Earlier today over 200 staff and students at Glasgow University rallied against the ongoing ‘restructuring’ process and the cuts which, despite initial denials from management, are eventually beginning to come to light. Called by the UCU, the main lecturer’s union on campus, the demo also had a strong turnout from both Unite and Unison, who represent maintenance and admin staff respectively.

The demo came on the same day it was unveiled in the national press that an entire research unit at the university, the Glasgow University Archaeological Research Division (GUARD), a pioneering group which regularly features on programmes like Time Team, is being closed down by senior management who claim it does not generate enough income. This is despite the fact it made £200,000 over the past financial year and is entirely self-funding! GUARD staff this afternoon told Leftfield of their shock and anger at the decision, but assured us that they wouldn’t be going down without a fight (apparently they’ve got whole cupboards stacked full of medieval weaponry and cannons, just sayin’…).

The decision clearly indicates where the priorities of senior management and Principal Anton Muscatelli lie – in the further marketisation  of education, where any department ‘not generating enough income’ can be discarded and thrown to the scrap heap, and raises serious questions of where the axe will fall next – if a self-funding department at the forefront of archaeology in the UK can be sacrificed, can anything be considered safe?

Over 100 jobs are now at risk at the university. The UCU have identified 83 across four departments which they believe are at threat, plus the 30 staff employed at GUARD. On top of this, across departments staff are not being replaced when leaving – a sly strategy of ‘natural wastage’ that avoids any confrontation. Last year, the University Health Service was subject to serious downgrading, with the closure of the main medical facility for student accommodation. Earlier this year, the post-graduate student union – the only one of its kind in Scotland – went bankrupt. What this amounts to is a serious attack on education and student services, but from a management cynical and skilled enough to stagger out the cuts – chances are, the major announcements will come at the very end of term, if not during the summer holidays itself.

The student-run Anti-Cuts Action Network was established at the uni last year as a pre-emptive move against the cuts. Management have consistently played a difficult game with us, making false promises and refusing to even reveal the existence of the restructuring process in itself until February of this year. Similarly, the student union bureaucracy have acted shamefully – no official student representation showed up in support of today’s demonstration. This comes despite past assurances from the SRC that they will ‘oppose academic cuts’.
Today’s ACAN speaker received an excellent reception, arguing that if any cuts are necessary at Glasgow Uni, it should be the salaries of senior management. Muscatelli is paid £248,000 and received a pay rise of 8% this year. Meanwhile, staff are being offered below-inflationary increases of 0.5%, effectively mounting to a pay cut, exposing the rank hypocrisy of those pushing through these swathing job cuts.

The UCU have called for an immediate halt to the restructuring process and for a fuller consultation to take place.Unfortunately, any opposition to the plans was needed months ago – when the unions were offering ‘cautious welcomes’ to the plans and refusing to engage with those who predicted the inevitable cuts and job losses that would soon follow. Nevertheless, there is still scope for action to be taken – the uni has warned that compulsory redundancies may be necessary, saying that ‘nothing can be ruled out at this stage’.

The restructuring, which will see the number of faculties cut from 9 down to 4 and departments slashed from 45 to around 20, will be complete by August of this year. It looks likely that the major cuts will not be announced until the break-up for the summer, creating obvious difficulties for resistance from a students.
As struggles like the one at Sussex, which has seen a huge militant anti-cuts campaign of student occupations and resistance alongside UCU strike action (in the face of police brutality and unjustified expulsions), the campaign will require mass participation and solidarity between staff and students. Today was just the beginning!

It’s less than a year since Glasgow City Council announced measures to drastically curtail the number of marches and parades in the city centre – reportedly by up to ‘ninety percent’. This policy was brought in ostensibly to cut back on the estimated 250 Orange Order parades through the city each year, and to allow the typically 10,000 strong king-billy-won-a-battle-three-hunner-years-ago-fuck-the-cafflics parade in early July to be rerouted out of the city centre.
Now Leftfield can reveal that this same policy is being used as a pretext to disallow, reroute and denigrate marches held by groups as diverse as the trade union and environmental movements.

