Glasgow, city of culture

 In 1990, Glasgow was the European city of culture.
 This was the culmination of a reinvention of Glasgows image. In the postwar period, Glasgow had suffered terribly from the effects of the loss of Empire. In the latter half of the twentieth century, Glasgow was popularly associated with violence and poverty, razor gangs, and drunkenness. Although Glasgow had always suffered from this image problem, it had been balanced by the sheer energy of the city that had at varying times made it the second city of the empire.
 Glasgow went through a malaise, where it lost its way and stopped being the wealthy, vibrant city it had been in the Victorian era. We were left with the ghost of better times, buildings funded by the tobacco lords and spice lords who had made their fortunes in the empire, some of the most famous scientists and engineers and politicians looking down from their plinths in George Square. This damage was building on itself; tourism was obviously low, and business was down as well. Glasgow needed to do something to get out of this terminal decline.

Gallery of modern art

 Starting from the early 80s, Glasgow city council went on a PR offensive. They ran a campaign, Glasgow's Miles Better, that was quite popular, to try and introduce some positive connotations with the city in peoples heads. Mr Happy from the mr men books was used as the cartoon character, and the ads painted Glasgow as a cultural centre that was also friendly to business.
 They dusted down Glasgows long-standing policy of making high culture freely available to everyone, and successfully worked a series of ambitious projects. The Burell collection, which had been lying dormant for decades, had a palace built for it and was opened in 1983. The SECC (Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre) was built in 1985; it looks like a cheap rip-off of the Sydney Opera House, and maybe it was, but having a generalised venue for culture and conferences and science exhibitions was good for business and for the local and international organisations to have somewhere safe and reliable they could use.

Burell collection

The big thing at the time was the Glasgow Garden festival 1988. This was a copy of two earlier ones in Liverpool and Stoke-on-Trent, which had been very successful. It was really a way to jolly people into not feeling embarassed or defensive about their city, that with some energy we could do the high-cultured stuff. In Thatchers Britain, although Thatcher was despised in Glasgow, it was good to say to the world that Glasgow was a place that could make money through business.
 At the same time, widespread attempts were being made to try and change the culture of violence, sectarianism and alcoholism that Glasgow had become notorious for. Projects to stamp them out, enforce laws, and to make them socially unacceptable were started in this time.
 All this paid off, as in 1990 Glasgow became the European city of culture, the same year that the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall was opened). By 1990, the big works had largely been done, but this synergistic approach had changed something. Of course, Glasgow did and still does have many problems. But the culture of Glasgow and the west of Scotland had changed for the better, the worst excesses of a decade ago were now not only unacceptable but could be changed.
 Glasgow in this period was an experiment, an attempt to use culture as a means of urban regeneration. It was a success, so it's been copied around the world.

Worst artists in the world?

Wood

McGonagall

Was William Mcgonagall the 19th century Ed Wood?
 Whilst it would be great to get Johnny Depp to play the official worst poet in the world (Vogon poetry doesn't count), are there any parallels between these two curious cultural icons?
 Both are regarded as the 'worst' in their fields. Not merely bad, anyone can simply be bad at something, but comically bad. Their work contains what the industry and the public regard as elementary errors that are so apparent that they are comical.
 However, the key is unintentional errors. If the errors appeared to be intentional, then they would lose their comedic appeal. The comedy arises from the delusion of greatness.
 William McGonagall was poet, and didn't he know it. His poems inadequately use poetic metaphor, and don't scan properly. Here's a sample of his most famous, the Tay Bridge disaster:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

 Edward Wood was an American filmmaker from the 1950s, who produced, directed, edited, authored, and starred in his own films. His productions were B-movies, with little commercial success, and were also created by his enthusiasm and lack of recognition of his limits. It was only decades later that his movies acquired a cult status, and as a result he is one of the most famous movie makers of Hollywood.
 William McGonagall also had no care for recognition from his peers, and made his money from performing his work in front of a crowd. Audiences would jeer and pelt him with fruit, for which he would recieve up to 15 shillings a night. He seemed to believe that the queen had enjoyed his work, due to a polite letter from the palace thanking him for his poem, and tried to perform for the queen after walking from Dundee to Balmoral. He was stopped by security. Whilst it has been suggested he was playing up to the crowd for money, I don't think this is the case. He went out of his way to perform, going over to America or walking 60 miles to see the queen, the sort of poetry most people write in primary school. I think he genuinely did believe in his talents. Like Ed Wood, who continued in his career long after common sense should have told him to stop.
 Both died penniless and were cruelly mocked by their peers and the public. Both had to be rediscovered by later generations. And both took mediocrity and produced strangely timeless work that's quite enjoyable.

TARDIS!

 
 As any visitor to Glasgow knows, we've still got police boxes.
 As a huge dr who fan, this is of course a source of great civic pride. Whenever I walk down Buchanan street, that blue box sticks out a mile away no matter how crowded (and it is always crowded) the street is. Even on May 4th, when we had Darth Vader and stormtroopers on Buchanan street, that didn't even come close.
 Of course, it wasn't always there. It was reintroduced in the late 90s (I think 1996). Before that, of course, they had been decommissioned by the early 70s due to the widepsread use of personal radios (and, no doubt, doctor who jokes). In 1994 Strathclyde Police decided to get rid of the remaining boxes. However, owing to the intervention of the Civil Defence & Emergency Service Preservation Trust and the Glasgow Building Preservation Trust, a few were kept around the city.
 But here's the shocking thing...they were red!

See how wrong it looks?

 Glasgow police boxes were all painted red until the late 60s. Aside from it just looking wrong, why red? Surely red is the colour of the fire brigade? If I saw a red police box, I'd assume it was for calling the fire brigade (to compund the confusion, they actually had fire extinguishers in them). Dr Who can't even be blamed here, because they'd been like that with introduction of the Mark I's (the Gilbert Mackenzie Trench design) in the 30s (police boxes went through several evolutions since their introduction in Albany, New York, in 1877).
 One thing that really annoys me -really really annoys me - is that they never leave the things alone. They're used as coffee shops, or repainted. In my opinion, this is wrong. They look great, tourists love them, and when you're drunk and coming round the corner past TGI Fridays in the early hours it just looks awesome.

I don't hate the 60s! Honest.

 

 Has anyone noticed the backlash against the 1960s recently?
 I once read a book, about ten years ago, that was about the 60s, and it began 'the 1960s are perhaps the most mythologised decade of all time'. Which I agreed with. However, in the last ten years or so, there's been something in the Zeitgeist that wants to re-evaluate the 60s, to explore it's dark side.
 I have to confess an interest. I love the 60s. When I somehow get hold of a time machine, that's where I'm going for a holiday. Youth culture and pop culture in general had an energy to it that's been lacking ever since, which is probably why it's been so romanticised. Woodstock, man landing on the moon, hippies - there was an innocent exuberance, which to our older culture can be charming. The 60s had an energy for change, but in a positive way.
 However, that would be to ignore the flip side of the coin, which is where this backlash is coming from in the first place. As a society, we can only ignore the dreadfulness of the 1960s for so long before it becomes decade-worship. The civil rights and feminist movements were a cornerstone of the 1960s, rightfully so, but they were the forced result of a culture that essentially punished you for not being male and white. The 60s could easily be a very dangerous time if you weren't part of that subset of the population. The 'establishment' that young people railed against was an oppressive regime that had had a long experience of silencing dissent. During the 1960s, most people were still aware of their place in society and knew to keep their heads down.

Kent state shooting

 Protests against the Vietnam war highlight the awful reality of actually having been around back then. Protests and demonstrations turned violent, and of course there was the Kent State shootings. The cold war had produced enough nuclear weapons for the repeated annihilation of all life on Earth, either by madness or by accident, and although protest was widepsread it was ignored.

JFK

 In Britain, to deal with the housing crisis, tower blocks had been enthusiastically built. However, the premise was flawed - tower blocks don't allow you to simply pile up indefinitely, there needs to be quite a lot of surrounding to space to let in light to the bottom and in case the things collapse like dominoes, so you might as well build normal 2-up 2-downs - the huge subsidises hidden, and whole commnuities were seperated. The pound lowered in value, and it became common for young men to go abroad for work. Britain in the 60s could be very, very, depressing.
 So why, then, has it been so mythologised? Why does our culture shy away from the bad side? Well, it could be that youth culture of the time is so appealing. Their fashions were ridiculous (but perfect for fancy dress), some of their beliefs were well-meaning but stupidly flawed (e.g free love, or no politics in the communes), it could be that they did amazing stuff in that decade (man on the moon, sexual and civil equal rights, forcing society out of its rigid old mentality), or maybe it's just that we would all like to outrage an older generation that we're outraging with our outragessness.
 None of these feel right. In my opinion, the 1960s are glamourised just because there was the mood of change. They had come out of the bland conformist 50s and the feeling was that they were making a much better, more interesting, society. Wages had been rising, young people had a lot more disposable income, and some more time before society expected them to settle down. We miss the feeling that things are getting better. We live in a world where politicians advertise themselves as managers of the economy, not changers of society. I lived through the birth of the internet, which was perhaps the biggest change to our society since the 1960s, but nobody really got excited about it. It just happened a bit at a time. Maybe this explains our new-found antipathy to the 60s - we know, deep down, that the opening years of the 21st century just won't be eulogised anything like the 60s.