A VITAL service for blind people in Glasgow is facing the axe.

A VITAL service for blind people in Glasgow is facing the axe.

Cue and Review, which provides talking newspapers' on cassette, CD and podcast for hundreds of visually impaired Scots, is on the verge of closure, despite desperate efforts by its bosses.

Managing editor Alastair McPhee, who set up the service 26 years ago, and operations director Morag Mackay, have even stopped taking their salaries, which total £21,000, in a last-ditch attempt to save the lifeline service.

It costs around £70,000 per year to run Cue and Review, and Alastair and Morag rely on subscriptions and fundraising to meet costs.

"It is extremely difficult to get funding nowadays," explains Alastair.

"We applied for lottery funding 13 years in a row before we were successful, and the last lottery grant we got was about four years ago.

"We're considered too small a concern for many trusts to fund us, and even our normal avenue of bag-packing or can-rattling in supermarkets has closed down, with many stores adopting their own charity of the year', for which they fundraise exclusively."

They were forced to introduce a modest subscription fee of 70p per week five years ago as a last resort.

This allows listeners access to all 15 newspapers - including the Evening Times - and magazines covered by the service.

"In an ideal world, obviously, we want our service to be free, as it had been for many years," sighs Alastair.

"But we had no choice."

There are 600 talking newspaper groups in the UK, including around 60 in Scotland.

Alastair, who is visually impaired, set up Cue and Review when he was a pupil at Bishopbriggs High School, as part of a charity fundraising project.

More than a quarter of a century later, and the service has moved on from its humble beginnings in a school store cupboard hastily transformed into a recording studio, to a vast, sprawling building on Crowhill Road.

"It is a 1970s building, and it needs work," admits Alastair. "But on the plus side, we own the building, so we do get some income from renting out the other units. There are 18 here, and at the moment, five are empty."

Morag, 56, joined in 1993. "It was everything I wanted from a job - it was flexible, so I could work around a young family, it was a charity, so it appealed to my sense of social justice."

She smiles: "And it involved talking - which is one of my main skills"

There are four volunteer directors on the board with Alastair and Morag, and around 20 other volunteers.

On a typical day, the headquarters is busy but calm, with volunteers coming and going with a quiet sense of purpose.

Alastair and Morag are aware they face a huge uphill struggle to keep Cue and Review going, but they are not ready to walk away yet.

"We need to raise awareness of the service, to get more listeners, but for that, we need a bigger advertising budget to allow us to invest in TV, web and radio advertising, for example," explains Alastair. "At the moment, we are relying on sighted people spotting our ads and telling a relative or friend who is visually impaired, that we exist."

Morag agrees.

"We could walk away, close up shop, and that would be the end of it," she says, bluntly.

"But neither of us wants that to happen."

Alastair agrees. "Blind people should be able to access what is in print.

" It's that simple, as far as we are concerned, and to lose this service, is to cut off a lifeline for many, many people."