Controversy over the new parades policy came to the fore last December, when The Wave demonstration, demanding urgent action over climate change, wasforced out of its city centre route, which it had taken the two years previously, and made to march between parks in outlying regions of the city. The police and the council parades committee claimed a city centre route would bring disruption to Christmas shopping. In London, on the other hand, the 50,000 strong march was allowed to march through Westminster, the heart of government.

And now, in perhaps their most audacious curtailment of the right to protest yet, the council have not only denied the trade union Unison the right to hold their demonstration against public service cuts in the city centre, but forced it back to 9.30am in the morning. The march will assemble on University Avenue – on the Glasgow University campus, and typically dead at this time on a Saturday – and be entirely confined to the west end, ending at a rally inside Kelvingrove Park.

Sources at Unison Scotland have told Leftfield that this was the best arrangement on offer from the council , and that attempts were made to push for the demo to be held later on in the day – particularly given that it is a national mobilisation, with coaches coming from union branches across Scotland – and for a more central assembly point. It is understood the council are insisting that this has to be the case to justify their restrictions on Orange walks and Irish Republican parades, and to prove that they are not discriminating on any one particular group.

The precedent for the decision on the upcoming Unison march was set by the rerouteing of the 10,000-strong demo against education cuts organised by the teacher’s union, the EIS, last month. Blytheswood Square has traditionally been a meeting point for marches held by the trade unions, the anti-war movement and so on. Now, however, it houses a five star hotel – and the EIS application to meet there was rejected on these grounds, forcing a relocation to the west end. Says Jim Coleman, now leader of GCC: “Gathering there will no longer be acceptable. There will be businesses in the city centre wanting us to come up with a new policy on parades. We need to look at new methods of parading around the city centre, not through it.”

the cooncil got very up set when the marchers wouldn't relocate to kelvingrove

The council have clearly laid out where their priorities lie – not in Glasgow’s proud working class tradition of trade unionism and industrial militancy, but in further gentrification and commercialisation of our city’s streets. This attack on the basic right of the labour movement to march in central Glasgow is particularly ironic given the grip that the Labour Party possess over the City Chambers, and further points to the insanity of the trade unions continuing to fund a political party that blatantly does not represent their interests.
Glasgow clearly has its own unique set of issues when it comes to marches – Glasgow allegedly has more Orange marches than Derry and Belfast combined, and is surely one of the only cities in the world where the Irish community can’t hold a St Patrick’s Day parade without being attacked by racist thugs. Yet this is now being used as an excuse by GCC to come down hard on demonstrations by everyone – when they evidently possess their own agenda: that the city centre is for commercial use and profit-making, not for cultural or political use, no matter how ‘respectable’ or ‘official’ the cause. For further evidence on this, only a few weeks ago a group of SSY members were doing a stall outside the now empty Borders store on Buchanan Street – we’d barely even set up when a besuited man from Land and Environmental Services strode up and informed us that they needed permission to do a stall. This was news to a group of comrades who’d been doing stalls at the same location for years, and right enough, we ignored him and continued on for the next hour and a half.

We need to reclaim the streets – last November when we took to them in our hundreds to oppose the Scottish Defence League, the police were powerless to stop us, even though the march was in effect illegal. Meanwhile, the establishment-backed Scotland United group had had to jump through hoops to get a route approved through the city centre.
SSY usually holds a Legalise Cannabis march each summer – I wouldn’t hold your breath on us getting one with council backing this year. Not unless it’s held in the middle of a fucking roundabout in the middle of a fucking industrial estate at half seven in the morning.

sometimes pixels speak better than words:

join the campaign facebook group: tinyurl.com/nesbitt4gc

First Bus wankers!

