Russell Findlay - @RussellFindlay1

SCOTLAND’S ‘ poverty industry ’ is under the spotlight thanks to rapper Darren ‘Loki’ McGarvey’s best-selling book Poverty Safari. McGarvey - raised in Glasgow’s Pollok - criticises well-meaning experts who descend on deprived communities with big ideas about how to fix deep-rooted social problems. Tapping into public funds, their creative projects make little difference to the people who live there. Reporter Russell Findlay looks at an architect behind a series of bizarre taxpayer-funded schemes in some of Scotland’s poorest areas. >>> LEE Ivett is no ordinary architect. Working from his Glasgow-based studio Baxendale, he is described as an ‘urbanist with a track record of developing transformational long term projects ’. Using edgy but vague buzzwords, one architectural website continues: “ His mode of practice is intensely generative, developing low-budget socially-focused projects from scratch largely for marginalised communities within Scotland a...

A MAJOR criminal based in Spain has been approached by security services in a desperate bid to end the Daniel v Lyons drugs war. The wealthy expat, who is in his 60s and was once jailed over a heroin haul in Glasgow, was asked to broker a truce between the warring families. Both gangs - the most prominent of Scotland's 22 high level organised crime groups - have been told the approach may have come from Britain's domestic security service MI5. The National Crime Agency (NCA), described as Britain's FBI, is understood to have been involved in the extraordinary move to end Scotland's deadliest criminal feud. One source said: “ The expat criminal was in London on business when he was approached by either the security services or the NCA. “He was asked to use his influence by relaying the message to both sides that the bloodshed in Scotland had to end. “Unfortunately, it seems not to have had the desired effect. There has been so much violence that ...