How Glasgow vape shop fire highlights dangerous cuts to councils and emergency services

Here's my latest column, published in today's Scotsman (17th March 2026).

If council and emergency services are being starved of cash, where exactly are our unprecedented taxes being spent?

With the embers still glowing in the smoking ruins of Glasgow’s grand old Union Corner building, our political leaders were already on the scene. Kitted out in obligatory hi-viz, to signify professionalism, we heard the predictably sombre declaration that the rules and regulations would have to be tightened to prevent such disasters and that new legislation may be required to deal with vape shops.

To see yet another fine Glasgow building reduced to ashes and rubble is sad indeed, but I’ve some good news for our hard-pressed parliament. There’s no need to allocate precious time for new legislation. Adequate laws exist to check on the safe operation of premises. We don’t need new laws, just proper enforcement of existing ones.

The destruction of Union Corner is symptomatic of a wider malaise in our ability to properly regulate a wide range of activities due to the decimation of council and public protection services. Through a decade of funding cuts, these services have been shrunk, leaving dangerous gaps.

Back-office functions are always the first to go when the axe is wielded, the peripheral functions, the inspection and regulatory services, leaving councils hollowed out. Our Fire and Rescue Service has fared little better, and I wonder whether its fire prevention and inspection capacity is quite what it was. It’s not the lack of law but the lack of money to enforce it.

As we approach the May elections, it may be worth asking if council and emergency services are being starved of cash, where exactly are our unprecedented taxes being spent?

Many of us have just been hit with the second near-double-digit council tax rise in two years without any discernible improvement in our services. Our streets need cleaned and our roads are in a disgraceful state, so where does our money go?

Perhaps it’s time to find out just how much it costs to run all our branches of government, including the numerous quangos. Could it be we’re funding an enormous machine too cumbersome to manoeuvre or actually deliver services?

Speaking of proliferation, the number of vape shops do seem to be multiplying in all our towns.

Perhaps it is because they stand out with their garish neon signs but am I alone in wondering just what is driving this sudden emergence, and what exactly is going on behind the counter?

And speaking of horrible warnings, there was another from our national sport last weekend but one. Just as we were celebrating our long overdue qualification for the World Cup, we were rudely reminded that the ugly side of football is alive and well.

It’s a long time since the bad old days of the 1980s when football violence was a plague and arrests of 150 a weekend were not uncommon. Since then it’s got very civilised, with football grounds, security and safety systems greatly improved.

But a week last Saturday the mask slipped, and we once again saw the hatred and violence that still exists, particularly in the ‘Old Firm’. As the pressure grows to allow alcohol back into football grounds, we should remember how bad it used to be, and determine not to go back there.