“We created GalGael as a vehicle to take forward what we’d learned and to move from being about what we didn’t want to what we did want.”
The articles or podcasts in this series are meant to be a stepping stone, or dipping a toe in the water kind of approach in helping to encourage ordinary people to think a bit more about public life.
Hi bob —
While Europe sees two of its hottest months on record and we continue to tip further
into the climatecrisis, companies such as British Gas have raked in nearly a billion
in profit. All that when we’re worrying about paying our energy bills.
And it is not just temperatures that have been climbing, across Scotland rents have
continued to skyrocket with new rents in Edinburgh and Glasgow having the top three
sharpest rent increases in the UK over the last year. Though the rent freeze has
been extended until March 2024, rents are already too high and we need proper
government action to bring them down.
With this as a backdrop, the need for organising to gain power in our communities is
clear. And in these last two months, members have been doing just that.
“The housing crises is an active agent of repression and as been since Thatchers time. Where the working class activities that couldn’t be suppressed were commercialised.” Stefan Szczelkum.
Part of that he is talking about is the present obsession of owning a house. And the entrenchment of many in the working classes to become a cog in the commercialisation process. Rather than becoming part of a movement working to curb Thatchers neoliberal legacy. Instead many are inadvertently working to maintain it. By placing their future and trust in the hands of banks.
When people lived in council houses with controlled rent. One of the lesser things they worried about was being evicted or being made homeless. How many can say that today, particularly when they are paying a mortgage in a housing market that’s prices have gone through the roof.
Back in the day your secured tenancy in a council home was much the same as everyone else’s. Your problems were much the same as your neighbours. That is until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher and the neoliberal project. Which basically meant. Forget your solidarity, and sticking together. Now we live, she could have suggested under the neoliberal motto of. “Everything is for us and nothing for you.” Continue reading
The algorithm can offer some facts and reviews but it can’t show you what it feels like to matter.
You can go on google and Facebook and find where places are. But you don’t get to talk to the people in these places. The internet can give simple information but it can not give the deeper knowledge of a place than actually going there can. The algorithm can offer facts and a review of different places, but it can not hear the rhythm or the feel of the folk who live there. Continue reading
A 2023 project to research and publish:
A city hand book for the discerning citizen, traveller and reader.
The Glasgow user Manual – A peoples guid to the city
The Project, will be a one year long survey for setting up process and ideas for collecting information for a peoples guide to the city. A publication and website that will manage information and data for a long term portal to allow access to a wide range of city data, infrastructure and aspects in the public interest. This year long project will be the first phase in organising and creating the content for a publication with a work title of: The Glasgow user manual A peoples guide to the city. Continue reading
At the time of his death in 2006, Augusto Pinochet had been implicated in over 300 criminal charges for human rights violations. The charges included 194 counts of killings Spanish citizens. He was arrested in London and held on house arrest in comfortable rented accommodation for a year and a half before being released by the British government. During that time he was visited by Margaret Thatcher to pay her respects.
Who was Pinochet?
Pinochet was the Chilean dictator who took power in Chile in 1973 after a US backed coup that ousted President Allende the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, which lead to a brutal right wing dictatorship, led by Pinochet.
“Pinochet’s newly formed junta locked hundreds of thousands of people in detention centres, “disappeared” (killed) at least 2,279 for political reasons and tortured another 31,947. Pinochet took power by military force and used military force to maintain his regime.” libcom Continue reading
Andy Wilson interviewed at East India Docks Greenock around 10 years ago. An incredible knowledge on public ownership under Scotland’s Common Good Fund. And Greenock harbour one of the worst infringements on Scotland’s common good law according to Andy Wightman, auther of The Poor Had No Lawyers: Who Owns Scotland and How They Got it. Andy passed away some years after the video was made. This film was mad by Simon Yuill as part of his research on the Common Good
More VIDEOS: Continue reading
“Glasgow Life” Still closing down working class facilities and culture while spending millions on tourist attractions. Turning the city into a generic shopping centre like all others and ignoring the cities uniqueness.
The People’s Palace at GalGael – Govan’s Critical Connections.
Burrell’s vanity project he got us to pay for.
Forgotten Communities to Cultural Tourism
The Burrell Effect – Transferring pubic to private
Mr Chesty Burns The Fried Bread