Hollywood loves Glasgow. What do we get in return?

Dear readers, how was your weekend? Glasgow didn’t quite enjoy the tropical temperatures the rest of the UK was boasting about, but we ought not complain. Calum and Robbie cycled over to Civic House on Friday after work during the balmy weather. On the way, they stumbled across a road closure and huge fire engine, only to realise it was actually a film set. More on that below. 

Our route also took us through the contested space that is the Woodside underpass, as Calum reported on earlier this month. The pair dismounted their bikes, like all good law-abiding cyclists, only to hear a rather aggro bell-ringer who then began shouting at them for not moving out the way. It was pointed out that they too were supposed to have dismounted, which only seemed to aggravate matters further. The destination the rage-rider was in such a hurry to get to? Civic House, where they’d arrived all of 30 seconds before. Awkward!

Glasgow in Brief 

🎞️ Every time a new Hollywood star is spotted in Glasgow, it’s like the first time all over again, at least for the papers (this week, actor Glen Powell is back to film his latest blockbuster). But the city will get used to it — the incidence of glossy American films choosing international locations to film in is only growing more frequent, as it’s far cheaper than shooting on home turf (as this revealing — paywalled — Vulture story reports). With parts of Hope, Wellington, and St. Vincent Street shut down for filming over the weekend, we wondered just how much this movie palaver actually benefits the city (beyond the chance of bumping into a star in your local boozer). In 2018, The Ferret (£) found that in the five years prior, Glasgow City Council received just £35,000 in return for all filming-related road closures. This included Fast & Furious 6, which had a budget of $160m and filmed in 2012 — that year, the council only claimed a total of £8,372 from productions taking over the city’s roads.

📽️ In fact, in 2022, the council was due to pay Warner Bros a tidy £150,000 in grant funding to film Batgirl wholly in the city. Thanks to the film being unceremoniously axed, Warner Bros opted not to “draw down” the funds, a spokesperson for Glasgow City Council tells The Bell, which is slightly contrary to what was previously reported, where GCC were said to have “not paid” the film giant. The same spokesperson told The Bell that a conservative estimate for the economic impact of film, broadcast and advertising production in Glasgow this century would be “well over £400m”. This is distributed across the wider region via hotels for staff, food and drinks venues for feeding and watering them, and all other associated costs including transport and storage, not to mention the wages paid to local jobs created by the industry. But there don’t seem to be any concrete figures available on this to really test that claim — should we start investigating further? Let us know in the comments. 

📚 Every secondary school in the city could lose its librarian, if proposed council budgets are approved. The review of the school library service plans to save £100,000 by reducing headcount. Glasgow Life (which manages the service on behalf of Glasgow City Council), plans to remove librarians from all 30 of Glasgow’s secondary schools and head up the school service with a principal librarian along with three area-based librarians. In 2024, The Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC), the advisory body for the Scottish Government, wrote to the leaders of all 32 local authorities to “ensure public library and school library interests remained at the forefront of discussions”. Only nine councils indicated they were fully committed to their library services. SLIC has taken a dim view of such budgetary behaviour, urging councils to avoid “slow, salami-slicing” cuts, and its CEO, Alison Nolan, has previously called on policy-makers to invest in libraries. COSLA, for its part, has repeatedly warned of real-terms funding cuts to local budgets, where councils have to navigate a “very difficult balancing act” between continuing to deliver day-to-day services and managing increasingly higher demand. The Glasgow plans have been relayed to trade unions, with consultations expected to begin soon. 

🏘️ The secretary for housing, Màiri McAllan, has only been in the job since 11 June, when she returned to cabinet after mat-leave with an instruction to tackle the housing emergency. The Clydesdale MSP is feeling the heat already, with Shelter Scotland assistant director Gordon MacRae accusing the government of making a “political choice” over homelessness and ‘managing’ the decline of the housing sector. Glasgow declared a housing crisis in November 2023 following rising homelessness and a significant shortage of affordable housing. An action plan to tackle the emergency was launched at the start of the year by the Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), on the same day government statistics showed 3,060 children in the city were in temporary accommodation. Plans include reducing empty properties across the city and working with registered social landlords to maximise the number of properties allocated to homeless households. Out of 32 Scottish local authorities Glasgow has seen the largest numerical increase in homeless applications, with a 22% rise. The city also accounts for 63% of all applications received from those with refugee/leave to remain status. 

