World leaders from 120 countries will descend on Glasgow for the COP26 climate change conference later this month – despite Scotland’s second city being blighted with rubbish and fly-tipping as well as some of the UK’s highest poverty, drug use and crime rates.
Grim photos of Glasgow – once a Labour Party stronghold and now in the grips of Nicola Sturgeon’s party – show a city in the midst of chaos, with bins overflowing after the SNP-controlled council decided to move once-fortnightly collections back by an extra week.
The situation could soon worsen, with 1,500 refuse workers, school cleaners and cooks who are members of the GMB union set to join bin men and ScotRail staff on strike because of an ongoing pay dispute – with 96.9 per cent of returned ballots backing industrial action.
The action is slated for the first two weeks of November, when world leaders including UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and US President Joe Biden will be in town for one of the most consequential climate summits in history. Scenes of waste-strewn streets would be a fresh blow to the summit, which has already been hit by news President Xi Jinping of China may not attend.
Organisers fear a snub could be a precursor to China refusing to set new climate change goals amid the ongoing global energy crisis. Meanwhile, there are doubts about whether other leaders such as Vladimir Putin will make the journey to try to thrash out a new global approach.
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison previously cited Covid quarantine restrictions as a reason he might not attend the conference, but has since confirmed his attendance. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro have also not committed to being in Glasgow for the event.
While the Scottish First Minister and the SNP leadership on the national stage ‘banning’ nuclear submarines and trying to introduce a four-day week, the buildings owned by Glasgow’s council are decaying, with raw sewage coursing through cellars and rats hospitalising dustmen.
To cap it all, Glasgow is currently the eighth-highest Covid hotspot in Europe, has been found to be the deadliest place to work in the UK, and the difference in life expectancy between the richest and poorest in the city has recently been found to have increased by three years.
After a hard-fought recovery from the collapse of industry and huge unemployment of recent decades, it appears Glasgow has been knocked down once again – and the blows raining down on it are being struck by its own elected leaders.
Pictures have shown the grim reality of every corner of Scotland’s second city being blighted with rubbish, fly-tipping and bins overflowing in recent months (this image shows fly-tipping in Cranhill)
Workers remove bath tubs, window frames, mattresses, broken furniture and construction waste dumped underneath the M8 motorway on September 15
Flytipping has skyrocketed in the city since a £35 bulk waste charge was implemented by Glasgow City Council in April. Above: Litter is left in Camlachie area of east Glasgow
Grim photos of Glasgow – once a Labour Party stronghold and now in the grips of Nicola Sturgeon’s party – depict a city in chaos, with bins overflowing after the SNP-controlled council decided to move once-fortnightly collections back by an extra week
Fly-tipping scandal
Glasgow City Council, run by the SNP, rubberstamped plans to make refuse collections happen every three weeks in April and introduced a new £35 charge for ‘bulk items’, which has prompted a marked increase in fly-tipping.
Refuse collectors have warned of an impending health and safety disaster – pointing to the ever-increasing risk of Weil’s disease, which can be passed on to humans through rat urine.
Ms Sturgeon, 51, and her party have faced criticism from leaders across the political spectrum, including Labour’s Keir Starmer who warned Glasgow was ‘in a waste crisis’ earlier this summer.
Thomas Kerr, the Conservative leader on Glasgow’s council, added: ‘We’ve become the fly-tipping capital of Britain and host the UK’s fourth-highest population of rats. That’s the legacy of Glasgow’s first Nationalist council.’
Eva Murray, a city councillor who has lived in Glasgow all her life, says: ‘The other day, I was walking around the city centre, and I noticed that there was a genuine smell.
‘There’s just no doubt that the city is very dirty. We are in the middle of a waste crisis and it’s important that people should know that – including all the world leaders and delegates that are coming to COP26.’
Chris Mitchell, GMB Scotland Convenor for Glasgow City Council Cleansing, started his working life 30 years ago as a street sweeper. He thundered: ‘There’s a complete denial by the SNP that the city is in crisis. I’ve never seen a decline this horrendous.
‘Over the past six to seven years, our budget has been obliterated. It’s a risk to public health and safety, and in the summer the city stinks. It’s actually embarrassing.’
Pictures show the grim reality of every corner of Scotland’s second city being blighted with rubbish, fly-tipping and bins overflowing in recent month
Mr Mitchell provides figures that speak for themselves. ‘The number of street cleaners has gone from around 800 to 900 down to 213,’ he says.
‘The number of refuse collectors has gone down from 1,300 to 800. And the council often has to hire agency workers, who have no pensions, or don’t even know if they have a job at the end of the week.’
To encourage recycling – and doubtless to save money – the council has reduced bin collection to once every three weeks. In addition, it is charging £35 per item for disposing of bulk items such as pieces of furniture.
The result is predictable, with fly-tipping rampant and household waste bins overflowing – providing rich pickings for Glasgow’s ever-increasing population of rodents.
‘The rats are getting bigger and bolder as they have more rubbish to feed on,’ says Mr Mitchell, whose union has started a ‘rat register’ so the public can report sightings.
Bath tubs, window frames, mattresses, broken furniture, construction waste, drug paraphernalia have all been pictured left to rot on Glasgow’s streets in recent months
Strike action
It comes as 1,500 Glasgow City Council staff in the refuse, cleansing, school janitorial and catering sectors could strike because of an ongoing pay dispute, with 96.9 per cent of returned ballots backing industrial action.
GMB members rejected a £850-a-year increase for staff earning up to £25,000 a year from local authority umbrella body Cosla, with the union – along with Unison and Unite – all calling for a £2,000 pay rise. Cosla said negotiations are ongoing.
