Layout and Location - The Stones and the Stars: Building Scotland's Newest Megalith - page 112

This grew into a feasibility study for a Glasgow Astronomy
and Space Centre, which was discussed at the first meeting in
Roy's office, on March 9, and at the official one in the St. Vincent
Street Job Centre on March 13, at which I agreed to take the post.
Meanwhile, I had brainstormed the Astronomy and Space Centre
at the previous Saturday's ASTRA meeting and been to see sev-
eral proposed sites for it, including the People's Palace museum on
Glasgow Green - little knowing the political minefield that this
was to turn into later. I still had misgivings about taking the job,
knowing that it would disrupt my writing career; indeed, some of
the consequences are not fully played out to this day. When Ken
Naylor asked if I would take it, I thought hard for a minute and
then said “Yes” - only to be told that on paper I had started an
hour and a half earlier. It was the turn of the financial year, and
if the project hadn't started that morning, the money would have
reverted to central funds and been lost.
The Jobs Creation “Astronomy in the Parks” project was to run
for eight and a half months, to the end of 1978, and in that time we
established that there was indeed a case for constructions such as
sundials and a model of the Solar System scaled to the city bound-
aries. On the educational side there was a considerable demand by
schools, libraries and youth groups for talks, etc., but still more for
exhibition material to use as the background for class projects and
the like. With help from ASTRA we began to meet such requests,
and in January 1979 the project was expanded to a much more ambi-
tious “Astronomy and Space Education Program” under the aus-
pices of STEP, the Special Temporary Employment Program.
The program for schools and so forth achieved spectacular
results, particularly in the latter half of the year, but by then the
writing was on the wall. On taking office the new, Conservative,
government had announced that the STEP program would be
wound down in favor of YOP, the Youth Opportunities Program,
with the emphasis on unskilled school dropouts. I was told that
the Astronomy Project, which was at that time fully manned with
a staff of ten, had in fact been given by Sir Keith Joseph in the
House of Commons as an example of the type of 'nonsense' to be
terminated! At any rate, the MSC representative who inspected
the Astronomy Project was not interested in what had been accom-
plished. The only question was whether the skilled adult staff