Looking Back: The Caring City

From 1973

The Caring City

By J.E.McNeill

Glasgow taxi drivers entertain city children on the annual outing Pic - Scottish Daily Express

I have had enough. I am wearied of television programmes knocking Glasgow; I am wearied of the press and big-mouths of other areas knocking Glasgow; and I am wearied of the prevalent attitude South of the Border (and even in ‘Auld Reekie’) that half the inhabitants of Glasgow have razors tucked behind their ears!

The time has come to present some of the less publicised but far more important aspects of our good city. Our parks, for instance, are numbered among the finest in Europe and we have a greater park area than most other cities. All right, we do have overcrowded houses, but we have within easy access, great green oases to which their tenants can escape.

Our recreations are probably the cheapest in Britain, available to all our citizens. Where else can you play on a reasonably good golf course in lovely surroundings for fifteen pence a round? Certainly not South of the Border! Where else can you get an hour’s tennis for about ten pence, and, if you require, hire racquets and shoes for tiny sums? What’s more, if you are a pensioner you can have your daily round of golf for five pence!

More Gifts

More gifts from our caring city – if you are a pensioner you can have a bath free, paddle and swim around free at the public baths; and travel anywhere on public transport for one penny so long as you carry your concession ticket.

University extra-mural classes are tremendously wide and varied in scope - covering languages, art, music, ornithology, politics, history, law (you name it, we’ve got it!). For £2 the ordinary citizen can attend most of these courses once a week throughout the winter, and again the old age pensioners can attend these courses without dipping their hands into their pockets at all. I met a man who passed his First-Grade Music exam at 72 years of age after one of these classes!

Our water supply, originally provided by our caring forefathers, is about the best in Britain – you try raising a lather in a London bath and you’ll see what I mean!

Annually our taxi drivers take children away for a whole day at the seaside, balloons and streamers festooning the windows. There are devoted teams who also take children to the baths; and heaps and heaps of ordinary people who are just far-from-ordinary good neighbours.

And all those dreadful football matches, blown up to the villainous proportions on the wee box! Ibrox was the place where our son was given a raincoat by one of the toughest characters in sight – “canny let the wee fella get soaked” – and came home with indigestion because the whole group insisted on giving him a share of their pies.

Remember, too, our churches. I have heard the churches described as the ‘singing kirks of Glasgow’ because of the joyous heartiness of the singing. But they are also the caring kirks – big churches, wee churches tucked amongst the remaining tenements, and new charges in the vast housing estates, all caring for the people around about. Many strangers or families coming into the city for the first time have found the local church a haven where apart from the fellowship of worship they also found good friends, welcoming clubs or meetings, activities that in turn give warmth and happiness helping others.

But perhaps the greatest proof of Glasgow’s warmth is the reaction of the Southerner who is posted to our city. We know several who came in trepidation, miserable at the hard fate which consigned them to this dreadful city. We know none who did not leave again even more unhappily – some even in tears, and three lots who have told us firmly that they’ll certainly be retiring to the Glasgow area!

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