Community Public Meeting On Finance Crisis: Maryhill, 26th Nov, 7:30PM, Woodside Halls

Public Meeting for all Maryhill - the finance crisis and our community, what difference does it make?

Maryhill Burgh Meeting: The financial crisis – how’s it going to affect us in Maryhill.
A public meeting for Maryhill and beyond: Woodside Halls, 7:30PM, Wednesday the 26th of November
Tenants, Homeowners, Ratespayers, Claimants, Refugees, Migrants: ALL WELCOME
PUBLIC MEETING: for the whole community

MAP: Woodside Halls

• * Your Home
• * Your Rent
• * Your Council Services
• * Your Repairs
• * Your Refuse Collection
• * Your Childcare
• * Your Kids Play Facilities
• * Your Job
• * Your Benefits
• * Your Community Safety
• * Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour

YOUR RIGHT TO HAVE A SAY!

How a crisis in the world’s financial markets is going to hurt Maryhill, is going to hurt our services, raise our rents, hurt our pockets, and damage our community, and what we can do together in Maryhill to stop this happening.

A public meeting for Maryhill and beyond: Woodside Halls, 7:30PM, Wednesday the 26th of November

Come along, and hear what can be done. Have your say!

Meeting organised by:-

The Burgh Angel – community newspaper
The IWW – independent trade union

–
Speakers include: IWW, Burgh Angel, London Coalition Against Poverty, and independent economists

 

Friends of Glasgow Parks

Friends of Glasgow Parks?  [Citystrolls Update]

“City parks to invite private companies to join in shake-up”

"625 car parking spaces on football grounds in Victoria Park"

"Nightclub in Botanical Gardens"

"Expensive adventure playground in Pollok Park & more car parks"

"Park toilets turned into chic cafe Kelvingrove"

"Building school in park"

"Save our schools"

"Community Bandstand ignored Kelvingrove"

"Park creeping"

"Consulted Remember?"

Read... http://commongoodwatch.wordpress.com/

"Mr Booth admitted that during the review, the possibility of the parks
being run by an external organisation was considered. However, the option
was dismissed amid fears that private contractors may charge for some of
the facilities which are currently free"...

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Why do we call the GHA a ’social landlord’?

GLASGOW RESIDENTS LIVING IN FUEL POVERTY RISING DRAMATICALLY

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.2464399.0.105_000_city_families_in_fuel_poverty.php

AROUND 105,000 Glasgow families face a miserable winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes, a report says.

Earlier this year city councillors were told around 72,000 families did not have enough money to pay heating bills.

Tomorrow the council’s executive committee will be told that number is believed to have soared by another 33,000 due to two recent substantial fuel bill increases.

GHA – THE COUNTRY’S BIGGEST ” SOCIAL ” LANDLORD – RAISING RENTS BY 6%

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.2464426.0.rent_rise_for_city_tenants.php

THOUSANDS of Glasgow Housing Association tenants are facing a 6% rent hike.

Bosses say the proposed increase would kick in in January, a year after rents rose by more than 5%.

The board of Scotland’s biggest social housing landlord will meet tomorrow to set its annual rent strategy for 2009.

An agreement which transferred Glasgow council houses to the GHA sets rent at no more than the Retail Price Index – the main measure of inflation in the UK – plus 1%. The 6% rise would be based on the current RPI of 5%. It means a family paying £300 a month rent would pay £318.

 

The Clyde Gateway: A New Urban Frontier

[Originally Published here in Variant Magazine]

By Neil Gray

“Not only does ‘urban regeneration’ represent the next wave of gentrification, planned and financed on an unprecedented scale, but the victory of this language in anesthetizing our critical understanding of gentrification in Europe represents a considerable ideological victory for neo-liberal visions of the city.” Neil Smith¹

“The Clyde is now one of the largest and most visionary renewal projects being undertaken in Europe. I believe that this is only the beginning of this tartan tiger’s awakening.” Stephen Purcell, Glasgow City Council leader²

Glasgow’s urban regeneration converges most symbolically around the £5.6 billion Clyde Waterfront project to transform 13 miles of the Clyde river corridor into an “…internationally competitive ‘central belt’ for business, employment, living and tourism.”³ The Clyde Gateway project, an ancillary development situated in the east of the city, is deemed a vital part of this broader long term project to re-brand and transform Glasgow’s image from that of recalcitrant ‘Red Clydeside’ into that of consumerist ‘Glasgow: Scotland with Style’. The scale of the Clyde Gateway project – which includes the site for the 2014 Commonwealth Games – is enormous: Stewart Maxwell, the minister for Communities and Sport, recently described the development as: “The biggest regeneration programme in Scotland.”⁴

