I am an Aberdonian by birth and inclination. Having lived in and around Aberdeen for a few months shy of seven decades, I might be well placed to reflect on past, present and future challenges for Scotland’s third city.
As a boy, I recall being awakened at the crack of dawn to accompany my father to the fish market to watch baskets of shimmering cod and haddock emerge from the "intimmers" of deep-sea trawlers. Around the same time I watched anxiously as my father descended143 metres in a rickety bucket to repair broken machinery on the floor of Rubislaw Quarry. The quarry, the largest man-made hole in Europe, produced the granite for much of the city centre and more besides. From time to time I accompanied him into the heat and tumult of the engineering works where he sweated for more than half a century for scant reward.
What do these random recollections have in common? The trawlers, the market, the quarry, the works and, above all, the men became surplus to requirements. We’re a service economy: bankers not anchors are the future.
The windfall of North Sea oil softened the impact of the loss of traditional industries and skills. For some 40 years a significant proportion of the area’s population has lived within the oil bubble. There is, however, every indication the bubble has burst or, at best, is deflating.
PwC suggests that 67 per cent of young people are considering leaving the area, largely in response to problems in the oil industry. Oil and Gas UK estimates around 35,000 jobs will be gone by 2019. Only this week, Wood Group warned of further job losses in the North Sea.
The damnable thing about what may be the lingering death of North Sea oil is the absence of a lasting legacy for the north east. Sure, many enjoyed high wages over four decades but that is not reflected in a city prepared for a future without oil. A walk down Union Street is a depressing experience. The once impressive shopping mile is a ragbag of charity, phone, betting and vacant shops.
Aberdeen is paying the price for hubris in the oil industry. Little or no thought was invested in planning for a post-oil future. The unforeseen collapse in the price has fast-forwarded the north east to a time when oil would no longer be the sticking plaster concealing fundamental ills.
National and local government complacency has compounded the problem. Oil revenues were plundered by successive Westminster governments to subsidise post-industrial unemployment. Scottish Government financial settlements consistently short-change Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. Aberdeen’s financial settlement for 2016 was the meanest for any of Scotland’s cities.
The £500 million for regeneration pledged by Westminster and Holyrood is welcome, although the latter appears reluctant to come up with the promised £254m. The lengthening timescale is a concern. While the Aberdeen bypass, for example, is welcome, it has come 10 years too late.
The PwC report emphasises the need to invest in areas such as tourism. Perversely, the Labour-led council continues to prove that city planning is an oxymoron. Its decision to plough ahead with the abysmal Marischal Square development will inter two of the city’s finest landmarks, Marischal College and Provost Skene’s House in an unneeded and unwanted glass and concrete pile.
There can’t be another city in the world lacking the vision and leadership to develop the space created around both buildings as a focal point for tourism and a piece of heritage to be passed on with pride. Short-term expediency and cash have prevailed.
Simultaneously, the widely derided “modernisation” of the art gallery has closed another of the city’s best-known landmarks. I came across a group of foreign tourists outside the gallery, bemused that it would be closed for upwards of two years. Perhaps they could seek solace in a concert at the 19th century gem, the Music Hall or visit Provost Skene’s House? Sorry, they’re closed as well.
I recently spotted a retro car sticker pleading: “Dear God, send us another oil boom. We promise we won’t p**s it away next time.”
As a matter of urgency, the local economy requires diversification in ways that replace the high-end jobs that are vanishing in large numbers. For example, planning and investing in the essential decommissioning of obsolete and toxic offshore facilities that cannot simply be toppled or left to rust. Renewable energy and life sciences can also feature in any long-term regeneration strategy.
This is a national as well as a local crisis. Those who live furth of the central belt sometimes feel our contribution to national wellbeing is undervalued. The north east has oiled the wheels of the national economy for 40 years. Without urgent action those wheels, national and local, may well turn much more slowly.
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