Public consultation

The consultation meeting at St James' tonight was ace. The place was packed - at least eighty people turned out to make their voice heard. Excellent questions were put, some of which couldn't be answered.

One which really had parents concerned was bus provision. There's no direct bus from the Calton to Alexandra Parade, so it had been suggested that buses might be provided to take pupils the 1.3 miles between the schools. Fine and dandy, you might think, until it was revealed that there would be no supervision of pupils on the bus (other than from the bus driver, who ought to have his eyes elsewhere!). Parents were understandably worried about their children - some as young as four - being left to their own devices for the trip, and made it quite clear that they felt that was unacceptable.

I was very pleased at the quality of the questioning; officials were left in no doubt why the community opposes this proposal.

Marching in the East

I'm going back... way back. I've decided to date this post from when I meant to blog it, which was last Saturday. Otherwise, the following posts won't make sense!


On the 14th, schools supporters from across Glasgow came together to show their opposition to the schools closures proposed by the Labour administration of Glasgow City Council.

On the 21st, supporters of St James Primary School and Queen Mary Street Nursery came together to march from Queen Mary Street to St James' to demonstrate their willingness to save their schools. Parents proposed to move the nursery to the primary to save what they have.

I only got a few pictures of the demo and march, but it was a great turn out, and massive credit has to go to the parents, especially Kelly and Angela, for their work to pull the march off. It was a great show of strength, and made the wider community (including the smokers standing outside every pub at Bridgeton Cross) aware of how important this campaign is.

More excellent photos are available here, taken by the SSP's Rikki Reid.