Eleven council areas in west and central Scotland, including Glasgow, will enter level 4 lockdown – the toughest level of coronavirus restrictions – from 6pm on Friday. The Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she understood people's frustrations, but the prospect of a vaccine would mean returning to normal from spring. Non-essential shops are to close, along with pubs, restaurants, hairdressers and visitor attractions, but schools will remain open
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Douglas Stuart wins Booker prize for debut Shuggie Bain
Scottish-American wins £50,000 for autobiographical novel about a boy growing up in 80s Glasgow, which is ‘destined to be a classic’
The Scottish-American author Douglas Stuart has won the Booker prize for his first novel, Shuggie Bain, a story based on his own life that follows a boy growing up in poverty in 1980s Glasgow with a mother who is battling addiction.
Stuart, 44, has described himself as “a working-class kid who had a different career and came to writing late”. He is the second Scot to win the £50,000 award after James Kelman took the prize in 1994 with How Late It Was, How Late, a book Stuart said “changed his life” because it was the first time he saw “my people, my dialect, on the page”.
Continue reading...Mercy Baguma’s son and his father granted UK asylum
One-year-old Adriel was found with his mother’s body in their Glasgow flat in August
The son of Mercy Baguma, who was found in a distressed state next to his mother after she died in her Glasgow flat in August, has been granted asylum along with his father, who is now the boy’s sole carer.
Baguma’s death caused a national outcry as it emerged that the Ugandan, who had applied for asylum in the UK and was not able to work at the time of her death, had struggled to provide for herself and her baby during lockdown.
Continue reading...Follow Covid rules so students can go home for Christmas, says minister
Oliver Dowden says everyone must follow rules after Labour urges promise on ‘unfair’ restrictions
University students should be able to return home to their families at Christmas if the country “pulls together” and observes the new coronavirus rules, a cabinet minister has said.
The government is under pressure to guarantee young people are not confined to their halls of residence over the festive period because of Covid-19 outbreaks on campuses.
Continue reading...Boris Johnson agrees to help father of Mercy Baguma’s child stay in UK
PM pressed to help resolve asylum application for child’s father, who is now the boy’s sole carer
Boris Johnson has agreed to intervene in the case of Mercy Baguma, who was found dead in a flat in Glasgow two weeks ago next to her distressed one-year-old son.
Johnson was pressed by the Scottish National party MP David Linden at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday to arrange an urgent meeting with the home secretary to resolve the asylum application that has been pending for the child’s father, who is now the boy’s sole carer.
Continue reading...North Lanarkshire Covid-19 outbreak at NHS contact-tracing centre
Local cases confirmed by Sitel, the US firm that runs the affected site in Scotland
Health officials are investigating a cluster of Covid-19 cases at a call centre in Scotland that carries out contact tracing for the NHS.
US firm Sitel confirmed on Sunday that its call centre in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire has suffered a “local outbreak” of infections.
Continue reading...After the Glasgow hotel attack, a week of shock, anger and compassion
Grassroots groups have rallied to help traumatised former residents of the Park Inn
When Gabriel Vest ran into Asda on Sunday evening with £300 to spend on underwear and socks, staff at Glasgow’s southside branch were initially bemused. He explained he was buying emergency supplies for around 90 asylum seekers evacuated from the Park Inn hotel last Friday after Badreddin Abedlla Adam, from Sudan, stabbed six people before being shot dead by police. “Then they just wanted to help. I didn’t even have to queue.”
Vest, who ordinarily works with Bikes for Refugees, was bulk-buying for Maslow’s, a nearby community shop that supplies second-hand clothing for newly arrived migrants, and that day was hurriedly putting together packages for residents who had had to leave their belongings behind the police cordon. “I got a message from another volunteer who was at the hotel, to say there was one man who was still in his underwear because that was how he’d left his room when the fire alarm had gone off. He was left like that for two days. It was grim.”
Continue reading...Six seriously injured in Glasgow attack and suspect killed by police
Two teenagers and a police officer in hospital after man went on attack at hotel
Six people including a police officer and two teenagers were seriously injured, and the alleged perpetrator shot dead by police, after multiple stabbings at a hotel in central Glasgow.
Police Scotland said David Whyte, a 42-year-old constable, was in a “critical but stable condition” in hospital with five other men – aged 17, 18, 20, 38 and 53 – seriously injured, after a lone man went on the attack shortly before 1pm at the Park Inn hotel on West George Street.
Continue reading...Glasgow attack: police name injured police officer – as it happened
Police Scotland chief constable pays tribute to 42-year-old police officer David Whyte who was one of six injured
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Related: Six seriously injured in Glasgow attack and suspect killed by police
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Britain’s urban fabric comes under spotlight shone by BLM protests
Force of history demands re-evaluation of colonial statues and street names
Cities have always been about apportioning and memorialising power; about writing force into space. Britain’s colonial and imperial past is inscribed into the bricks and mortar of every city and town in the country. Mostly this hidden text of power relations and wealth acquisition lies dormant in the half-forgotten significance of street names, in the knotty iconography of grand facades, in the barely read inscriptions on memorials and sculptures, in the nomenclature of grand public buildings. Forming the backdrop of lived lives, these omnipresent clues are rarely fully decoded. The most monumental of sculptures has a habit of fading away to near invisibility if it is sufficiently familiar.
