Glasgow Central is on Fire!

[weareallqueens]

The fire started in a vape shop, apparently but seems utterly out of control now. No trains in or out of the station. Has hit the Grand Central Hotel too.

What would be really useful, and I know it's all about money, would be a station accessible by the railway lines which serve the areas covered by central station but connecting to the lines leaving Queen Street. This would have allowed a service into Glasgow, avoiding central station but still keeping the city served.

There are lines which used to go the old St Enoch station, which used to be where the mall is, that connects to springburn, duke street etc. a location at the east end of argyle Street is theoretically doable. The lines see freight and empty passenger trains. It had been discussed as Cross rail.

It probably will not happen.

I think the issue with that is that Queen St is operating pretty much at capacity. They are really hemmed in by the tunnel. They wouldn’t have been able to take on all of central’s routes.

Now they’ve got the low level at Central opening tomorrow that will take a lot of the pressure off. Especially with the Avanti trains starting and terminating at Motherwell and being able to connect with the low level trains.

I’m guessing (going by when there was the big power cut recently) their priority when central opens will be the Ayr lines and the inner and outer circles as they are the ones with more difficult connections (apparently the bus to Paisley yesterday was mega busy and a lot of people had to wait for 3/4 buses).

I wonder if they’d ever consider something like a platform at one of the depots just for emergency / very occasional use.

Polamdie is a bit middle of nowhere, but Shields Road has the underground station

It just keeps getting better 🙄

https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/25923806.glasgow-union-street-fire-vape-shop-failed-pay-business-rates/

The owners of this shop need locking up. If found guilty yada yada.

@JenniferBooth Awful. The guy is so lucky nobody died or he’d be facing manslaughter.
No bloody wonder these shops have a terrible reputation. A curse on the owner and all who operate like him.

We have one in our main shopping precinct Hopefully its been through all the required checks

Yes. It was lucky it was a Sunday so fewer people around/ most shops closed.

From someone called Count Dankula on Twitter

The Union Street fire story gets worse and worse. -shop was run by Pakistani nationals -did not have a legal licence to sell vapes, were not even registered -owed £10k of business rates from last year (council sent bailiffs after me for being 3 weeks late on a £2k payment.) -the shop was sold to a new owner only 2 weeks ago -fire was apparently caused by an overloaded vape charging station. They most likely had multiple extensions plugged into the one socket. -Allegedy a woman had rented a room for her business upstairs and was due to open for her very first day of business literally the next day -foreign scammers are already setting up fake gofundme's to try and scam locals who want to donate to help the business owners.

I think the fact it was a Sunday, and there was an old firm game that went to extra time are both blessings.

For all the hassles the OF game brought, it undoubtedly kept a lot of people at home (either watching or avoiding the city) or in pubs until after 4pm so far fewer people milling around town.

😧

Is anyone really surprised by any of that?

The shop had only been open for 2 weeks. The business rates debt is from last year and will relate to a different business.

But we all know that a lot of these businesses are a "revolving door" of different owners (but linked by family or otherwise) who basically swap shop fronts between themselves to "restart the clock" and create "deniability" for both tax evasion, evading business rates and utility bills, H&S, employment laws, etc. It's common knowledge. New shop opens, trades a few months, then closes down. A few weeks later, new owner comes in opens it up again, trades a few months, then closes down, over and over again. It's all deliberate so that no single owner is running it long enough for the authorities to catch up with them.