Exclusive: post-Budget fallout as Glasgow councillors slam 'calculated' leaks

Dear readers, we hope you’ve had a restful weekend. Maybe you were exploring Glasgow’s majestic waterways? Or perhaps you were biting your nails watching Scotland inch tantalisingly close to last-minute victory at Twickenham, alas. While most of you were hunkering down on Sunday, one Bell staffer was standing on a 15th century bridge getting lashed with sideways rain and high winds while trying to conduct a series of interviews. The things we do for a story… 

We’re not sure if you’ve noticed, but there seems to be a whisper of positivity in the air when it comes to Glasgow’s regeneration. A shift was set in motion in the new year with the announcement of the city’s 850th celebrations, and since then the mood music has started to subtly change. We live in hope that council tax increases — as imperfect and inequitable as they are as an instrument — might be another step in the right direction when it comes to getting the city on a forward footing.

But the process to announcing last week's Budget was not so smooth — read on for an account of the leaks that led multiple councillors to slam an anonymous City Chambers colleague. Paid members, we’ve got a bonus exclusive from council leader Susan Aitken at the bottom of today's edition, and it’s fiery stuff. Suffice to say, she's come out swinging.  

Budget 2025: free meals and denunciations 

Topline: Glasgow’s 2025/2026 new Budget was signed off by the SNP and Greens yesterday, amid the “ruins” of the multi-year Budget set in 2024. 

Yes, there’s a 7.5% council tax hike (which, say if you’re in Band D, is an annual increase of £166), but also good news in the form of universal free school meals for primary school children, a reverse on teacher cuts, and millions invested in improving the conditions of the city’s streets, parks and roads.

But a concurrent story was running alongside the Budget: a fallout over the City Chamber leaks that preceded it, specifically concerning proposed education cuts that didn’t come to pass. 

What’s the backstory? On 10 February, just over a week before the big City Council meeting took place, The Herald ran a pre-Budget exclusive — councillors were considering serious education cuts, they reported, ones that would particularly impact nurseries and additional needs staff. The story was built around a leak of five specific cuts that ranged from reviewing nursery entitlements and staff numbers for dyslexia support services. 

And? Unsurprisingly, this report — and subsequent probing follows-ups — threw parents and educators alike into a bit of a panic. But come Budget day, the cuts did not materialise. Instead, announced council treasurer Ricky Bell, the city would be reversing 2024 measures and returning general teacher numbers to their 2023 status. 

Cllr Bell then took the unusual step of directly addressing the furore surrounding the rumoured changes, saying that pre-Budget discussions were not a “secret” process — an allegation levelled against the council in the past week — but a necessarily confidential one, so all options could be explored. Leaks of “selective information,” he said, caused “fear and alarm in our communities and [eroded trust] between colleagues”. 

On a roll: And Cllr Bell didn’t stop there, directing ire at a single anonymous individual. “I hope the leaker of this information reflects on her actions and regrets what she’s done,” he concluded. A smattering of applause broke out, with the rebuke receiving a level of cross-party support the Budget didn’t. There was backing from Labour finance spokesperson Jill Brown – who called the leak “outrageous” — and Greens rep Holly Bruce. 

To leak or not to leak? Leaking titbits to the press is a political tradition. But is it always a constructive one if the information isn’t yet solid? Council leader Susan Aitken sent The Bell a frank, lengthy response when we approached her for comment. The summary is, she’s not happy, citing recent leaks regarding a £1m donation to the local authority, and this latest incident, which Aitken says was not “so much a leak as a fabrication”. 

“It may have been presented as a principled leak by that person,” Aitken opines, “but I think most people close to the subject know it was calculated — not very well calculated, but calculated all the same — to mislead.”

“Where a decision is taken to act in confidence,” she adds. “there is usually a good reason for it [...] Not one of those hypotheticals made it into any party’s budget and it is very hard to believe that any elected member who had been even vaguely paying attention genuinely thought they would.” 

For paying members, who want to read more from Aitken on the subject — including why she thinks such leaks feed into conspiracy-adjacent Budget chat — scroll down to the bottom of today’s newsletter, where we’ve published our interview in full. 

Political agreement: Conservative councillor John Daly tells The Bell that, in the case of a cross-party process like producing a Budget, which requires “full and frank discussions” to be held, leaks can engender fear. “A lot of options are put out there,” Daly says. “Many of them will never come to pass. They affect jobs and livelihoods; that’s the reason we have these behind closed doors because the last thing you would like to do is scaremonger and upset people”. 

