General Chat

The north is not the south is very true BUT ithere are other difficulties in being poor within an affluent area.

We have been on benefits since my dad had his stroke.We do alright because I am mean and we have always lived on low wages.Local wages were always based upon agricultural wage rate which were usually supplemented by cheap housing, free milk and maybe other perks. also we have been in a councl house for nearly fifty years.

Houses are expensive and the local young people cannot afford to live here. Local shops are expensive because most local inhabitants will pay the prices they charge,likewise the pub.We are fighting to save the bus services which may be the only way to reach cheaper shops.

We have always been kind of beholden individually to the more affluent local people,doing there cleaning and tending their gardens. There is little chance to organize ourselves together like there is where many neighbours suffer a smilar degree of poverty. The community is geared toward the more affluent. This is why political unrest generally takes a long time to ferment in rural areas.

For anyone interested

Googlebooks has the following

Richard Stenlake, 1996 - 112 pages
A must-have for anyone with any interest in the gorbals.....

Eric Eunson
0 Reviews
Richard Stenlake, 1996 - 112 pages
A must-have for anyone with any interest in the Gorbals, this is one of our best-selling titles and deservedly so. It includes two specially drawn maps by Ronald Smith showing the Gorbals in 1858 and 1910, plus about 200 photographs of this notorious and decimated area. The text covers the period from the thirteenth century to the mid-1990s, but while there are a few photographs and illustrations dating from before the Second World War (plus a dozen or so showing the rise and fall - literally! - of the 1970s developments), the vast majority of the pictures date from the 1950s and 1960s. They were commissioned by Glasgow City Council in connection with the redevelopment of the area and cover the Gorbals along with Tradeston, Kingston, Laurieston, Hutchesontown and Oatlands. Many of the streets, shops, factories and buildings depicted will be well-rememberd by former Gorbals residents.
More »

there should be no Slums in the UK.....The Gorbals have always been slums......When is something going to be done about it......I read of London slums in the 1800s and the depressing stories of those who lived there with no hope.....This programme shows that for Glasgow.....nothing has changed.

We are not a third world country......When will they do something to help all those who live this way?.....Be it Scotland or any other part of the UK.

No you didn't get carried away Susan, "The North is not the South and their voices are weak when it comes to anything being done for them......" I think that is entirely true.

I hope that seeing these bright, funny, mature beyond their years, children looking up at the black mould covering the ceiling above their beds DOES offend people. I hope it offends people enough to make them wonder just how cutting benefits without a corresponding provision of jobs is going to help these children. Councils are going to have to cut 'non-essential' service...what, like repairing these atrocious buildings? making them even slightly fit for human habitation?

yes, it was where Colin and Justin did their redecoration programme and yes The Gorbals IS historically a slum area, the slums have just gone upwards now.

Glasgow has always been left behind in the regeneration Stakes....... since I was little......I always remember it being depressing and the housing....you wouldn't believe the squalor......As the years went by....nothing changed.....It was like a place forgotten by the state.......in my opinion of course.......I first went to school there.....demolition was always going on but nothing cleared and nothing much done for the people.

The North is not the South and their voices are weak when it comes to anything being done for them......


Oh whoops....got carried away there for a moment ;-)

You hope you risk offending someone RR?

Eats shoots and leaves.


Not to be flippant.

We've had a documentary or two about kids in that area, shown on television here (with subtitles, thank heaven).

Extremely depressing, yes.

Was that the area where the renovate/redecorate boys decided to try to work their magic?

Gorbals is where my Wiltshire grx3 grandfather oddly showed up in 1841. Is it historically a depressed area, I wonder? Just curious.

I just turned it over Rose. it is so depressing.....I can't believe that this country could allow people to live in such dreadful damp conditions.....And so he should be watching.

David Cameron is watching tv right now!

"Poor Kids" BBC1

"More than 3.5m children live below the poverty line in the UK, which has one of the worst child poverty rates in the industrialised world. Four youngsters explain what it is like growing up when a family has little money.

"You must be kind of bad to put people in houses like this," says 10-year-old Paige. She is talking about her home, a high-rise flat in the Gorbals area of Glasgow."


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13632856