What I saw in Glasgow East

I’m in Glasgow East for the day, making a short film of my column in the current Spectator for the BBC. We’ve just been in perhaps the most run down housing estate I have seen – there is a doll in the doorway next to a dead rat. Houses were boarded up, and you’d think it was condemned if it wasn’t for a postman making his way inside. It made it all the more appalling to see two kids stepping over this junk to go back home. I spoke to them briefly – twins, aged 12. They said it was okay on the estate, aside from the gang fighting on Fridays. Their complaint was that it there was nothing to do here. I asked why all the houses had been vacated. Vandalism, they said – people having their windows put in. The local pub here has no windows at all, just huge slabs of white concrete.