• The Bell heard the impact of the leaks firsthand: one councillor told us a member of their staff — who would be affected by floated cuts — had to be signed off sick with anxiety after catching wind of them. 

More holes? The city council has quite a leaky reputation, with some parties said to be more permeable than others. “It’s terribly tribal,” says Cllr Daly, comparing Glasgow to other Scottish local authorities. Leaks, he adds, often undermine the extensive work undertaken as a “unit” by elected representatives. “I think there’s a party affinity which, for some individuals, supersedes responsibility to the city and the greater good we are trying to do”. 

Bottom line: As journalists, this is not an anti-leak screed — god knows where we’d be without the humble tip. But it poses an interesting question about the inner workings — and mechanisations — of the council. Was the leaker a concerned politician, horrified at the potential for more cuts? A Machiavellian schemer? Or somewhere in the middle?

A nugget to leave you with: after some poking around, The Bell did reach out to one individual to ask if they were the source of the leak. Certainly not, they said — before following up the denial hours later to accuse us of “bullying and harassment" and saying they had reported our correspondence to the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Wouldn't a simple ‘no’ have sufficed?

What's your take on leaking? Aids transparency or disrupts council work? Tell us in the comments.

Stories you might have missed:

Who keeps redirecting Glasgow’s runners?
Several runners completing a 10km race near Castlemilk accidentally found themselves going harder, better, faster and stronger than anticipated, when a prankster masquerading as a course official redirected them on a 2.5km (1.5 mile) detour. The most intriguing detail though, is this follows similar sign-tampering at a Queen’s Park run in January. It appears a serial trickster is targeting running enthusiasts in the city — if you’ve got any leads, let us know. 

Glasgow’s Greggs bandit scams Leeds council out of £710k
A Glaswegian who pretended to be a Greggs property manager was able to defraud Leeds City Council out of £710,000 during the Covid-19 pandemic, a court heard last week. Aftab Baig, 47, of Paisley Road West, claimed the cash via a small business grant scheme, despite possessing no links to the nation’s favourite baker. Baig was found guilty of three counts of fraud.

Read/listen/watch

Red on your face: The Daily Mail discovers political education
The Daily Mail’s Scottish political editor typed herself into, quite ironically, a red-faced fury last week. The piece concerned Glasgow’s Red Sunday School, a socialist space for children and young people at the Kinning Park Complex, itself a site of community resistance. In 2022, RSS became the first socialist Sunday school in the city for over four decades, re-establishing a tradition of the left with roots going back over a century. The Mail’s take, predictably, was one of “brainwashing toddlers” and “political indoctrination”, as well as a shadowy trail of money leading to a trust linked to… “Red Ed” Miliband’s father. We’ll let you decide who’s been red-pilled...

We also rec: 
“In Scotland, we don't go in for that lazy criticism, not even in an ironic way” - Vittles Magazine
Questions pondered in this timely interview between Times Scotland critic Chitra Ramaswamy and Vittles founder, Jonathan Nunn, include exploring the age old Glasgow/Edinburgh rivalry through a culinary lens, and why Scotland’s stellar restaurant scene is misunderstood by London-based critics. The chat's incisiveness makes amends for Ramaswamy's conflation of Strathbungo and Govanhill, an otherwise irredeemable error.

It's time to get off the sidelines and show people make Glasgow - The Herald
We’re recommending a Dani Garavelli piece for two weeks on the bounce, but for good reason. “[M]y Glasgow will not be your Glasgow because cities are not objective entities, they are an accretion of all we experience within their boundaries,” she writes poetically, urging us to do more than sit on the sidelines if we hope to see another city rebirth. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments.

Did you catch… our weekend read on Glasgow’s ‘smart-canal’? 

In our Saturday feature, Natalie Whittle took to the banks of the once-mighty Forth and Clyde canal to discover how a multimillion pound computer ‘brain’ could regenerate the waterway — and open up former floodplains for housing. 

Readers loved this one. ‘Fascinating’ was the standout feedback in the multiple comments and emails we got. There were also questions, like one from Tim, who asked if residents paying for the smart canal meant people living in the developments it enables, or everyone in Glasgow. 

But our favourite response was from Shirley, who said the feature made her “very excited to hear positive things happening in Glasgow [...] Clean the canal, make it safe, have events on or close to the canal to bring people to it, even use it for transport, whether commercial or social. Have cafes and bars along the way. Go on Glasgow, you can do it”. 

Revisit Natalie’s piece here. 

Just a perfect day

Every week, one Glasgow resident runs us through their ideal way to spend a day in the city.