Bus fares went up AGAIN in Glasgow today, with First Bus introducing fare increases well above the rate of inflation.
For most standard fares, this means an increase of 10 pence – just a year after a similar increase – while others services are facing price rises of up to 34%.
Glasgow has a very low level of car ownership, meaning most people rely on the public transport system to get around – especially the service provided by First Bus, given that the subway system barely leaves the city centre, and the limits of the suburban rail network.

The increase is totally unjustified – last year, First Group announced record profits of £134 million, while at the same time freezing the wages of staff and cutting services.  We’re always being told that opening up public services to ‘competition’ and the ‘free market’ gets better value for money, drives down prices and improve services… yet it’s been proved time and time again that leaving public services in the hands of people who only care about making profits is absolute insanity. First Group couldn’t care less about a family in Possil who rely on the bus to get in their messages. They don’t give a shit about debt-laden students who rely on the 44 to get into college every day, or people who need it to get into work.
Bus fares in Glasgow used to be capped – that is, they were regulated to keep them affordable for ordinary people and prevent the runaway fare increases we’re so accustomed to now – but two years ago this was removed in the name of ‘competition’. Predictably enough, bus fares skyrocketed almost immediately, rising some 25%, and this has gone on unstopped since.
Glasgow SNP MSP Anne McLaughlin last week lodged a motion in parliament calling on First to ‘reverse its decision’. While this is all very well, it’s a totally flawed strategy: no amount of appeals or petitions is going to change the fact that First are in public transport to make money, and if this means hitting ordinary Glaswegians in the pocket, then so be it.
Indeed, the Scottish Parliament has far more sweeping powers when it comes to buses. In 2006, the SNP’s annual conference voted to back a policy of reregulating the bus network, which would give local authorities control over bus routes, rather than private companies. However, one year later, a certain Mr Brian Soutar, millionaire owner of Stagecoach and all round knobhead, gave a £500,000 donation to the party. Oddly enough, this policy of bus reregulation was dropped from their election manifesto a month later – though the party refutes any allegations that these events may be linked! So instead of taking real action to lower the cost of public transport, they’re now forcibly reduced to the level of populist posturing and token appeals, none of which is ever going to get anywhere. The SNP: don’t say we didn’t tell you they’re a fucking joke.

The SSP offers a radical alternative to the mainstream when it comes to buses: let’s make them all free. And trains. And ferries. If we can find billions to spend on bank bailouts and trident renewal, we can surely afford the less than £1 billion a year it’d cost to run Scotland’s entire public transport network  for free. Not only would this dramatically reduce the number of cars on the road – meaning less emissions, faster travel and less road accidents – it’d be the biggest pro-environment policy enacted by any government anywhere, ever. And it’d be a hell of a lot better than the privatised, delayed, outdated, chaotic mess of a public transport ’system’ we have at the moment.

There’s loads more on the SSP’s free public transport policy here: www.freepublictransport.org

bigup LT for the design

I’ve recently received the honour of being selected as the Scottish Socialist Party candidate for Glasgow Central. As a Yoof I’ll be keeping Leftfield updated with all the juicy goss and scandal from the campaign trail.

The constituency is pretty big and covers areas with widely varying demographics, including Pollokshields, Govanhill and the Gorbals in the area south of the river, Calton to the east and my old stomping ground of Anderston and Finnieston in the west. Some sources describe it as the wealthiest seat in Glasgow, which to me simply means it is the most unequal ward, as the riches never seem to have trickled down to many of the people I know

I’ll be standing on the following platform:

• Say no to cuts, invest in public services
• Troops Out of Afghanistan NOW
• Give Youth a future – create new green jobs and end unemployment
• Defend asylum seekers and refugees
• For an independent socialist republic
• Free public transport for all
• Re-introduce student grants, abolish the loan system
• Tax the rich, make them pay for their crisis
• Start a massive program of building homes that are good quality and affordable for all
• Nationalise the banks and all previously privatised industries

