Nicola Sturgeon’s open (and closed) book

Good Monday, dear readers. Thanks for joining us for another start of the week briefing. Headline: in a competition for how grey a summer sky can be, this morning’s entry came away with top prize. Over the weekend we were busy monitoring Glasgow’s goings on so you don’t have to. But we did find time to kick it back in the Cairngorms, in Robbie’s case, where he was sliding down a waterfall into an icy cold pool and foraging for mushrooms (not always in that order). For Calum, it was a weekend of puppy training and horror movie watching (I Know What You Did Last Summer and Two Thousand Maniacs, if you’re interested). 

We’ve got some exciting projects on the go that will reveal themselves to you in the fullness of time. Last Wednesday, one of them bore fruit — the absence of a fire suppression system at the timber-filled Mackintosh church at Queen’s Cross. These stories take time and commitment to produce, so thank you for supporting us and making it all possible. We’re always on the lookout for tips. Anything that’s on your mind, email editor@glasgowbell.co.uk in confidence. Now, time for your Glasgow in brief.

Glasgow in brief

📖 Apparently Nicola Sturgeon’s book launch in Govanhill on Friday was a bit of a damp squib. We’re told there were technical difficulties, the Q&A was curtailed, the event finished 45 minutes early, and the vibe was generally a bit off. Little matter though, because Sturgeon was all over the pages of the Sunday Times a few days later, both being interviewed and in the form of an extract of her new memoir, Frankly. The former first minister revealed that she came “perilously close to a breakdown” during the Covid inquiry, and spoke openly about the impact a miscarriage had on both she and her former husband Peter Murrell, who was charged with embezzlement in April in a police investigation into SNP finances. She also claimed Alex Salmond’s camp had leaked details about an investigation into sexual misconduct claims made against him — an allegation strongly refuted by Salmond ally Kenny MacAskill, leader of the Alba party. Sturgeon followed up with an interview with ITV News, in which she admitted some regret over not pausing the gender reform debate at the point at which it had become polarised. “I fervently believe that the rights of women and the interests of trans people are not irreconcilable at all. I should have taken a step back and said, ‘How do we achieve this?’.”

Sturgeon is more candid than she’s ever been while writing about her sexuality, stating that she does not consider anyone’s — including hers — to be binary. [S]exual relationships should be private matters,” she writes. Her own desire for privacy be damned, ITV’s Julie Etchingham inevitably asked her about her sexuality anyway. Sturgeon refused to make a “big revelation” or put “labels” on herself. Etchingham then asked if we might now see her in a relationship with a woman. “I’m just out of a marriage, so I’m not rushing into a relationship with anyone, anytime soon,” Sturgeon said with a laugh, seemingly at ease with herself — and more importantly, amused at her own joke.

🦶A rancorous row has erupted following a gender-critical group being kicked out of the Glasgow University Union on Saturday evening. Let Women Speak had rented a space for “dinner, drinks, and dancing” in the union following their “free event” — which looked an awful lot like a protest — outside Kelvingrove Museum earlier in the day. A video of the GUU event shows the bar manager asking the group’s leader, Kellie-Jay Keen, to leave along with the rest of her party following alleged “harassment” of bar staff by guests. The video shows a group of women dispute the charge of harassment and claim they are being asked to leave because of their beliefs. The group’s beliefs consist of disputing that men can have vaginas and women penises, and that there is “no such thing as non-binary”. Police were called and the group eventually left, although the exact order of events isn’t quite clear. 

Keen hasn’t exactly been free of controversy before this. She and Let Women Speak recently launched a campaign called “free your face” after Keen shared a video of her telling two women wearing niqabs to free their faces, gesturing to them to remove their veils as she promptly walks away from them. She has also spoken on the Hearts of Oak podcast, a show for the eponymous radical rightwing group founded by agitator Tommy Robinson. In 2023, neo-Nazis (an ideology Keen says she “abhors”) attended Melbourne and Auckland rallies she had organised.

