Spread spend to ease pressure

Sir, – Recent reports show Edinburgh is the second fastest-growing city in the UK after Manchester, with a 12% rise in inhabitants since 2006 and the attendant boom in house prices and congestion.

Only an hour’s potential train journey from the capital, Levenmouth folk must wonder why growth is so unbalanced. I would suggest two critical drivers of this process.

The first is the deliberate fuelling of centralisation and the absence of any serious regional policy for Scotland.

Official decisions to site the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Executive in Edinburgh and the relocation of 3,000 HMRC jobs to New Waverley involve public funding which fuels the boom in one overheated location.

Since the UK has long suffered from the overcentralisation in London and the absence of any regional policy since the 1960s, you would have hoped Scotland would have learned this lesson and used its discretionary spending actively to seek greater geographic balance. Secondly, in the era of city regions and city deals, transport links are vital in spreading the load any one location must bear. Yet transport investment has lagged and been concentrated on the main cities or city corridors.

For example, the latest City Deal for Edinburgh and the SE included £140 million for Edinburgh transport but none to connect major outlying urban areas such as Levenmouth. Yet house prices and rentals there are 35-40% of Edinburgh’s and a onehour commute by train which is not currently in place would relieve pressure on the capital.

We need to take every opportunity to relocate public bodies and any discretionary spend out of Edinburgh and use this vast public resource to regenerate lagging areas. Trump if one of his female relatives had been subjected to his assertion that “she wouldn’t even mind being grabbed by the p***y”.

The man is a sex pest and a misogynist and regardless of his elected position and the fact he has never been called to account because of his financial status and political allies, a “polite reception” is not warranted and should not be afforded.