Recently the collection of purple and brown bins has been sporadic. Do we know why? Can the Society talk to the Council about this? Thanks
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This morning the Strathbungo Society received the welcome news that Network Rail’s proposed tree works on the Glasgow – E.Kilbride line won’t start this weekend. Nicola Sturgeon, our MSP, had earlier in the week secured agreement from Network Rail that they would meet with the Strathbungo Society. We asked her then to clarify whether Network Rail would suspend any work until we had a chance to negotiate and she has received the following reply from the Network Rail Communications Manager: “I have spoken to the project team and can advise that we won’t be doing any work for now on the stretch of railway between Nithsdale Road and Crossmyloof station.”
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The latest newsletter has arrived. Coming through your door imminently, or you can read it here.
You can also find it, and old newsletters back to the 1990s, at the BygoneBungo Newsletter Archive.
(Statement from Fiona Mackinnon on behalf of the Strathbungo Society)
Network Rail are planning to cut down every tree along the 11 miles of track between East Kilbride and Glasgow Central. Their timetable starts in September i.e . now. When the chainsaws and giant chippers plan to arrive to work all night in Strathbungo, we do not know.
The Chair, Treasurer and Secretary of the Society and a number of local residents went along on Monday night to Network Rail’s ‘drop-in information’ session but came away shocked by the potential scale of destruction planned but also by the lack of detail from Network Rail about what they will do and when. Most importantly there was no real explanation why.
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A huge thanks to all the Society members who put months of planning in to this year’s event, the volunteers who helped setup, steward, and take down, the imaginative stall holders, the musicians, and everyone who came along to make the event another great success. Here’s a few random snaps of the day, with thanks to Craig Johnston for several of them.
And if you want to get more involved, planning starts again in the den at The Bungo on Tuesday 16th July, 7.30pm. There’s no let up. Come along if you have any great ideas to improve this or any other of our events!
A fan finally gets her selfie taken with Paola!
Mandy Maria, artist
Tunes at the Community Zone, courtesy La Roche Rumba
Nicola Surgeon visits the Peace Pole
Folky Polky, Polish folklore art
Lucky dip at the Society bottle stall
Folky Polky
There's one way to improve your swing
Project Ability
New Victoria Gardens
Fast food, Bungo style
Strathbungo Society Tea Garden
Exploring
Jon Molyneux and Jane Carolann open the event
The Society Tombola
The art of signwriting
The view from the Society stand
Dylan Lombard, photographer, raising money for Indepen-Dance
Jazz in the garden
The Gazebo set-up team get their moment of fame. Thanks for the help, guys!
Children's Hospices Across Scotland
Karen Cairns artist
The Society bottle stall, always popular
McMillan's Bar
Karen Miller photography
Music in Marywood
Selfie time! First minister sports Bungo Bag.
Elise V Allan artist
Fresh bakes
Fresh Beer
Folky Polky
Folky Polky
Music at the Queen Square bar
Jazz Zestival
If you have any good pictures, you can email us, or use the submission form, Write!
See you next year.
There is a programme of events at the Queens Park Arena (the old bandstand) but they don’t always seem to be well advertised locally. Or I am not paying attention.
If you want to see what is on, try their events web page. Or follow them on facebook for updates.
Tomorrow (Friday 3rd May) they are holding a celebration of the great Paul Robeson’s appearance at the bandstand on May Day 1960, with an introduction by Norry Wilson of Lost Glasgow fame, and the play Call Mr Robeson. I believe the weather will be dry (if not that warm) and tickets are still available.
There are also disco sessions on this holiday weekend.
The adverse effect of traffic on the comfort and safety of the residents in this area has the same root cause as in any other urban area, i.e. too many vehicles in too small a space. However, the problem is aggravated in Strathbungo in that the streets were not designed to carry through traffic or fast traffic, or to be used for parking. The older streets, Regent Park Square, Queen Square, Marywood Square and the northern half of Moray Place were built on a scale adequate for access to the houses by horse and carriage. The result is we have an area which is totally unsuitable for the unrestricted use of motor vehicles, whether belonging to residents or to anyone else.
So said the Strathbungo Society in their fact finding report in 1972. It’s a common theme in Strathbungo that the concerns of today are little different from those of yesterday, but it has been brought into focus by this week’s announcement of legislation to ban pavement parking in Scotland. What effect will this have on Strathbungo? Will we need to ask for an exemption, or is this the very thing we have been waiting for?
In 1972 the Society conducted a survey of the numbers of cars and commercial vehicles parked in Strathbungo overnight, There is nothing like hard data to base a discussion on, and so I couldn’t miss the opportunity to repeat it. This is what they, and I, found.
When I first moved into Marywood Square 4 years ago I thought that the lane running up the back of my tenement was a brilliant opportunity to get some wild flowers growing, so I sowed some seeds. They came to nothing. I was busy, new flat etc, I didn’t really give it much thought. The next Spring I took it a bit more seriously and I and a close neighbour both sowed seeds. Same result – nothing! But this time I realised why. The lane had been sprayed by weed killer – or so it appeared to me by the burned vegetation. So last year I gave seed sowing a miss only to see a couple of new plants in my garden killed as weed killer drifted through the railings.
I’m now getting more and more aware, and concerned that we have a serious environmental problem and it seems that globally we’re in the throws of a sixth mass extinction of species (manmade this time?) including a major threat to insects which are at the bottom of a food chain that maintains birds and animals and are crucial as pollinators. Could we in Strathbungo not play a small part in countering this by challenging the Council, who I’m presuming spray the lanes with weedkiller, and consciously try and turn our lanes into a haven for wild flowers insects and birds. It seems to me that this could be a very positive experience for the children in the area who with proper parental encouragement and support might enjoy helping bring wild flowers into the lanes and learning about them and the wildlife they support. I’ll contact the Council (again) and this time try and find out just why they think it’s a good idea to spray weedkiller. It seems strange to me as they don’t seem to take any responsibility for any other kind of “maintenance” in the lanes. Would other residents, and maybe the Strathbungo Society itself be interested in trying to get the spraying stopped and encouraging wild life into our area?
David Murray may not be the most familiar Strathbungo character, given he lives 35 miles away on a farm in West Lothian, but he has surprisingly strong links to the community.
He has been delivering fresh organic fruit and vegetables fortnightly to the area for many years (thewholeshebag.co.uk), and regularly serves at the Society’s Back Lanes Tea Garden. His son has even provided the musical accompaniment on the pipes some years.
He recently helped clear the railway embankment at Marywood Square in preparation for spring planting, and is a dab hand at patching cobbles in the back lanes, currently restoring a section off Marywood Square. He is landscaping several gardens, including fresh turf for the tea garden this year.
Single handedly sprucing up Strathbungo – if you spot him, say hi!
Statement from The Strathbungo Society Committee
Traffic and parking in Strathbungo present a problem of ever increasing severity; recently we have been informally advised that it will soon be necessary to restrict parking in Regent Park, Queen and Marywood Squares to a single side in order to allow access for emergency vehicles. Fire vehicles in particular are increasingly unable to get along these streets. There is however an alternative more radical solution to this problem that will also take care of many of the other environmental problems associated with Strathbungo’s streets. It is clearly not practicable to think of restricting use of the streets to pedestrians alone (pedestrian precinct) but it is possible to consider a residential precinct. This type of arrangement has been extensively used in Holland where it is known as a Woonerf (plural Woonerven).
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