Glasgow

Glasgow’s Success is Key to Scotland’s Success Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, May 29th 2016 Glasgow is Scotland’s biggest city. It may only contain 606,340 people in its council boundaries, but the Greater Glasgow conurbation is double that - at 1.2 million. Glasgow is one of the drivers of the Scottish economy and society: a place of great wealth, enterprise, jobs and culture. But it is also characterised by staggering degrees and levels of poverty, inequality and disadvantage. This isn’t anything remotely new and has been the case since the city experienced rapid industrialisation from the early 1800s, but it limits

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Govanhill: A Response from Glasgow City Council May 5^th 2016 Dear Mr Hassan, I saw your article on ‘Scottish Review’ about Govanhill and, as a press officer for Glasgow City Council, was particularly taken the paragraph, which said: For years Govanhill has had a palpable feeling of falling between the cracks and has not received council and government regeneration policy and funding. It isn’t by any stretch one of the poorest parts of Glasgow or Scotland, but this has meant that it has consistently missed out on funds, priorities and influence. Below is a fact sheet, which was produced by

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Govanhill: Glasgow’s Ellis Island and the Battle for the Heart of Nicola Sturgeon’s Constituency Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, May 4th 2016 A couple of years ago a community arts project in Glasgow designated Albert Drive on the city’s Southside as ‘Scotland’s most ethnically diverse street’. It was a good strapline – filled with positivity and pride, but inaccurate. Instead, that byline should be held by the nearby community of Govanhill, with 53 different languages recorded in its small area. Govanhill has always been in transition and a place for immigrants: known for a long while as Glasgow’s Ellis Island. In

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The Real Glasgow Effect on all of us Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, February 10th 2016 Glasgow is many things. It is a place, an idea and a story. Willie McIlvanney once captured this writing: ‘Glasgow is a great city. Glasgow is in trouble. Glasgow is handsome. Glasgow is ugly. Glasgow is kind. Glasgow is cruel.’ There is a Glasgow industry of books about the city - the biggest and most burgeoning concerning any UK city - London apart, which is over ten times its size. There are dry academic accounts and studious examinations. There are cultural tours. Then there is

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Glasgow is not Scotland so let's stop pretending it is Gerry Hassan Scottish Review, February 10th 2015 Someone observing Scotland from afar could easily fall under the apprehension that all there is to the nation is Glasgow. A Martian, or alien from another world, who had the misfortune to only follow and comprehend our country through the transmissions of BBC Reporting Scotland or STV News at Six would think that we were a strange land. They would imagine that all there was to this country was a few streets, only inhabited by men, where football and crime were the

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The Myth of ‘Glasgow Man’ Gerry Hassan Sunday Mail, February 1^st 2015 ‘Glasgow man’ is expected to be a critical factor in the forthcoming general election contest in Scotland. He, or it, is central to Jim Murphy’s attempt to save Scottish Labour and win back 200,000 Labour supporters who voted Yes in the referendum. It is also pivotal to the SNP’s attempt to breakthrough in traditional Labour seats. Glasgow man is shorthand for a certain political demographic - the equivalent of ‘Basildon man’ who supposedly won it for Thatcher, and of ‘Mondeo man’ who contributed to Blair’s three election

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The Glasgow Games, the Great War and A Requiem for the Post-War Dream Gerry Hassan National Collective, August 4th 2014 Two very different tales of a city and a country - Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games followed by the Glasgow Cathedral commemoration of the outbreak of World War One when the UK declared war on Germany. The Commonwealth Games showcased Glasgow on a Scottish, UK and global stage, aided by ‘Team Scotland’s’ best ever haul of medals. The games profiled Glasgow as an international city and tourist destination – a transition which has been underway for at least the last 30 years.

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The Story the Media Should Have Told You About Glasgow Gerry Hassan May 7th 2012 The story of the recent Scottish elections was clear and unambiguous: voters are returning home to Labour and the SNP honeymoon is over. All of this is magnified in the Glasgow result: Labour holding or as most of the media interpreted it ‘gaining’ back the city it had briefly lost. All of this ‘analysis’ was done with no breakdown of the Scottish local election party share of the vote; no doubt we will have to wait until David Denver’s research several months down the

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What is the story of Scotland’s biggest city and who will tell it? Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, April 14th 2012 The forthcoming local elections are reduced in most of their coverage to their impact on UK and Scottish politics. Most attention is focused on the tragi-comedy and pantomime of Boris versus Ken, with even the plethora of local referendums on Mayors across some of England’s cities concerned with what happens to this or that Labour MP. The only other place that gets a serious look in is the battle for Glasgow, between Labour and SNP for control of

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Telling Glasgow’s Stories and the Culture of Miserablism Gerry Hassan The Scotsman, February 15th 2011 Glasgow is a city rich with stories, myths and folklore. It has gone from being ‘the second city of Empire’ to branding itself as ‘the second city of shopping’ – statements which show the continuation of Glasgow swagger, ambition and belief – for all its undoubted problems. Glasgow has throughout this experienced constant change and adaptation, of coming to terms with decline and proclaiming renewal. Often this has involved a simple backstory of counterposing a caricature of ‘old Glasgow’, of traditional industries and an omnipotent

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