The contest itself is looking like being a big battle between Labour and the SNP, with both standing fairly high-profile candidates. Labour have selected Anas Sarwar, son of the current MP, Mohammed Sarwar. Nothing dodgy about that, eh!? I cursed the (un-)democratic culture within the Glasgow Labour Party when Paul Martin was being lined up to replace his corrupt dad Michael (you know, that idiot who was the Speaker of the House of Commons for a while) and I am equally contemptuous about the Sarwar succession. It reeks. My only previous experience with Sarwar Junior was when I attended a 2007 event at the Carling Academy, entitled Y*Vote. Itwasn’t advertised who was organising it, but whoever it was got a couple of crap bands along – the McDonald bros were the main event and the Zutons did a DJ set, zzzzz – and they banned all parties from handing out literature. Then up pops Anas, revealing it was a Labour front, looking every bit the polished career politician-in-waiting, pleading for our vote. Well he never got mine.

appealing for your vote, totally no nepotism here

In the yellow and black corner (eh, the SNP one) is Osama Saeed, who is nowhere near as bad as the Labour guy, but is unfortunately still standing for a party committed to protecting the interests of their millionaire benefactors. I’ve encountered him a few times recently, as we were both organising protests against the fascist Scottish Defence League, a nasty wee group who tried to take to the streets of Edinburgh and Glasgow. In the end the good guys won (i.e. the SDL got chased away) but I had a big problem with Osama instructing people that all they should do is stand in a park and listen to speeches by establishment politicians, because the polis would deal with the fash. That’s woeful logic in my book and not a reliable way of stopping the rise of 21^st century Nazism.  But I still have a fair bit of respect for him, which I wouldnae really say about the Labour guy. Although the recent scandal about the charity he was running has had me scratching my head a bit.

saeed and salmond: thick as thieves

Despite any reservations I may have about Sarwar and Saeed, they would surely be in full agreement with me that the British National Party represent something more than just a wee misguided party who we disagree with. The BNP are the latest form of a long and shameful tradition of British fascism. They are yet to announce a candidate for Glasgow Central, but there is a distinct possibility that they will. They stood here in 2005 and may try to cause tensions in a multi-ethnic constituency with 2 prominent Muslim candidates. Their recent relative success should send a chill down people’s spines. They are a threat not only to ethnic minorities, homosexuals and trade-unionists, but to anyone who values free speech and democracy.

I do not believe that the BNP should be treated in the same way as any normal, democratic political party. If they ever came to power they would install a violent, authoritarian state, and people like me would probably end up in concentration camps. As Anas and Osama will surely know, the BNP are Islamophobic to the core and wherever they make progress, the number of attacks on Muslims and all non-white people increases greatly. I do not think that any democrat should treat them as a legitimate party.  In fact I will stick my neck out here… I do not believe that any of the other parties – socialist or capitalist, revolutionary or moderate – should sit on a platform alongside them and allow them to spread their bile.

There are things we can do to stop them being given an audience.  If the Labour and SNP candidates make it clear that they will not share a platform with the BNP, then organisers of debates/hustings will not invite them. I will be writing to the 2 main candidates to ask them to stand up and make a brave commitment – to pledge not to share a platform with the BNP. None of us should passively allow the fascists to spread their propaganda and build up support. The future is too important, let’s take action to stop them now.

Jim Murphy, champion of Glasgow

While being interviewed by Brian Taylor about all this nasty Purcell business, which SSY has made passing comment on, Jim Murphy, Scottish Secretary (AKA official attempted whip of the entirety of Scotland) and knobhead, has said that he wishes everybody would stop being so nasty to Glasgow. The problem, of course, is that Jim seems to be getting the Glasgow Labour Party mixed up with Glasgow the city.

“The Labour Party is more than one individual. I think what happened to Steven Purcell was a horrible situation for himself and his family. It was a personal trauma for him, but there are wider issues about Labour in Glasgow.” Jim says. Resisting my language student temptation to analyse Jim’s interesting semantic choices (I guess all those drugs just ‘happened’ to jump up Steven Purcell’s nose), and the fact that it wasn’t just a tragedy for his family but a total abuse of Purcell’s office, from which he has escaped quickly and cleanly for a nice holiday in the sun, Jim’s right to say that there are wider issues about Labour in Glasgow.

School closures, service cuts and now their new plan to privatise Glasgow’s wonderful parks*; all of these are major issues that I have with Glasgow Labour. The fact is that they do a good enough job of besmirching their own reputation without Steven Purcell’s help.

Don't let those straws get their hooks into you, Jim!

Jim also says that “We should be proud of Glasgow in the same way we’re proud of Edinburgh, in the same way we’re proud of Dundee with the games industry, in the same way we’re proud of Aberdeen with the oil and gas industry.” and he’s right – Glasgow is a fantastic city. But the problem Jim has here is that nobody’s been saying that the whole of Glasgow’s been caning it up, palling about with super dodgy guys and abusing their office. This is just a really weak attempt to distract from the whole Purcell debacle. Take some friendly advice Jim; if you really want to upstage Purcellgate, then you’re gonnae need to check into rehab, disappear for three hours, come back covered in Llama shit and then run away to Antartica to live with the penguins.

* For more info and to help out with stopping this totally stupid plan, join the Facebook group here.

MAX DUNBAR: nice vest

Two days ago, the Scottish section of the BNP put a statement up on their website, ‘exposing’ an ‘anti-BNP Scotland group’ which has pledged to ‘destroy the party in Scotland’.
Who could this mysterious organisation be – whose actions the BNP admit have lost them ‘thousands’ of votes? Unite Against Fascism? Antifa? The Thunderbirds?
Not quite – it’s actually three of their own leading (ex-)officials! Yep, great news everyone – the BNP have started destroying themselves from within. Although the post (which has since been taken down but has been cached by google here) doesn’t put names to the ‘trio of fools’ involved, comments underneath the article out them as Charlie Baillie, Max Dunbar and John Robertson. These are pretty much the core of BNP activism in Glasgow – when the BNP attempted street activity here last year during the European Elections, it was invariably these three that were out. Indeed, Baillie was the BNP’s number one candidate on the Scottish regional list for those elections, and was later the candidate for the Glasgow North East by-election, where they finished in fourth place and came within a few dozen votes of saving their deposit.
The reasons for Baillie and co’s departure aren’t very clear – it seems there’s egos and personal agendas coming into play, as well as the anti-Griffin sentiment which has been causing unrest within the party down south,  which the recent court decision that forced them to open up membership to non-whites has only increased. The BNP’s Scottish leader is Aberdeen-based Gary Raikes, who has a reputation for being a bit of a useless twat. As well as owning “4 horses, 8 sheep, 5 dogs, 9 cats and 3 ferrets” and not having a favourite colour (true facts!), Raikes is a firm Griffinite, as is Walter Hamilton, now the Glasgow organiser and about their only senior member left in the city.

GARY RAIKES: definitely doesn't have a massive ego

The BNP had planned to stand twelve candidates in Scotland for the upcoming Westminster elections. With three of them now complete outcasts from the Scottish party and ‘refusing to stand’, they will only be contesting nine – one short of the minimum 10 seats required to get a televised broadcast! So not only will this fuck up their plans for the Westminster elections –  it’ll also have seriously implications for the party in the Holyrood elections, which are only a year away. The BNP’s long term strategy in Scotland appears to rest on getting an MSP elected next year, and most likely on the Glasgow regional list, for which they wouldn’t require a massive increase from the 4.92% that Baillie took in the Glasgow North East by-election recently. Griffin himself has said that he believes the 6.5% or so that they’d need is a “do-able thing”.

But none of them counted on three of their leading members in Glasgow walking out. Their plans now lie in ruins. Long may this fine tradition of the far-right destroying themselves continue!

HI-VIS WANKERS: the people of glasgow tell dunbar (in hat) & baillie (centre) to get tae

Jack Irvine contemplates 16 year old boys' bottoms

(With additional reporting by Sarah, Liam T, and Neevvy.)

Regular readers will know that Leftfield has carried the best coverage of Purcellgate in the Scottish media.

Leftfield favourite Purcell is now reported to have fled Scotland. In his absence he’s left behind a high powered and expensive team of lawyers and PR men to make sure that no one could ever allege he’s done anything dodgy. And that’s because he totally hasn’t, honest.

Heading the team is former editor of the Scottish Sun Jack Irvine. Now a PR consultant specialising in “crisis management” (what crisis?), he’s also been notable as a leading behind-the-scenes campaigner for organised homophobia.

Irvine was one of the main men behind the Keep the Clause campaign, which tried to stop the Scottish Parliament repealing a homophobic law that prevented schools from “promoting homosexuality.” Introduced by the Thatcher government in the 80’s, the real aim of this stone age legislation was to prevent children being able to learn about the possibility of being gay in sex education classes.

When MSPs finally got round to abolishing this nonsense, a powerful coalition of some of Scotland’s leading capitalists came together to try and defend legalised homophobia. The most famous of course was Brian Souter, head of Stagecoach buses, who got rich by cutting routes and driving rivals out of business. He’s also most notable for being Scotland’s most famous homophobe, as well as having donated £500,000 to the SNP just before their election to government in 2007.

But others involved in the Keep the Clause group included founder of the Sports Division stores and Scotland’s richest man Tom Hunter; Kwik Fit founder and multi-millionaire Sir Tom Farmer; Souter’s sister and Scotland’s richest woman Ann Gloag (who at one point was richer than the Queen); David Moulsdale the owner of Optical Express; and former head of Strathclyde Police, and then Metropolitan Police Commissioner under Thatcher Sir David McNee.

Many of these individuals also used Jack Irvine personally for their own PR. Irvine, who once described gay men as “Slobbering queers who want to get their hands on 16 year-old boys’ bottoms,” in the Scottish Daily Mirror, seemed the natural choice to run a political campaign of right wing homophobia on behalf of all these powerful Scottish figures.

The campaign was ultimately a failure, despite the attempts of Irvine and crew to engineer a fake “referendum”. Around 70% of Scots who received the ballots for this put them where Keep the Clause’s politics belonged-the bin.

Soapy Souter gets to grips with the "gay problem"

Irvine has found other ways to express his homophobia during the course of his career. In 1999, when Bank of Scotland announced a major business deal with rich televangelist, homophobe and general right wing bastard Pat ‘Knobhead’ Robertson, Irvine was on the front line defending BoS from gay rights protests. He also used a column in the Scottish Daily Mirror to peddle hate on a regular basis, such as this gem on the decision to equalise the age of consent for gay and straight 16 year olds:

“A pretty young boy of 16 can’t vote for his local MP, but he can now be buggered by him… So equality is the key, is it? In that case, shouldn’t 16-year-olds get the vote, be eligible to become, say, policemen? No? Why not? Because they’re not mature enough. But they are deemed mature enough to be bum chums for sleazy old pervs.”

But what keeps Irvine in sharp suits is his work for PR company Media House, which he founded in 1991, and which has helped him to the position where he’s been described as “Scotland’s answer to Max Clifford.” According to his biography page on the Media House website:

“Irvine specialises in international litigation and is a founding partner of Tactical Response, a confidential consultancy that advises boards on sensitive matters such as extortion, terrorism, fraud and abduction. They are operational on a global scale.”

That global reach will come in handy now that sources close to Purcell have indicated that “Mr Purcell has left the politics of Glasgow behind and is now resting and recuperating in the sun.” Leaving aside whether, as the former top man in the city, Purcell bears any responsibility for Glaswegian politics being a “mire”, we hope that as and when he does return to Scottish politics he’ll be refreshed by his experience on holiday. Indeed, he may even be able to recommend time on a beach for others with a chemical dependency stress and exhaustion. Most people with the same kinds of problems aren’t able to afford to recuperate in the sun, and find themselves in much less attractive surroundings. We hope Purcell one day finds the time to try and change the scapegoating and lack of support for people who may or may not allegedly have drug problems.

We also hope it’ll give him time to reflect on the contradiction of an out gay man employing such a notorious homophobe to defend him. Indeed, Irvine, who has used the infamous “but I have gay friends!” defence against accusations of homophobia, likes to claim his relationship with Purcell proves he isn’t a bigot.

According to another source “”Steven has always had an interest in the southern hemisphere and it is thought he might be spending some time there.” This mysterious and cryptic statement leads on to our bonus feature, Leftfield’s new favourite guessing game:

WHERE IS STEVEN PURCELL?

So, we can take out 50% of planet Earth from the equation. What options does that leave us with? Leftfield offers a few suggestions:

#Perhaps Stephen has hotfooted it over to Australia. He is rumoured to be about to surface on the new series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! where he will surely be a Glaswegian viewer favourite for those gruesome bushtucker trials. It’s possible that he’s been receiving advice from former contestants such as Daniella Westbrook (insert comment about deviated septums), Peter Andre (on how to revive a flagging career) and Brian Harvey, a man who knows all about addiction, since the day that he ate 47 baked potatoes and then accidentally ran himself over. It’s quite likely. Just sayin’.

#Maybe he’s in Colombia. Colombia is a lush and beautiful country, straddling the cool blue of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. To the north lie the impressive Andes mountains. To the south, the mystery and allure of the Amazon Jungle.

Steven P hangin' in Medellin

For the people of Colombia, Steven Purcell could certainly offer the wisdom of his extensive public service experience to assist with Colombian issues, for example he might be able to assist with a number of aspects of the Colombian exports system – agriculture, quality control, product testing… We know that Steven has been welcomed with open arms by several political organisations in the country who have received his direct financial support in the past. He is said to be keen to try out those local delicacies that have not yet reached the nutritionally challenged streets of Glasgow.

Colombian superstar Shakira was earlier overheard welcoming Purcell to her homeland, going as far as to say “Phwoar, I saw him earlier and I can tell you, even if he has lied about those SPT expenses, sure as hell his hips don’t lie”.*

*Shakira did not actually say this. Probably.

#This one may be a long shot, but you can’t deny that Antarctica IS completely covered in white powder…

So where is Steven? The first correct answer on a postcard will receive 1 dildo, slightly used, courtesy of Brian Souter.

Hundreds of local residents and people from across Glasgow marched through the city earlier today in memory of Red Road flat residents the Serykh family, who were driven to suicide last weekend reportedly following the failure of their asylum application.
The demonstration gathered at the Red Road flats, one of the main areas in which Asylum families are ‘dispersed’ in the city, and marched on a route to the city centre, before a rally just off George Square. The march was noisy (with a samba band!) and got a really good reception from passers-by, especially when we reached the city centre and held a brief sit-down protest outside the City Chambers. Despite the overhanging sadness of last weekend’s events, the march had a celebratory atmosphere – of hundreds of people coming together to show Glasgow’s true face as a welcoming city that opens its doors to refugees and asylum seekers, and refuses to be taken in by the lies of the mainstream media and politicians who try to use those seeking sanctuary in our country as scapegoats for the problems of the system.
You can read more from Leftfield about the asylum system and the Red Road flats here.

SSP PUBLIC MEETING: end the government’s terror against asylum seekers! for decent housing, jobs and incomes for ALL!
Wednesday 17 March, 7.30pm. Church Hall, Quarrywood Avenue, Barmulloch.
With speakers Kevin McVey (SSP candidate in Glasgow North East) & Waheed Totakhyl (Scottish Afghan Society).

the marchers pours into george square

no borders, no nations, stop deportations!