(29)  Its not Glasgow!

The temporary home of the Scottish Parliament while the permanent one is built at Holyrood will be the General Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, located on The Mound in Edinburgh, it was announced on 20 March. Earlier, statements by Scottish Office ministers had suggested that the Glasgow chambers of the former Strathclyde Regional Council were under consideration as a possible site. Following the announcement, the deputy leader of the Glasgow council, Councillor Charles Gordon, stated: Edinburgh has cheated us. The Edinburgh establishment so detested the notion of Glasgow being given even temporary benefit that they moved heaven and earth to come in with a late tender. He added: We underestimated the extent of their hatred for our city, which they called sleazy. Donald Dewar, the Secretary of State for Scotland, remarked: I am a Glasgow MP, my home is in Glasgow, and I spend a lot of time trying to get home to Glasgow. He also indicated that the decision to locate the temporary accommodation in Edinburgh was not a tendering process. It was also announced on 20 March that the National Heritage Memorial Fund had turned down a Glasgow application for Lottery funding to support the creation of a new National Gallery of Scottish Art and Design in the city. Mungo Campbell, Director of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, said: The Edinburgh chattering classes have always been good at making their voices heard and now they feel stronger than ever. This is not good for Scotland and it is the problem that will epitomise Scottish politics from now on. (Sources: Edinburgh Evening News, 20 March 1998; Scotsman, 21 March 1998).