Organiser, Chris Mitchell, said: ‘Over the past 18 months throughout this awful pandemic, essential services across Scotland have been held together by an army of low paid workers. We were called key workers, even Covid heroes, but while politicians were happy to applaud us on Thursday nights, they’ve never put their hands in their pockets to pay us properly.
‘The eyes of the world will be on Glasgow during COP26, and our politicians now have a choice – will they fairly reward the frontline workers who got the country through the pandemic, or will they risk embarrassing the city and the country on an international stage? The message that our members have sent with this ballot result is clear. We are taking a stand for what we deserve, and we believe the people will stand with us.’
The call for industrial action comes after Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken was criticised for saying the city needs a ‘spruce up’ before the COP26 conference. Her comments received a backlash from politicians and members of the public who claimed she was ‘out of touch’ with the city.
A Cosla spokesman said: ‘We appreciate everything that Local Government workers have been doing, and continue to do, to support people and communities during the pandemic and as we begin to recover. We continue with ongoing, constructive negotiations.’
Rail workers will also go on strike during COP26, the RMT union confirmed on Thursday, over a separate dispute over pay and conditions.
ScotRail staff will strike from Monday November 1 until Friday November 12. Staff on the Caledonian Sleeper will hold two 24-hour strikes: one from 11.59am on Sunday October 31 and one on Thursday November 11, also from 11.59am.
The news comes amid sweeping cuts to local authority budgets backed by the First Minister – whose Scottish National Party took charge of Glasgow City Council in 2017. Pictured: Fly-tipping outside flats in Anniesland, Glasgow
Old car seats, boxes and household rubbish line the streets of Govanhill in Glasgow, just weeks before the COP26 conference
Poverty rates
Figures released last year found that parts of Glasgow’s East End are among Scotland’s most deprived areas. The latest Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) data shows Carntyne West and Haghill is the second most deprived area in the country, second only to Greenock town centre.
North Barlanark and Easterhouse South also joined the top of the list – ranked tenth.
Glasgow City Council as a local authority came second overall in terms of having the largest local share of deprived areas on 44 per cent.
However this marks the largest fall in areas of deprivation since the SIMD figures were last published in 2016 – when almost half (48 per cent) of the city’s data zones were classed as being in the bottom fifth.
The SIMD research splits Scotland into almost 7,000 geographic areas, with researchers looking at multiple indicators such as crime, unemployment, pupil attainment rates and how long people have to travel to get to a GP in each of these.
In the West End, Partickhill and Hyndland were ranked 6951 out of 6976 zones in Scotland, while Newlands in the South Side was ranked 6819. Carntyne West and Haghill in the East has seen a significant increase in the rankings in recent years. In 2012, it was ranked 273 in Scotland. It rose to 33 in 2016 before second in the most recent figures.
Community bins have overflowed, discarded masks and takeaway boxes spill out of gutters and piles of waste have mounted high in the city’s centre, providing rich pickings for Glasgow’s ever-increasing population of rodents
Drug deaths and crime
Scotland also continues to suffer the worst drug death rate in Europe, with figures released in July this year finding that deaths rose to a record 1,339 in 2020 – 21.2 deaths per 1,000 of the population, and the seventh time in a row that the number as risen.
The figure for 2020 shows 75 more deaths than the previous year, when 1,264 people lost their lives. Last year’s figure is also the highest number of drug-related deaths since records began in 1996, and is more than three-and-a-half times higher than England and Wales.
Glasgow was again found to be the worst area for people struggling with addiction, with 291 dying there last year. Greater Glasgow and Clyde had the highest rate of all Scottish health board areas at 30.8 deaths per 100,000 people, followed by Ayrshire and Arran and Tayside with rates of 27.2 and 25.7 respectively.
Men were almost three times as likely to die of drug misuse than women, the figures also show, and people in the poorest areas were 18 times as likely to die than those in the least-deprived areas. Almost two-thirds of all drug-related deaths were people between ages 35 and 54.
The rise in the number of drug-related deaths over the past 25 years has been the steepest since 2013. The SNP had a majority government in Scotland between 2011 and 2016, after which they governed with a minority rule.
Most of the fatalitieswere related to use of opioids such as heroin, morphine, methadone, codeine and dihydrocodeine. Benzodiazepines were implicated in 974 deaths. ‘Street’ sedatives such as etizolam, which is more potent than Valium, were found to have contributed to 806 benzodiazepine-related fatalities. Some deaths involved more than one benzodiazepine, or a mixture of prescription and street tablets.
Miss Sturgeon said the number of lives lost ‘is unacceptable, each one a human tragedy’ – adding that reform of laws regarding drugs is not a devolved matter.
And like other parts of the UK, Glasgow is victim to a knife crime epidemic. Just this week, a murder investigation has been launched into the death of a 14-year-old boy who was fatally stabbed at High Street station in Glasgow on Saturday afternoon.
Emergency services were called to Glasgow’s High Street station
The boy was taken by ambulance to the city’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital where he was later pronounced dead
Justin McLaughlin was found seriously injured following what police have described as a ‘shocking act of violence’. He was taken to the city’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital where he was later pronounced dead. Police described a 14-year-old’s death as a ‘shocking loss of life’.
The station in the city centre remained closed overnight as officers investigated the scene, with trains being diverted. Police Scotland have now confirmed they are treating the death as murder and are appealing for any witnesses who can help with their investigation.
Senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Brian Geddes, of Police Scotland’s major investigation team, said: ‘Our thoughts very much remain with Justin’s family and friends.
‘His family have asked for their privacy to be respected at this very difficult time, and they are being supported by specialist officers.
‘Although inquiries are at an early stage, what we do know is that an incident took place at High Street train station and we are sure that there will be people who may have witnessed something in the lead up to this.
‘The area would have been busy with members of the public and commuters and we are urging those who have any information, no matter how small, to get in contact with police.’