The 2014 Commonwealth Games has been a showcase of Glasgow, Scotland and indeed Britain, at their best.
Among various governments, authorities and organisations there has been a welcome laying aside of any political differences to work together in common casue and ensure the Games succeed.
And in Glasgow itself there has been an amazing sense of a great city coming together to welcome and support the athletes, performers, broadcasters, ticket-holders and tourists. Truly, these Games have proved the value of collaboration rather than confrontation.
Particularly for the city of Glasgow and its citizens, this has been a fantastic victory: never has the slogan People Make Glasgow seemed more appropriate.
Those of us who know Glasgow, or have lived there, as I did for a number of years, are not surprised at the warmth of the welcome extended to the thousands of visitors from all over the world who arrived for the Games.
Those whose perceptions may have been formed in the past, or by stereotypes, will have been blown away, in the nicest possible sense, by what they found when they experienced the true face of the city for themselves.
It has been my pleasure to have spent a lot of time in Glasgow over the past few days.
It is a place whose citizens are comfortable in their own skin and within their identities; fiercely Glaswegian, Scottish to the hilt and proud to be a key part of Britain’s biggest and most successful sporting event of the year.
They should be proud, because these were, are and always will be, Glasgow’s Games.
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1 comment
Comment by sid burnett posted on
and glasgow did it as scots and without a bawbee from england