Glasgow 'a client city of the global entertainment sector'

And of course we’d have been assured of the commercial spin-offs dripping down through the city’s economic infrastructure to benefit the punters. No-one would have been able quite to put a finger on what those rewards would have been or to quantify them. And any further inquiries about actual, proven numbers would have been rendered obsolete in the daily news churn. We’d all just have had to accept that, well, of course it had improved our lives.  

Phrases such as ‘delivering a boost to the night-time economy’ and ‘increasing the footfall in our key hospitality sector’ would have been deployed. There would have been ‘guarantees’ of more jobs and Glasgow’s wounded night-time economy would have got a turn out of it.

And who knows, maybe there might have be some overtime for those greedy refuse collectors whom the city’s leader accused of acting like fascists  by holding out for a modest wage increase during the Climate Festival. You know, the same workers who daily jeopardised their health during the pandemic by keeping the city clean.

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But the main winners would have been the high-end corporate chain hotels. During Cop26 they doubled their rates for a couple of weeks while continuing to pay their permanent and seasonal staff barely subsistence wages. The gig economy – “we’ll call you when we need you” – still held sway and some middle-class home-owners cashed in by renting out their rooms to pay for next summer’s holiday to Cancun.

Ask the residents of Glasgow’s East End if they saw any spin-offs from the 2014 Commonwealth Games beyond a world class velodrome and some new houses near Glasgow Green built by a consortium of the largest players in Scotland’s construction sector. But not before some locals whose families had lived in this part of Glasgow had been cleared out.

In recent years the centre of Glasgow has become Marvel Comics favourite overseas movie set. At any moment you’re likely to encounter men and women in fancy dress acting out Hollywood fantasies for a nice tax break and few grand to help with the city’s grievous cash flow situation.

In some city streets the residents think they’re living in Westworld. Or Zombieland. “Is that bloke at the bar with the bad skin and a leg in his pocket a real person?” At least though, they don’t need to spend too much time making the streets look like those in a dystopian, post-nuclear apocalypse. Glasgow is becoming a year-long reality show, relying on make-believe and the capricious whims of the global, corporate entertainment industry to throw them a few crumbs and thus to deflect from its slow descent into a sprawling public toilet.

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Any time now the city will announce it’s in the running to host the world drone-owners symposium or a Star Trek convention. Council leaders will say that the city has long been at the forefront of fantasy space technology. There’ll be “outcomes” and “deliveries” all over the place.

That Cop26 was brilliant, wasn’t it? Apart from the fact that no-one is quite sure if anything meaningful had been achieved. Despite all the pledges there was very little in the way of driving back the forces of rampant capitalism which cause the bulk of carbon emissions. Much of it due to them bribing corrupt governments in poor countries to let them develop cheaply in those verdant wildernesses which provide the world’s lungs.

Glasgow’s hospitality leaders meanwhile are still seeking a sense of purpose and leadership from national and local government to help the night-time economy recover from the pandemic and the effects of an extreme Brexit on the supply chain. But while they’re waiting the City Council has stealthily increased parking charges by 25% … just as city centre businesses are trying to recoup their Covid losses.

The only growth has been in the multi-storey Portakabins and storage units masquerading as student accommodation for a grand a month. Large swathes of the west end and north-east of the city centre are fast turning Glasgow into the world’s biggest dormitory city for rich overseas students looking for an “experience” while working-class students are being told to sleep on someone’s floor or delay their studies until they can secure affordable living arrangements.

At least though, the failure to secure the Eurovision song contest will spare us the sickening sight of dozens of third-rate Scottish politicians saying “we’re doing it for Ukraine”, NATO’s clients in their proxy war to bring Russia to heel. And we won’t have them and an assortment of media flanneurs live-tweeting their newly-discovered appreciation for Scandinavian Oompah Metal and enthusiastic Baltic House Mafias.

In a series of articles over the last two years, Donald Macleod, one of Scotland’s biggest nightclub entrepreneurs castigated the Scottish Government for its point-black refusal to help them during and after the lockdown. Earlier this year he encouraged them to re-visit the idea of a night-time commissioner, or ‘Night Tsar’ which has been crucial in helping Manchester’s entertainment sector to recover. 

“Our sector faces huge challenges,” he wrote. “And we should remember that this role is not a panacea but with employment levels well below pre-pandemic levels and dramatic falls in footfall, trade and rising costs and supply chain issues blighting any recovery, now is definitely the time to re-visit this idea.”

Glasgow is already one of the world’s most vibrant entertainment centres for new bands and fresh sounds. It has an indigenous music scene that regularly produces a conveyor belt of original artists like Gerry Cinnamon and Chvrches.

The entertainment economy which helped them to emerge is stricken and hosting another big-ticket event like Eurovision for the benefit of the itinerant, affluent demi-monde won’t help one bit.