Friday, May 1, 2026 — Edition No. 77 — The Cornmill Intelligencer

← Past Editions · Edition No. 77 · Friday, May 1, 2026

Today’s outlook: Central Station rises, whisky flows, ozone mends — Friday's looking frothy

News Glasgow

From the ashes: Glasgow dreams up a Central Station Quarter to rival Europe's best

Architects, heritage experts and city leaders are sketching out an ambitious new neighbourhood around Central Station — turning the fire-scarred heart of Glasgow into a once-in-a-generation chance to reshape the city.

By Helen Cooper

Six weeks after a catastrophic fire tore through the Union Corner building on the corner of Union Street and Gordon Street, Glasgow is choosing to look forward — and it is looking a long way forward.

The city council has convened a strategic recovery group and issued a call to architects, heritage specialists, transport planners and business leaders to imagine something far bigger than a like-for-like rebuild. The ambition, set out at the first full council meeting since the blaze, is nothing less than a brand-new "Central Station Quarter" that could stand alongside the great regenerated districts of European cities.

"We will recover and regenerate and turn this loss into a gain of a really great city centre neighbourhood surrounding one of the most important transport gateways into Glasgow and Scotland," council leader Susan Aitken told councillors.

Read full story →

News Scotland

Royal dram diplomacy: Trump scraps whisky tariffs in £1bn lift for Scotland

King Charles's state visit credited with breaking the deadlock as distillers toast the end of a trade barrier that was costing the industry £4m a week

By Damien Day

Scotland's whisky industry is raising a glass this morning after Donald Trump abruptly scrapped tariffs on Scotch — a decision the US president pinned squarely on the "wonderful honour" of King Charles and Queen Camilla's state visit.

The move ends a 10% levy that the Scotch Whisky Association says had been bleeding the sector of around £4 million a week in lost exports to its single biggest market. It also heads off a looming 25% tariff on single malts that had been due to snap back into place this spring.

Britain's Business and Trade Secretary Peter Kyle called it "great news for our scotch whisky industry, which is worth almost £1bn in exports and supports thousands of jobs across the UK".

Read full story →

News Scotland

Glasgow scientists confirm Scotland's first Usutu virus cases in Arran blackbirds

Mosquito-borne virus detected north of the border for the first time, but researchers say public health risk remains very low

Science

The ozone layer is healing — but scientists have spotted a small leak holding it back

A new MIT-led study finds a regulatory loophole could delay full recovery by seven years. The good news: it's fixable.

By Helen Cooper

The ozone layer — that thin, invisible shield protecting us from the sun's harshest ultraviolet rays — is on the mend. But scientists have just spotted a small leak in the rules that could hold its recovery back by about seven years.

A new study led by MIT and published in Nature Communications has, for the first time, put hard numbers on a quiet problem: industrial chemicals that are still legally allowed under the Montreal Protocol are escaping into the atmosphere far more than anyone realised.

The good news, the researchers stress, is that this is science doing exactly what it's supposed to do — catching a problem early enough to fix it.

Read full story →

News Scotland

Wolves howl, drums roll: Stirling unleashes its first Culture Night tonight

Forty-plus events across 26 venues — most of them free — as the city's 'Carnival of the Wolf' lights up Friday from 6pm

By Damien Day

The wolves are back in Stirling — at least in spirit. From 6pm tonight, the city and its surrounding villages throw open castle gates, pub doors, hotel ballrooms and one shopping centre for the first-ever Culture Night Stirling, a free festival built around the legend of the howling pack that, in the 9th century, woke the townsfolk in time to repel a Viking raid.

It is a chunky debut. More than 40 events are spread across 26 venues, from the Old Town Jail and Tolbooth to the Brig o' Turk Tearoom and Cardross Estate. The festival's theme, Carnival of the Wolf, is the first in a planned trilogy under the banner Legends of Stirling.

Sam Gellaitry, Tolbooth. The internationally touring DJ and producer is coming home for a one-off set at the Tolbooth — a proper homecoming gig in the venue that helped raise him. Expect a queue.

Read full story →

What's On Glasgow

Cat Clyde at King Tut's: a night of folk-rock magic on St Vincent Street

Canadian singer-songwriter brings her soulful, story-driven sound to Glasgow's most legendary small venue this Saturday

By Helen Cooper

There are bigger rooms in Glasgow. There are flashier ones. But for a particular kind of night — the kind where a singer's breath is audible between lines and the crowd quietens of its own accord — nowhere quite touches King Tut's Wah Wah Hut.

This Saturday, 2 May, the 300-capacity room on St Vincent Street plays host to Cat Clyde, the Canadian singer-songwriter whose soulful, story-driven folk-rock has been quietly winning over British audiences all spring.

If you haven't met her yet, picture this: a voice that can swing from a warm twang to a plaintive croon inside a single verse, songs steeped in blues, country and old-school folk, and lyrics that feel like they've been lived in rather than written down. She grew up in rural Ontario and it shows — there is a great deal of weather and wood-smoke in her music.

Read full story →

What's On Glasgow

Tame Impala return to Glasgow: psychedelic giants land at the Hydro

Kevin Parker brings the Deadbeat tour to OVO Hydro on Monday 11 May — the band's first Glasgow show in over a decade

By Damien Day

Tame Impala's swirling, kaleidoscopic spaceship docks at the OVO Hydro on Monday 11 May — and Glasgow has been waiting more than ten years for it.

Kevin Parker's psych-pop juggernaut hasn't played a Glasgow stage in over a decade, making this one of the must-see gigs of the city's 2026 calendar. Doors open at 6.30pm.

It's the UK leg of the Deadbeat tour, named for Parker's fifth full-length album, released last October on Columbia Records. The Hydro's official listing describes the new record as "wickedly potent club-psych explorations" — which, if you've ever stood inside one of Tame Impala's laser-streaked arena shows, sounds about right.

Read full story →

What's On Glasgow

Gravity takes flight: Korean dance spectacle lands at Glasgow's Tramway

Choreographer Jang-hyun Ryu brings his eleven-strong company to the Southside for a UK debut on 13 May — an extra-terrestrial dance about the push and pull of the universe

By Damien Day

Eleven dancers, an invisible force, and a soundscape that trembles like the surface of a distant moon. On Wednesday 13 May, Glasgow's Tramway hosts the UK debut of Gravity, a Korean contemporary dance work set to be one of the most striking pieces to land on a Southside stage this year.

The show comes from Seoul-based choreographer Jang-hyun Ryu and his company, Ryu and Friends, and forms part of A Festival of Korean Dance 2026 — the ninth edition of the UK-wide festival presented by The Place and the Korean Cultural Centre UK, with Tramway as Glasgow's host venue.

If you've never been to a contemporary dance show, don't be put off by the label. There's no plot to follow, no programme to decode. Think of it as music for the eyes: bodies, light and sound moving together to create a feeling.

Read full story →