2 weeks Ago By Stewart McDonald
It’s that sort of week where we’re all thinking about 2014 again: Scotland’s media was awash with reflections on our independence referendum when the news broke that Glasgow was going to hold the Commonwealth Games once again – though, as a sceptic, the less said about how it’s ended up in this position the better. We’ve a city to get ready. In what will be a ‘scaled-down’ version of the 2014 extravaganza, there won’t be any dancing tea cakes or multi-million-pound regeneration projects – the largest expense will be renovating existing facilities.
It’s understood that the budget will derive mainly from the compensation paid by the Australian state of Victoria for breaking the contract they originally signed. There’s a bittersweet element: only Glasgow is capable of holding an event of this size and sophistication; only Glasgow has the wherewithal and the stomach for trying out this new format; and yet, only Glasgow will get the sort of criticism that comes from stepping up to take responsibility for saving the Commonwealth Games. There’s an entire industry of voices, dripping in contempt, but also ignorance, about Glasgow and its challenges folded into one.
Scale of city’s success Glasgow’s ability to host something on this scale should be obvious, but it’s worth reminding ourselves why. It sits at the heart of a region of 1.85 million people, with a gross value added of £48 billion to Scotland’s economy, equal to around a third of our GDP and a third of all Scottish jobs.
Home to major domestic and global business clusters in the advanced manufacturing, space and satellite technology, and life science sectors, it has successfully remade itself as a post-industrial city with the second highest median wage of a large UK city outside of London. Funding unfairness Glasgow has had to battle through significant headwinds to get to where it is today, structural impediments to the city reaching its full potential that very rarely get discussed, with critics focusing on stereotypes about grime and crime that Scotland’s only metropolis has always had to put up with. Take the roads.
The Scottish Government allocates funding for roads on a per mile basis: so the high street of a village in Dumfries and Galloway gets the same amount funding as Glasgow’s Hope Street. As the most densely populated place in the country, we obviously have more demand on each mile of our roads in comparison to suburban or rural areas. Bearing in mind that less than 50 per cent of Glasgow households own a car, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that many of the journeys on our roads originate outside Glasgow: yet it is Glaswegians who stump up for the infrastructure, and put up with the traffic, the fumes and the neighbourhoods built around suburban car travel – like the good folk of the Gorbals who have seen a huge chunk of land turned over to free car parking for people working in Glasgow city centre.
Throw in the fact that Glasgow Council has sole responsibility for the Clyde Tunnel – more likely to be used by folk in Bearsden as a shortcut to the M8/M74 than it is to help Glaswegians get around their city – and you see how Glasgow’s road’s department has a Sisyphean task of keeping the tarmac in good order, with 10 per cent of the budget immediately being spent on the Tunnel. Why do Glaswegian council taxpayers subsidise the private car use of people who choose to live outside the city? Museums treated differently The Clyde Tunnel isn’t the only example of Glasgow bearing the load for critical national infrastructure: Glasgow has two of the top five most-visited museums in the country, yet we receive not a penny of additional Government funding for them, despite them being free to the public. Edinburgh, on the other hand, thought of a great ruse to make sure they got central government funding for their museums: they slapped the word ‘National’ on the front of them.
So, despite the fact the Rembrandts, Monets or Dalis in our collection draw tourists from around the world, we must pay for them from our own tax take. Cut off from its hinterland And this brings us to the most insidious part: the way that Glasgow sits uniquely as a local authority in Scotland cut off from its hinterland, and more significantly, its tax base. The city has finally turned around decades of decline and has seen its population rising steadily for a number of years and is now facing pressure to open schools rather than close them, with the youngest population in the country.
Yet despite its status as Scotland’s largest city and home to a third of our economy, vast swathes of those who use the city for work, leisure or education live outside of the city boundary: and as many readers this paper will understand, they tend to be in more affluent suburbs surrounding Glasgow. What policy wonks call Glasgow’s ‘travel to work’ area is far larger than the city’s core – artificially so in fact. The local government reforms that took place in the dog days of a previous discredited Tory administration not only cleaved a large chunk of Rutherglen and Cambuslang out of Glasgow’s boundaries, but it also ensured that areas like East Dunbartonshire and East Renfrewshire stopped contributing to Glasgow’s upkeep, despite Glasgow having to share our non-domestic business rates with them and every other council in Scotland.
Self-reflection required So, while we cannot pretend that the 2026 Commonwealth Games is going to be anything like 2014, let us not forget that there was only one city in that Commonwealth that can do what Glasgow is doing and at such short notice. And after years of doom-laden invective from established interests who have not reacted well to change in the city, I would like to think this would provide a moment for some self-reflection – though I won’t be holding my breath. I’ll just feel sorry for them that they don’t get to live in the greatest city in the world.
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