Briefing 1
Glasgow Life Closures 

  • The continued closure of Glasgow Life venues is a cost-cutting exercise by Glasgow City Council and is a choice, not a necessity.

  • The majority of the closed venues are in areas among the 20% most deprived in Scotland.

  • The council’s own equality impact assessment of the closures found that there is potential for “displacement” of vulnerable service users, and questioned whether the closures fell foul of the council’s human rights obligations.

  • The potential offloading of the venues through the People Make Glasgow Communities scheme is part of a long-term land & property strategy to reduce the council’s assets to raise money for more “high quality” investments in commercialised assets like the SSE Hydro. Read full Briefing here

Fact
File

  • In the Glasgow City Region, over 22 percent of 16 to 19 year olds are already unemployed and this is predicted to escalate, just as 16,000 leave education and enter the job market. 
  • An estimated 217,000 employees have been furloughed across the region during the lockdown, with potential for job losses to hit 90,000 when the government support to employers ends.
  • Glasgow Life, the "charity" that runs Glasgow's arts, sport and leisure, has financial losses of £12 million, due to cancellation of income-generating events during the first phase of the pandemic. As a result, many libraries and community centres will not reopen for the foreseeable future.
  • Fat Cat Scotland: Scottish Enterprise, the agency that distributes government funding to business, has 20 senior staff whose annual salary bill is about £2.02m. In 2018/19 they distributed just £24.5m to companies. That is to say for each senior director's labours the economy was boosted by  around £0.6m.

Glasgow's Israeli connection

In 2014 Gaza was under ferocious bombardment just as now. In Glasgow, preparations for the Commonwealth Games were underway. The City Council was quietly installing a Hi-Tech military-grade surveillance system bought from Israeli NICE Ltd (Neptune Intelligence Computer Engineering). It cost us £24m. Barry Dalgliesh explores the connection.

About us

The SANE (Solidarity Against Neoliberal Extremism) Collective is working to build a social movement of social movements, creating spaces and opportunities for all those who want to transform our city of Glasgow for the many. We support  new forms of activism, radical municipalism, collaboration and participation. Central to how we work are principles of solidarity, inclusion, the feminisation of politics and  "power with not power over".To join the SANE Collective, email info@sanecollectiveglasgow.org.uk
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Conversations for Change

Bringing campaigns, groups and individuals together to imagine, plan and campaign for a better future for Glasgow

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Events

First Sunday: On the First Sunday of the month, 4pm - 5pm, we get together to talk about SANE Collective's work and the state of the City,
Last Tuesday: 6pm to 7pm - conversations and shared learning

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About us

SANE was established in 2017 and our First Sunday meet-up has been happening since April  that year.
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