George Binning
The inhabitants of Guardian’s office have spent the past year (at least) pretending to ignore the radical developments going on in the Hub. It has been the general consensus that finding your news by looking out of the office window to see what’s going on is lazy. Finally, we have found some real news concerning the Hub. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it is not good news.
The laws of local competition have reared their big, obstructive heads and blocked the application for a Hub based pharmacy. We are being told what healthcare we can and cannot access in order to protect the business interests of Boots and a pharmacy more than halfway down Dumbarton Road. It is regrettable when a blatantly brilliant idea gets jammed in the wheels of the machine. The conclusion of the Pharmacy Practice Committee that an on-campus pharmacy would not be ‘desirable’ is frankly beyond comprehension.
More bad news: the Evening Times this week reported yet another attack on a Glasgow student. It is tragic that the international student in question will take this experience away with him. Re-reading the editorial of last issue (‘Living on a knife-edge’) now carries a sense of horrible foreboding; again we urge students to be cautious, and again we can be thankful that the attack wasn’t worse.
It’s not all doom and gloom; the prestige the University has earned in the world rankings, the city’s acclaim in the Lonely Planet Guide and the record successes of both the charity abseil and Freshers’ Week brighten the news considerably. These stories are an encouraging indicator that people are working for a better Glasgow; needless to say, nothing would have happened without the enthusiastic participation of the student population and the members of the wider community.
While the reporting of the such events may not focus on the confrontational or the sensational angles that appeal to many readers and writers alike, they are nonetheless a pleasure to include in Guardian’s pages.
