IT’S curious how returning to your home city after even the shortest of absences makes you look at it afresh. Having just come back to Glasgow after almost five weeks working abroad, I find the “Dear Green Place” about to become a global centrepiece for the UN climate conference – even if the city’s complexion has a distinctly khaki hue about it.

No sooner had I stepped off the plane than I met many of my fellow Glaswegians venting their spleen about the rights or wrongs of hosting COP26, rail strikes and whether Glasgow really is a city “full of rubbish and rats”. Not to be outdone, and as a long-time resident in the heart of the city centre, I feel a certain obligation to chuck in my tuppence worth on the city.

Glaswegians grumble about their city and always have done, but it’s taken on a new resonance of late. Quite frankly, short of some of our esteemed city council leaders, I’ve yet to meet a fellow Glaswegian who sees their city as nothing short of the tip it has been for some time now.

Make no mistake about it, this is vexing a lot of citizens – whatever our local politicians say to the contrary. Apportioning blame for Glasgow’s tawdry state depends of course on who you talk to.

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There are those who see Glasgow City Council leader Susan Aitken and her SNP administration as the devil incarnate in this respect. There are others who say it’s nothing new and that the long years under Labour were no different. Some again will insist that Glasgow is a work in progress, pointing to traffic reduction within the city, cycle lane extensions and the “refurbishment” of Sauchiehall Street as an indication of the improvements that can and must be made. But coming from the airport last week, looking at my city afresh, it was the decay that struck me most. Not the decay that still lingers from Glasgow’s once-proud industrial past, but one that comes from contemporary neglect.

Money, or a shortage of it, has of course a lot to do with this. As my journalist colleague Ian Jack pointed out writing in The Guardian a few months ago, between 2013 and last year Glasgow lost £270 per head in funding from the Scottish Government, with only one or two local authorities in Scotland faring worse. With such searing constraints on funding, compounded in turn by Scotland’s increasingly testy relations with the UK Government, making improvements to Glasgow or other Scottish cities must feel like fighting with one hand tied behind your back. It’s not just on the outside or the physical fabric of Glasgow on which such a loss of revenue has a corrosive impact. It does so from the inside too, with the closure of cultural venues and libraries.

But before anyone thinks me some kind of apologist for the shortcomings of Glasgow City Council, let me say that money aside, there is a shocking lack of joined-up thinking about tackling the city’s decay. Talk to residents in the city centre and they will tell of the fly tipping even right in the heart of Glasgow. Many businesses will tell too how they love the idea of part of the city centre becoming increasingly pedestrian friendly, but how access for refuse disposal sometimes becomes problematic alongside this. Everything about the city council’s response to problems such as these seems random, without a cohesive plan or structure.

Time and again I see companies tasked with road or building improvements start a job only to vanish with the work incomplete, leaving work sites fenced off before returning to finish the job weeks later without any consideration for the inconvenience it might cause for citizens. And speaking of buildings, many grand architectural features that the city should cherish and promote resemble a different kind of hanging garden these days with shrubs, bushes, weeds and moss engulfing masonry.

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But if Glasgow is almost peerless in sacrificing its best features on the altar of neglect, then this is only matched by its prowess in short-term window dressing whenever the city’s leaders clock that someone other than Glaswegians is looking on.

On orders from inside the City Chambers, a veritable army of burnishers goes to work, painting over graffiti, tarting up gap sites, moving Glasgow’s “eyesore” citizens – many the most vulnerable in our city – to where they will not be noticed quite so much.

Think Commonwealth Games and now COP26, and you will get my drift. I know these complaints might seem like small beer complained to saving the planet, and they are.

I’m all for tackling the ever-pressing issue that threatens our global existence. But along the way it would be courteous and more productive long-term for both the people of Glasgow and Scotland if those trying to impress simply didn’t indulge in a frenzy of cosmetic camouflage for the sake of short-term political plaudits.

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I love my city being showcased. I agree too with slogans like People Make Glasgow, and am proud that the city wins accolades for being among the friendliest anywhere. But these undoubted attributes are by and large only utilised when council leaders and politicians see benefit for themselves. Work started needs its own sustainability if Glasgow, its citizens and Scotland are to benefit.

Oh, and before I let myself and fellow Glaswegians of the hook when it comes to any personal responsibility for making our city better, can I just say try putting rubbish in the bins. It never fails to amaze me how this continues to be the city of the “pavement pizza”.

Anyway, I feel better for getting all that off my chest. It’s good to be home.