Allison Gardner, 62, Chief Executive of Glasgow Film and Director of Glasgow Film Festival

DAWN: I would do something really unusual, which would be go to Ruchill Park to watch the sunrise. Obviously, that is more of a summer expedition in Glasgow than perhaps something I would do in February, but it's a great place to see the whole city laid out with the hills behind it. At that time in the morning, there would hardly be anybody there, apart from the odd dog walker. So it's just a nice, peaceful way to start your day. A bit of outdoor meditation would be great, but it would have to be in the summer. 

MIDDAY: I would have to go to University Café, because I've expended so much energy that I'll require a very, very big Scottish breakfast. Greasy spoons are great. When we were younger, that was the only type of place that you could go. There were no chichi coffee bars or anything like that. It was just upmarket restaurants. Plainly, we couldn't afford them, so it was mostly just greasy spoons. So it's nice to get a really great breakfast, and that's sort of like a brunch — because once you've eaten that you don't need to eat again for a year. 

AFTERNOON: I would go to the Glasgow Film Theatre to watch an afternoon matinée. There's something magical about going to the cinema during the day — going in when it's light and coming out when it's dark makes me feel as if I've time travelled, because time’s moved on, but you've been in this dark space absorbing the story. You can't go wrong with 'Casablanca' [the 1942 film], I love 'Casablanca'. You're taken away from all your stresses and cares. You're in a space where you're absorbing the story, sharing emotions with everyone else. It's just lovely.

DUSK: I'd have to eat again, because I haven’t had anything since my very big breakfast quite early on, so I would probably go to Mother India’s Café. It's just so nice. They take pride in fresh ingredients. It's been going for a long time, it's a place that is beloved, certainly for our audience as well. 

AFTER HOURS: We are having an event at Glasgow Film Festival — we're doing a club night at Sub Club called Post Credits on 6 March, so I would like to go to that. It's going to be great. Because we're showing ‘Desire: The Carl Craig Story’, I had to learn who Carl Craig was by watching the film, because it wasn’t really my era for music, I'm more of a punk. I'll be exhausted by then, I was up at dawn watching the sun rise, so I’d definitely stay for an hour at the Sub Club then go to bed.

Glasgow Film Festival runs from 26 February - 9 March 2025.

Unconstructive critique: The Absent Ear, Brunswick St

The last time I ventured into the dungeons of the Amsterdam, this speakeasy-style cocktail bar had not long opened. There’s a vague memory of dry ice, and overblown gimmickry. Fast-forward a few years and the Ear is still in the top 50, albeit down a few pegs from its 2023 position. The gimmicks, on the other hand, have been ratcheted up a few notches.

My heart sank a little when the bartender explained the immersive art-inspired menu, and passed me a tablet. Cynicism soon waned upon sight of the digital artwork they’d commissioned from local artists. And it had all but evaporated by the time my sugar snap pisco sour arrived; its herby and vegetal notes counterposing zippy acidity. The second, a ‘Darjeeling Express’, quickly followed, served in a tea cup. The vibe is aloof and camp, the shtick off the scale. Drinks are finessed — reliably great and occasionally exceptional. If you can overcome the cringe of uttering a code word to enter, you might just love it.—Robbie.

Glasgow calendar: The people’s play

The latest production from arts charity In Cahootz, opens at The Boardwalk theatre on Thursday. ‘The People’s Place’, written by Linda Duncan McLaughlin, tells the story of five Glasgow based friends, who help a sixth member of their group return to the city to right a two-decade old wrong. Duncan McLaughlin crafted the story from material produced from a collaboration between Cahootz project participants from marginalised communities, and workshops within Glasgow’s recovery community. Performances 27 Feb–1 March, tickets from £3. Email suzanne@incahootz.co.uk to book. 

Other dates for your diary:

🎨 Creative and isolated? Creative Glasgow is hosting a networking event.
27 February, Third-Eye Bar; free entry but book a spot

⚽️ Men’s football too pricey? Watch Glasgow City take on Motherwell.
2 March, Petershill Park; £10

Members-only bonus: 'Councillors have been suspended elsewhere for leaking' warns Glasgow council leader

Q: Do you have any comment on the practice of political leaks at Glasgow Council?  

Susan Aitken: To be honest, the ethics of leaking are as much a question for journalists as they are for politicians – it’s for them to ascertain whether the information they are being passed is reliable and what the motivation behind the leak might be. There have been a couple of incidents recently.

The rest of this interview is for paying members-only. To get more exclusives, sign up to support independent local journalism now, for less than £9 a month.