CHARLES Dickens may have made A Tale Of Two Cities famous but Liz McAreavey
is aiming for one better:
a Three City solution to boost Scotland’s economy
Speaking on Go Radio Business Show With Hunter & Haughey, the chief executive of Edinburgh’s Chamber of Commerce explained: “Both Glasgow and Edinburgh have significant roles to play in driving Scotland’s economy, but you definitely need, Aberdeen in the mix as well.
“If these three cities are not performing at the top of their game, Scotland’s economy isn’t going anywhere.
“But I think we are much more collaborative and we could think about the Central Belt region almost as the metropolitan centre of Scotland that connects Glasgow and Edinburgh.”
She pointed out we need to improve connectivity and transport links, adding: “But if we get bogged down in the detail of, say, how do we fix transport, which takes years and years of policy, we are going to miss a trick.
“We’ve got to look at potentially a single labour market. This means looking at how we use Edinburgh’s expertise in front-end financial services to drive Glasgow’s growth in
back-office financial services. There are real synergies between the cities.
“We just have to get a dialogue going and see how we pull this together.”
Aberdeen, of course, has capitalised on the oil and gas industry.
Ms McAreavey said: “Even when we achieve net zero carbon, 30 per cent of our energy will still be provided by fossil fuel. We’re never going to eradicate that. If we’re not producing it on our doorstep in a sustainable way, we are going to be importing it from somewhere else in the world. So I think we’ve just got to think these things through; it’s not going to be an instant switch-off.”
Moving forward, as the Third City, Aberdeen can be a thriving hub in helping to drive the economy via a just transition from oil and gas to clean and renewable energy.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel