AS I write this week’s column, the World Cycling Championships are in full swing in the city.
Glasgow has a reputation of being a tremendous host of world-class sporting events, with many still having fond memories of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
These championships are a fantastic way to showcase our city to a global audience, with cyclists from around the world competing in various events.
So, I share the excitement of many of my fellow Glaswegians that a leading sporting event can be viewed on their own doorsteps.
And I hope the championships can inspire people of all ages to take up cycling and follow in the footsteps of the likes of Katie Archibald.
I also hope that in these challenging times during the cost-of-living crisis this brings a welcome boost to our city’s economy.
However, I am not naive to the concerns raised by many residents and businesses ahead of, and during, the event.
Preceding the start of the championships, people were quick to see the SNP-led Glasgow City Council employing contractors to repair portions of the city’s roads.
Normally, this would be a very welcome development.
Far too many of our roads are simply not fit for purpose so seeing the SNP-led council tackling the scourge of potholes and upgrading our infrastructure is a step in the right direction.
However, the problem is that these repairs look to have been confined to fixing potholes on routes where cycling road races are taking place.
That is a real kick in the teeth to motorists who shouldn’t have had to wait for a major sporting event for the council to finally spring into action and get to work on our roads.
That should be a basic requirement for the council to be carrying out on a day-to-day basis, but instead it has failed to act for too long.
While it is true that last winter was particularly difficult and certainly only worsened the situation, the need to massively repair Glasgow’s roads has been an incessant problem.
Earlier this year, the council announced it was doubling its budget to £12 million to help ensure that roads would be fixed, as the number of reported potholes amounted to 7000 in the first two months of this year alone.
Not only was it stated that this doubled budget would go towards filling potholes, resurfacing streets and eliminating cracks, but that £6m of this had to be reallocated, taken from a fund meant to improve our neighbourhoods.
I welcome the greater attention that has been given to the poor state of the roads in Scotland’s largest city, but much more needs to be done, and not only when the spotlight is on Glasgow.
It is in this spirit that I urge Glasgow City Council to listen to the wide-ranging group of voices that have been calling for it to urgently outline a proper timescale for fixing our roads and ensure that these repairs are always of the highest quality standard.
While one event is in full swing in Glasgow, it has been announced that another is to be cancelled for an indefinite period.
Upon making the announcement, Glasgow Life indicated it is shifting its focus towards delivering other events during the winter and holiday seasons.
The annual fireworks display on Glasgow Green was enjoyed by people of all ages, and families in particular.
I know they will be disappointed they will no longer get the chance to head down on Bonfire Night for the city’s biggest organised display. The key word being organised.
The cancellation of an official display will bring additional challenges for our already over-stretched emergency services.
We have already seen the dangers of non-organised displays in Glasgow as well as Dundee. Dangerous individuals were reported aimlessly roaming streets with baseball bats, with fireworks being fired at police officers and damaging their vehicles.
Subsequent criticism of the handling of non-organised events of this sort have focused largely on the SNP government’s failure to work with local authorities in creating specific firework exclusion zones.
One of the main problems with these zones is they take time to implement, with it being necessary for a consultation process to take place over the course of months.
This makes it difficult to have these zones, whereby the use of fireworks would be illegal, ready in time.
No council has yet begun to even launch such consultations. This means that later this year, Glasgow and other cities will potentially see a repeat of the violence endured last year by members of the public and emergency services.
Yet again the SNP have delivered legislation without thinking through what it will mean in reality and failed to support our cash-strapped councils in their work.
To help avoid a repeat of scenes we saw last November, I urge the SNP government to adopt the Scottish Conservatives’ push for a Firework Safety Plan to tackle the obvious shortcomings of the present process, so that as many people as possible can still enjoy firework festivities in a safe manner.
By Annie Wells