Central Belt Quotes

“The lorries thunder through mile upon mile of farmland, indeed, but... it is obviously related to an urban economy... Dereliction is the word... The stigmata of neglect litter the highway {A80] almost all the way from Glasgow to Stirling... let the intelligent traveller consider as he passes through them the nature and provenance of Millerston, Mollinsburn, Cumbernauld and Dennyloanhead. It is impossible to traverse such communities without seeing that something rather horrible once happened to Scotland, something from which it has never recovered.”
― George Blake, The Heart of Scotland

“A combination of policies to attract work to areas of unemployment and to disperse the congested population of the Glasgow conurbation has created a new Scotland, neither urban or rural, which straggles westwards from the fringes of the Firth of Forth to the lower Clyde. It is this unknown Scotland, not in the guidebooks, away from the motorway, seen fleetingly from the express, that holds the key to the modern politics of the country.”
― Christopher Harvie, Scotland and Nationalism: Scottish Society and Politics 1707 to the Present