At times, though, such associations are activated and become urgent. So it has been in the case of the long-running affair of Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the 17th century from the enslavement of thousands of Africans.
Continue reading...Glasgow asylum seekers moved into hotels where distancing is ‘impossible’
Firm stops allowances of hundreds of people after telling them to pack up their flats with an hour’s notice
Hundreds of asylum seekers in Glasgow have been given less than an hour’s notice to pack up their flats before being moved into city centre hotels, where they claim social distancing is “impossible”.
They have also had all financial support withdrawn, apparently because the hotels provide three meals a day, basic toiletries and a laundry service, in a move condemned by campaigners.
Continue reading...Cop26 climate talks in Glasgow postponed until 2021
Crucial UN conference will be delayed until next year as a result of the coronavirus crisis
The UN climate talks due to be held in Glasgow later this year have been postponed as governments around the world struggle to halt the spread of coronavirus.
The most important climate negotiations since the Paris agreement in 2015 were scheduled to take place this November to put countries back on track to avoid climate breakdown. They will now be pushed back to 2021.
Continue reading...Thousands of independence supporters march in Glasgow
March is first of eight planned for 2020, which looks set to be crucial year for movement
Thousands of independence supporters have begun marching through the streets of Glasgow.
The march is the first of eight planned for 2020 by the grassroots organisation All Under One Banner in what is likely be a crucial year for the Scottish independence movement.
Continue reading...From Bodmin to Berlin, crowds vent their fury at Boris Johnson’s ‘coup’
Protesters ranged from students at the prime minister’s old Oxford college to retired teachers, children and activists
In Cambridge’s Market Square, a crowd of families, young people and silver-haired academics listened as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy was read out. Many joined in, from memory, making a collective appeal for non-violent resistance: “Rise, like lions after slumber... Ye are many – they are few.” There were moments of more garrulous protest too. During a speech criticising Boris Johnson, someone shouted: “Off with his head!”
From Bodmin to Berlin, Bristol to Oxford, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in towns and cities across England, Scotland and Wales on Saturday to vent their fury at Johnson’s plan to suspend parliament. Around 1,200 people attended the rally in Cambridge, where they booed the prime minister and his adviser Dominic Cummings as though they were pantomime villains.
Continue reading...Riot police out in Glasgow as Irish unity march sparks disorder
Council calls for fewer marches amid reports of smoke bombs and closure of Govan Road
Riot police, mounted officers, a force helicopter and dog units are being used in Glasgow after protesters against an Irish unity march sparked “significant disorder”.
Police said the planned march through the city’s Govan area, organised by the James Connolly Republican Flute Band, was met by hundreds of “disruptive” counter-demonstrators at about 7pm.
Continue reading...Police stop and search is working in London, says anti-violence chief
Lib Peck insists tactics are succeeding despite Londoners ‘feeling powerless’ over crime
The head of London’s newly formed violence reduction unit has said Londoners feel powerless about levels of street crime but insisted that increased use of stop and search powers had been successful.
Lib Peck, the former leader of Lambeth council who was appointed to the role in January, made the comments while on a two-day fact-finding trip to Glasgow, visiting some of the Scottish unit’s key projects and meeting senior officials.
Continue reading...Glasgow firefighters tackle blaze at former university campus
Large fire breaks out at derelict building being turned into luxury housing development
A large fire has broken out at a derelict university building in Glasgow which is being turned into a luxury housing development.
Firefighters are on scene at the Jordanhill campus in the west of the city as smoke billowed from the former Strathclyde University building.
Continue reading...Thousands join Glasgow march for Scottish independence
Rally comes as polls indicate SNP likely to make gains in European elections
Thousands of people have marched in Glasgow in the largest show of support for Scottish independence since Nicola Sturgeon said she would introduce legislation to hold a second referendum on the issue.
The All Under One Banner event, led by a single flag-bearer and a pipe band, left Kelvingrove Park at 1.30pm and was following a route west to east through the city centre to a rally at Glasgow Green.
Continue reading...Snake on a plane goes 9,300 miles from Australia to Scotland in woman’s shoe
Holidaymaker shocked to see stowaway python in her slip-ons on return from Queensland
As souvenirs go, it is a unique one. A woman has returned to Scotland from a holiday in Australia to discover a stowaway snake hidden in one of her shoes.
In an incident that will confirm the worst fears of visitors to Australia, Moira Boxall unpacked her luggage after the more than 9,300-mile journey from Queensland to find the small and very much alive creature curled up in her slip-ons. It even shed its skin during its voyage in her footwear.
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