@ianfraser
Author and journalist. Latest edition of my book ‘Shredded: Inside RBS The Bank That Broke Britain’, about the pivotal role of what's now called NatWest in the global banking crash, was reissued in 2024. Recovering financial editor. www.ianfraser.org
Union Corner on left and the former RW Forsyth department store on the right. Photo:: Google Streetview
On the right - the ex RW Forsyth dept store, remodelled by JJ Burnet in 1896. Changes included raising the roof, inserting a Corinthian dome and creating a quarter-circle stairwell
On the left - Union Corner, built 1851, which was also given the name "Forsyth House", the building which burnt down
The building which was destroyed by fire, known as both Forsyth House and Union Corner, was never a Forsyth's department store, and wasn't altered by Burnet. That building is across the road. UC was designed by James Brown of Brown & Carrick for stationers/ publishers Orr & Sons and opened in 1851.
Glasgow Central High Level is to remain shut all week due to a “high level of instability” following the Union Corner fire, says Network Rail. Train services to and from Low Level station will resume tomorrow, though.
Fire which destroyed Glasgow’s Union Corner building, built in 1851, and closed Central Station, Scotland’s busiest, started in a vape shop which hadn’t paid business rates and isn’t registered to sell tobacco or vaping products.
@karingoodwin.bsky.social @theferret.scot
Finally, HMS Dragon sets sail from Portsmouth and heads for the Eastern Mediterranean.
Loaded with ammunition and supplies, the Type 45 Destroyer is ready to protect British military bases in Cyprus.
Thomas Corbett-Dillon, whose real name is Craig Dillon, is infamous for his bizarre “a million made-up things” appearance on Fox News with a very gullible Tucker Carlson...
Thomas Corbett-Dillon, whose real name is Craig Dillon, is infamous for his bizarre “a million made-up things” appearance on Fox News with a very gullible Tucker Carlson...
Twitter didn’t just contribute to the news cycle; it dictated it. News broke there, scandals unfolded there. Then Elon Musk killed it. @roisinlanigan.bsky.social
Oil prices tumble back down towards $85 a barrel after Trump says the Iran War is “very complete”.
Glasgow's Union Corner building in 1983 - source Glasgow Herald. The building was famous for its Bell's Scotch whisky and Barr's Irn Bru illuminated signs. The building originally publishers and stationers Francis Orr & Sons was destroyed by fire on 8-9 March 2026.
racist image on the Barr's Irn-Bru ad? Two years later, Barr's had changed it to this.
Glasgow's Union Corner in 1981 with Renault Fuego in foreground.
The building destroyed by fire in Glasgow is Union Corner. Designed by architect James Brown, it was built in 1851 for stationers Francis Orr & Sons. For years there was a Barr’s Irn Bru illuminated ad over the roofline and a neon Bell’s Scotch whisky sign on the dome. This view was taken in 1981.
Huge fire in Glasgow's Union Street causes building to collapse and indefinitely closes Central Station, Scotland's busiest railway station.
This is *nothing* dignified about wearing a cheap baseball cap that promotes yourself to the otherwise solemn ceremony to receive the bodies of the troops you had killed to distract from your bad economy and rampant pedophilia.
Coincidence or what? Around the time Thai resident Christopher Harborne, aka ‘Chakrit Sakunkrit’, made his first £9 million donation to Reform UK, Nigel Farage started repositioning the party as the most crypto-friendly British party. Harborne’s 12% stake in Tether is worth around $65 billion.
Energy markets brace for $100-a-barrel oil as Middle East producers cut output. Goldman Sachs warns that crude and refined products such as petroleum and diesel could hit all-time highs “if Strait of Hormuz flows remain depressed throughout March”.
depressing
“This was never meant to be a fair fight, and it isn’t a fair fight. We’re punching them while they’re down, which is exactly how it should be,” says secretary of war Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth has “Deus Vult” tattooed on his arm, words associated with white supremacists who romanticize the Crusades
Not sure about the “always” there. I find it hard to forget Madrid’s response to the Catalan independence movement in 2017. Then there are things like General Franco’s regime, the Spanish Inquisition and the conquest and colonisation of Latin America.
Meanwhile, Spain's massive investment in renewables is paying dividends now: with prices for Spanish industry and consumers low and stable compared with other European economies.
www.ft.com/content/ac77...
Gift link here.
There’s actually three Selwyn Gummer brothers: John, Peter, and Mark.
House of Lords standards commissioner finds Peter Selwyn Gummer, aka Lord Chadlington, committed three breaches of a Lords rule banning peers from providing “parliamentary services in return for payment or other incentive or reward”.
“The certainties of the US’s stewardship of the ‘international rules-based order’ have been deformed beyond recognition by the Gaza genocide but no alternative architecture has taken their place. Instead, there’s a politics of gangster imperialism that has neither international nor domestic consent”
Photographer Murdo MacLeod patrols Scotland's hills with members of the Scottish Avalanche Information Service, which has since 1988 published daily forecasts of the avalanche risk in six mountain areas.
h/t @severincarrell.bsky.social @theguardian.com
There has been some coverage, with ten articles published on the Minab atrocity in the last couple of hours.
A chilling crime by Pete Hegseth and the US Navy. Iranian warship IRIS Dena was unarmed and taking part in an int’l exercise with countries including the United States when she was sunk off Sri Lanka by a torpedo fired by a US nuclear submarine, killing at least 87 Iranian sailors.
Bild and Die Welt owner Axel Springer buys the Daily and Sunday Telegraph for £575 million after trumping a £500 million offer from the Daily Mail and General Trust.
News that healthy life expectancy is in decline in Britain exposes serious truths about the state we’re in.
By @theguardian.com columnist Aditya Chakrabortty
General Sir Richard Shirreff says Starmer’s right to stay largely out of America and Israel’s war on Iran. “We shouldn’t in any shape or form be involved with the Americans closely because they‘re being led by a couple of gung-ho nutters [into] a war of hubris without any clear idea of how it ends”
I appreciate that.