Culture

What is our politics?

Posted on by bob

I was leafleting in Govan for Save the Docks campaign public consultation and a young guy from a few meters away asked what it was about. Before I gave him the leaflet, he said. “I fuckin hate Govan, I used to love it, but not any more. I fucking hate it.” There wasn’t really any malice in his voice, more like regret and a kind of loss of hope. I chatted to him for a bit but he might have been too far down in the groove that our conversation would have made any difference.

He seemed like the kind of guy with a bit of support would be useful to his community. I have known other activist, people, in Govan with exactly the same attitude. Folk who were once good leaders but worn out by so much disapproval, distrust and repeatedly climbing the same hill of petty slights, and personality politics. With too much negativity to endure, too little aspiration to bear and too little agenda to adopt. This is not just a Govan phenomenon, you can find it all over. Why? well maybe.
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The Glasgow User Manual – An Almanac and Peoples Guide To the city

Posted on by bob

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 →

Forgotten Priorities In The Culture City

Posted on by bob

“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

As America awaits more violent attacks, (Act II) time for some reflection

Posted on by bob

I don’t think the moron nutcases attacking the capital are the main problem. They are kind of puppets for the main regime, the Cristian fundamentalist. The clean cut people in the wheelhouse charting the course. Remember when they were talking on US news outlets about UK cities being run by Muslims, which people here were perplexed at. Continue reading →

NATURA URBANA | THE BRACHEN OF BERLIN

Posted on by bob

NATURA URBANA | THE BRACHEN OF BERLIN tells the post-war history of Berlin through its plants.

Glasgow Brachen
When I had time to do City Strolls, visiting the Glasgow bracken was a favourite. Unfortunately we do not have the same respect and love of the bracken as the Berliner. The 70s adventure playgrounds, environments and happenings, pop up theatres, had its time in the city. But big brother council and its ubiquitous red glaze soon covered up the bracken and sanitise the land long before it was needed for development parcels. I was never surprised that each time we did a talk on Scotland’s Common Good Fund, at the Electron Club or elsewhere, at least one Berliner would turn up for each occasion. And very impressed they were, that our Common Good Fund existed, along with its uniqueness. I guess it would take a Berliner, to appreciate, who still have the sense and scope of what the brachen and the commons represents and has to offer.

We also had our own Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord potential, but the Philistines-that-be down at the council, could not wait to be rid of ever last remanent of our innovative, industrial and engineering past in order to swathe the landscape in concrete boxes. Who knows to what mental damage the cleansing, both social and environmental of the city has done to its citizens. Soon there will be no place to be lost in, to find, to imagine. No nooks and crannies to offer respite from the bland. No city strolls because there will be no place to go or discover only generic landscape.