🧑‍🚒 Since informing readers that the Mackintosh Queen’s Cross church has no fire suppression system (despite years of concerned calls to install one), we were belatedly informed that there is supposedly a very appropriate picture hung somewhere in the church. ‘Mackintosh 167’ is a Banksy-inspired stencil and spray paint work by the architect Drew Carr. He created it in 2023 as an homage to the firefighters who battled the 2018 blaze in the Mack. Given the lack of fire safeguards in the church, perhaps it’s sensible that Toshie is clad in bunker gear.

🚉 A comprehensive map of Glasgow’s metro rail and subway system was released over the weekend, but not by ScotRail, Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) or Glasgow City Council. Instead, we have the popular @tubemapdesign Instagram account to thank. It’s a strong visual representation of the potential of an interconnected transportation network for Glasgow. It’s also a sad reminder that the plans for the Clyde Metro (a proposed multimodal mass-transit system) are moving through the eye-wateringly expensive consultation phase at a glacial pace. GCC and SPT are spending some £20m on a consultation framework to make an investment case for the £15bn plans. Possible routes and cost won’t be known until 2027. In the meantime, enjoy this wonderful map, and try to dream of a better future for the city’s public transit system.

Stories you might have missed: 

• “Unnecessary radioactive waste” leaked into Loch Long due to Royal Navy not maintaining pipes from nuclear bomb store (The Ferret)
• Glasgow paid £13m to transport and treat waste across UK and overseas (Daily Record) 
• Glasgow to trial automatic voter registration (Glasgow Live)
• George Galloway eyes Holyrood comeback via Nicola Sturgeon’s seat (The Herald, £)
• Hardeep Singh Kohli accused of indecent assault in a BBC studio (BBC News)
• 'People Make Glasgow' tower sold and to be turned into flats (BBC News)

Read/listen/watch: Darren McGarvey, Trauma Industrial Complex 

With Sturgeon’s memoir dominating the headlines, you could easily miss the release of Darren McGarvey’s Trauma Industrial Complex. That would be unfortunate. In a world of personal trauma and oversharing, he asks if the stories we tell ourselves are liberating us, or keeping us trapped. It’s a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, read by the author himself. McGarvey also talked about the perils of sharing his own trauma in an interview with Scotcast last week. It’s a critique not only of the trauma industry, but also the practices of the media itself, which often prey on vulnerable people and their stories. “People are just performing according to the incentives in this late-stage capitalist society … In the collapse of mental health services, people are turning to social media for guidance about mental health and trauma, and it’s a wild wild west out there — so people have to be very careful,” he told the BBC's Martin Geissler.  

Catch up and coming up: 

• Calum’s weekend read dissected the goings on behind the scenes at the CCA, as it remains closed to the public

Crisis at the CCA

Is this the end of an institution?

The BellCalum Grewar

• Robbie and Calum looked into claims the Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society sat on a report highlighting its vulnerability to fire and the need for a fire suppression system
  

Unconstructive critique: Qasba, 21 Allison Street

Culinarily, Allison Street punches heavy. It’s home to Kurdish shawarma,  Vietnamese pho, Pakistani curry cafés, and an Afghan eatery — to name but a few. You can now add North African cuisine into the mix, since Qasba opened its doors at the end of May. Owner Louisa Boulzareg has lovingly woven her Algerian heritage throughout the menu, as well as the ingredients they stock and the walls of the wee space itself. Admittedly, I experienced no small pang of food envy watching my lunch partner munching on a spiced chickpea baguette, while awaiting a cauliflower and courgette tagine to arrive from the postage stamp sized kitchen. Little matter, I  preoccupied myself with a delicious spiced ice coffee. Thankfully, the food was more than worth the wait, and I’ve already earmarked half of the menu for return visits.—Robbie.

Glasgow calendar:

🏆 World Pipe Band Championships, 15–16 August, Glasgow Green

⛑️ Medical Aid for Palestine fundraiser, Stereo. 15 August, 11pm

🦸Glasgow Film & Comic Con, 16–17 August, Braehead