🏗️ It might be getting worse but Glasgow’s housing crisis is nothing new. In 1959 the documentary New Lives for Old paid a return visit to Glasgow, reflecting on the grim state of the city’s postwar housing stock they’d first witnessed seven years prior. Glasgow then had the biggest housing problem in the UK. The solution: “one of the biggest social upheavals since the industrial revolution”. We see the city at a pivotal point, as slums are being cleared and citizens moved out to the new peripheral housing estates. In the space of six years, the city had built 30,000 new homes, flattening areas like the Gorbals and moving residents out to ‘Big Four’ housing estates and new towns. Still, the number of people waiting for a home continued to rise, even during the largest housebuilding programme in living memory. There’s a lesson in here somewhere…

Stories you might have missed: 

🚕 Taxi fares in Glasgow rise by 3.32% (but doesn’t impact Ubers or GlasgowGo which are private hire cars) - Glasgow Times

🥀 Darren McGarvey on the death of Peter Krykant - UnHerd 

🪧 Father of Kory McCrimmon leads march to end knife crime - BBC

💰 Michelle Mone's £250 million Dubai property project was never finished and is now just a desert shell - Daily Mail 

Read/listen/watch: Dani Garavelli visits The Thistle 

There’s been much debate about the tone and motivation of Darren McGarvey’s piece on the death of Peter Krykant (see above). In a less polemic take, Dani Garavelli spent time at the Thistle, the safe drug consumption room set up in the wake of Krykant’s campaigning activism. At the heart of the debate over SCRs is a divide between abstinence-based recovery — of which McGarvey appears to be a proponent — and those who advocate for provision of spaces in which drug users can continue to use safely. These needn’t be mutually exclusive, paradoxical as that sounds. What’s often been missing from the conversation, however, is compassion for those who find themselves in these circumstances, which is adequately remedied here. Garavelli learns that some users are put off using the Thistle, given the centre is never out of the headlines, and finds attendance is tailing off too. “It’s too early to tell whether the centre will succeed, but it shouldn’t be allowed to become a casualty of the culture wars,” she concludes. 

We also rec: 

🎧 Tommy Sheridan on Scotcast

🤝 Frosty: The Herald meets Aamer Anwar 

⚽ Glasgow Uni professor on the art of the football chant 

Catch up and coming up: 

• Neapolitan or New York style? Last week, Robbie rated Glasgow’s most hyped pizzerias. Were his takes controversial? Decide for yourself. 
• Did you know tigers once roamed Baillieston Road? Or rather, enclosures at the now shuttered Glasgow Zoo. At the weekend, Iain McGilp traced the dramatic decline and urban myths surrounding the city’s lost attraction. 

The last days of Glasgow Zoo

It’s hard to believe now, but tigers once roamed a site off Baillieston Road

The BellIain McGilp

Unconstructive critique - Parveen’s closing party

History has taught the wise that you arrive late to Parveen’s at your own peril. Their closing party at Civic House on Friday — they announced at the start of the month that they are moving to their own Southside spot soon — was no exception. Arriving half an hour after doors opened, the queue was already snaking out onto the street; by the time we reached the front, belly protesting at the wait, panic had set in as a marker pen steadily scored out items from the menu. Rejoice, we managed to scoop up a bowl of a spicy cashew makhani, with baby aubergine and coconut lime khoran. It was hot, heady with spices and ginger, and quite the delight. As the sun blazed through the windows, we concluded proceedings with pistachio and rose barfi gelato, made by the good folks at La Gelatessa. Heaven in a scoop. We exited at sundown, as well-fed revellers boogied the night away.—Robbie.

Glasgow calendar: Enjoy Shakespeare (and Marlowe) in Glasgow’s glasshouses

Bard in the Botanics are kicking off their summer residency at the city’s Botanic Gardens this week with two new productions. Well, we say new: they’re adaptations of Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe classics. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is obviously on the docket; it begins the run on 25 June, followed by Doctor Faustus on 26 June. Preview tickets start from £19. 

Other dates for your diary:

• Diana Ross hits the Hydro 25 June, tickets from £53
• Northern Soul comes to Milngavie 28 June, tickets from £6.13