Commonwealth Games Organizers Face Backlash Over Ceremony Demolition Plans

A groundswell of opposition "is building in Glasgow against plans to showcase the live demolition of a skyscraper housing block during the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games this summer," according to Tracy McVeigh of the London GUARDIAN. It has been decried as "crude" and "offensive" to those who lived and died in the flats to make an "entertainment out of their destruction." Pressure is mounting on organizers "to scrap a proposal to blow up five of the six remaining Red Road flats." More than 3,100 people had signed a petition to Shona Robison, the Scottish government minister responsible, insisting that the flats should be "demolished with dignity." Carolyn Leckie, a former MSP who started the petition, said that "this was especially galling." Leckie: "Certainly it's not an appropriate celebratory spectacle. What on earth were the people who decided this thinking of? You couldn't make it up" (GUARDIAN, 4/5).