City boosters have been quick to point to poverty, deprivation and dereliction in the east of Glasgow to legitimise large-scale regeneration. They argue that the Clyde Gateway initiative will ensure the provision of jobs and housing, the remediation and reclamation of contaminated land, and bring wider benefits to the local and national economy. Above all, they argue that the project is essential to ensure Glasgow’s ‘edge’ in the competitive global economy. Yet, the over-arching reality is that urban regeneration has for some time been writ large as a global urban strategy of gentrification and capitalist accumulation. The disjuncture between the triumphal neo-liberal ideology of the city – of successful self-regulating markets achieving optimally balanced economic growth – and the everyday reality of uneven development, intensifying inequality, and generalized social insecurity is ever increasing.

 

Govanhill Baths: “Historic pool on show for first time in seven years”

From ET:-

VISITORS are to be given a behind-the-scenes glimpse of Govanhill Baths – for the first time in seven years.

The Govanhill Baths Community Trust is opening the B-listed building to give people the chance to explore the former steamie.

The trust is still hoping to see the Calder Street baths transformed into a £7.5million healthy living centre at the heart of the community.

And now they are getting locals involved in a bid to generate a fresh surge of support.

Andrew Johnson, chairman of the trust, said: “A lot of people were very upset at the baths closing seven years ago and they have not been able to see inside since.

“It is a historic Victorian building and people deserve the chance to look inside and see what the facilities were like 100 years ago.”

Since the pool was closed amid violent scenes in 2001, campaigners have been battling to raise funds to restore the building and reopen it as a swimming pool. But they have so far failed to secure enough cash.

Although relations between the council and the trust were initially strained, city bosses have now created a board, including MSP Frank McAveety, to give the group professional support.

Glasgow City Council offered a 99-year lease to the trust on the condition the group produced a business plan showing how they would generate enough cash to revamp the building.

The trust were given a further boost in August 2007 when the council offered £5000 to help hire a development officer – and extended the fundraising deadline to July 2009.

Now campaigners have until the end of October to come up with a second business plan, showing how they will regenerate the baths.

Mr Johnson added: “We are working hand in glove with Glasgow City Council, who have been extremely supportive of our efforts to renovate Govanhill Pool.

“Hopefully by inviting people along on Sunday we can show the community how important the building is and what benefits it will bring to the area.”

Visitors to this Sunday’s open day will get the chance to see a model of the proposed Govanhill Sports and Wellbeing Centre.

Nord Architects, who are designing a series of eco-friendly plans for the centre, will be on hand to hear suggestions of what local people want from the development.

The day will also feature a photography exhibition of people involved in the campaign to save the baths, taken by Glasgow artists Reuben Parris and Steven Hanson.

Guides will be on hand to give tours round all three pools and answer questions on the history of the building.

For more information log on to www.govanhillbaths.com

 

Gentrification in Glasgow (film), and May Reshuffle – Movement for Justice in El Barrio Tour

Glasgow is facing a wave of gentrification.  The following short films (the next in the housing and community series Answer Time) are being aired in advance of the May Reshuffle in Govan, a community event for all the family.  The films address the theme of gentrification in Glasgow, a theme that the series hopes to address over the coming months, to give citizens of Glasgow the information to stand up and defend their communities.

DICTIONARY DEFINITION: Merriam-Webster

Main Entry:

gen·tri·fi·ca·tion

Pronunciation:

\ˌjen-trə-fə-ˈkā-shən\

Function:

noun

Date:

1964

: the process of renewal and rebuilding accompanying the influx of middle-class or affluent people into deteriorating areas that often displaces poorer residents

The May Reshuffle features community campaigners from across the pond, Movement for Justice in El Barrio.  The group are staging a tour of the UK, to make links with communities resisting gentrification here, and to raise awareness of their community’s plight.

– – — – — – — – — – — – — – –

HARLEM MEETS SCOTLAND

“We will not be moved!” Juan Haro of “Movement for Justice in El Barrio” is taking that message from the ground-breaking Harlem community group to Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh this month, as part of a European speaking tour. The renowned Greenwich Village Voice describes the group as “the best power to the people movement in New York City.”

The members of “Movement for Justice in El Barrio” are mainly poor Mexican immigrants. Having driven their previous landlord, millionaire Mr Kessner, out of East Harlem, they are now involved in a major battlewith new landlord, UK-based multinational Dawnay Day.

Juan Haro explains : “Driven by multi-national corporations and profit-seeking landlords and facilitated by city officials, gentrification has swept New York causing the grand-scale displacement of low-income people of colour and immigrants from our communities. East Harlem is experiencing a wave of harassment, abuse and intimidation in attempts by greedy landlords to evict us from our homes in order to raise rents and increaseprofits. Movement for Justice in El Barrio is fighting back: “We Will Not be Moved!!!”

The group accuses Dawnay Day of trying to drive its tenants out of their
homes by the imposition of illegal charges. Juan says “We are organizing
on a transnational level to combat displacement in El Barrio – East

Harlem – by building a multi-nationalnetwork to go after one of our main targets, the multi-national corporation Dawnay, Day Group at their central headquarters in London and on multiple continents where they hold property.” Dawnay Day also own the prestigious Carlton Hotel on Edinburgh’s North Bridge, and hotels in Troon and Stirling as part of
Paramount Hotel Group.

Movement for Justice in El Barrio is committed to a grass-roots way of organising, stating “the struggle for justice means fighting for the liberation of women, immigrants, lesbians, people of colour, gays and the transgender community.” They are part of “The Other Campaign”, an international extra-parliamentary movement initiated by Mexican indigenous rebels the Zapatistas.

MJB are keen to make links with community groups in Scotland. At the Edinburgh meeting they are being joined by a speaker from Save Our Old Town, campaigning for community-based change in Edinburgh’s Old Town, and against the “Caltongate” development.  In Glasgow they are taking part in the May Reshuffle and Radical Bookfair, an event hosted to bring together a range of community groups, campaigners, and Govanites, aimed at building community cohesion, and a fun day out for all the family.

• MJB has been active for 3 years, and has 400 members, tenants in privately-rented housing in mainly Hispanic East Harlem. They have launched an innovative form of local democracy, “a consultation of El Barrio”, in which 1,500 local people expressed their views on which issues the movement should take up and prioritise. This led the New York Daily News to state :”It is real grass-roots democracy, and it is being practised by the immigrants who live in East Harlem.”

• Meeting: 17 May, 2-4pm, Pearce Institute, 840 – 860 Govan Road. Glasgow G51 3UU.

 

Developers clash over Tesco plans [ET]

RIVAL developers clashed at a public inquiry over major superstore plans.

Tesco is appealing a decision to refer a planning application for a development of supermarket and student flats at Partick, close to Glasgow Harbour to the Scottish Government.

[A 'Times reader comments]:-

The ET really need to get to grips on the planning system and provide accurate information.

Tesco arent appealing against a decision to refer a planning application to the SG. They are appealing to the SG against the non-determination of 2 planning applications by GCC.

Are your reporters nodding off while the Inquiry is on??

Read the full article…

 

Lifts Out in Maryhill

From the ET today…

A YOUNG mum forced to struggle up six flights of stairs with a toddler and baby to get to her flat today told how she’s been made a prisoner in her own home.

The lift in Leanne Baker’s seven-storey high-rise block has been out of order for the past eight weeks while maintenance work is carried out by Glasgow Housing Association.

The situation came to a head last month when Leanne’s two-year-old son Andrew was rushed to hospital and paramedics had to climb the 140 steps to the 6th floor.

GHA says it is doing its best to help – but according to Leanne that’s not enough.

Housing bosses wrote to residents at Maryhill’s Fearnmore Road flats in offering concierge assistance to tenants who needed it while the work was going on.

Initially, the concierge carried three-month-old Rhiannon while Leanne took Andrew.

But that help came to an end two weeks ago when the concierge said he could no longer carry the children on health and safety grounds.

Leanne says since then getting out of the house has been a nightmare. Work on the lifts isn’t due to end until December 21.

Leanne, a hair stylist married to Andrew, 24, said: “How am I supposed to carry two children down six flights of steps on my own? My husband works long hours and without help I’m trapped.”

When little Andrew became ill at home six weeks ago, NHS 24 nurses suspected meningitis and told Leanne to call an ambulance immediately.

But when paramedics arrived with their equipment they too were faced with the stairs.

Leanne said: “It took them three times as long to get up and down.

“Thankfully Andrew didn’t have meningitis, but he did have pneumonia which he still hasn’t fully recovered from.

“When I complained to my local housing office they said said Andrew would just have to walk up and down the stairs.

“I asked to be moved but all they could offer me was a cold, damp house with no furniture, and of course we couldn’t move our things out because the lifts are out of order.”

Bill Lanigan of GHA said: “Due to health and safety regulations our concierge staff are not permitted to carry children up or down stairs.

“We are making arrangements to assist Miss Baker with her children while ensuring our staff are also protected.”

Publication date 26/11/07

 

Broomhill Ave. Park Fight Taken to Parliament

The comment below, taken from the Evening Times website, sums up very well the fight to stop another unsustainable development.  Developers want to swallow another much loved local park in Broomhill.  We’ve covered this issue since it emerged.  This is the latest on the fight.

Posted by: Stewie Griffin, Glasgow on 1:29pm Fri 19 Oct 07
GCC at it again, their greed knows no bounds. Who exactly is benefiting from all this construction, certainly not the ordinary citizens of Glasgow, just property developers. We need green space in Glasgow, it’s overcrowded as it is. This new Culture Quango will not be happy until they have sold off every park in Glasgow.

From the ET…

“CAMPAIGNERS trying to save an area of green space targeted for housing have taken their fight to Holyrood. The park, at the bottom of Broomhill Avenue near Partick, has been used for more than 50 years by children, dog walkers and for community events. But, as reported last week in the Evening Times, residents recently discovered the ground, which is ownd by Glasgow City Council, was to be sold as part of a multi- million pound housing development. The land, with trees, bushes and wildlife, was originally to be included in a roads scheme, but was never used for the purpose. advertisement As a result, council bosses decided it was surplus to needs and agreed it could be sold as part of a package. The other sites for sale include the Balshagray annex of Anniesland College and the former Balshagray swimming pool, both owned by the college. However, Councillor Aileen Colleran is furious she was not consulted about the decision. And Liberal DemocratMSP Robert Brown is now taking the issue up at the Scottish Parliament. Mr Brown, who has lodged a Parliamentary motion backing campaigners, said: “This is an example of the pressure there is on green space, particularly in the West End.” Resident Chris Osborne is heading a pressure group that wants the land to remain as open space. He said: “This area is massively important because it is used on a daily basis and there is a real strength of feeling against the sale.” Ms Colleran added: “This is one of the few pieces of green space in the area.” Ms Colleran and the action group have both lodged formal requests with the council asking that the sale be halted until locals are consulted. A council spokesman said: “The council is aware of local feeling on this issue and will take this into account when considering the future of the area.” Publication date 19/10/07″

You can sign an online petition to support this campaign, here: http://www.petitiononline.com/broomave/petition.html

 

 

 

Letter to the Herald – Wilton Street Tenement Collapse

John F. Crawford’s comment (Sep.4) adds to the extensive discussion in your columns of the nature and causes of the collapse of the wall in Wilton Street on Monday 27 August).   Many of your correspondents, and indeed your headline article and leader (August 29), have focused on problems in the maintenance of Scotland’s stone-built Victorian heritage.   As someone living  beside the devastated site in question, however, I wish to point to yet more disturbing issues.

First, it should be stressed that the collapsed wall was not a tenement gable-end but the already-weakened remnant end dividing wall of a terraced town house.   Secondly, a major new-build development project was being carried out on the adjoining gap site with, on the very day of the collapse, significant excavations close to the wall in question.

The local community is demanding a full and rigorous official inquiry, including  statutory investigations by the Health & Safety Executive.   This is because an aggressive development project, carried out adjacent to an old building in precarious condition, seemed to be a disaster waiting to happen.

Fortuitously, fatalities and serious injuries were avoided.   But I would urge Glasgow City Council to recognize this near-catastrophe as a wake-up call that should provoke serious examination of the fundamental lessons to be learnt for its future development policy and procedures.   One of these might well be greater restraint in its less discriminating efforts to cover green and leafy areas with concrete.  The next time, there may be blood as well ink on the Council’s hands!