City council chief hits out at ‘ugliness and extremism’ of online anti-tourism trolls
Edinburgh City Council leader Adam Mcvey has hit out at online trolls for tarnishing the debate on the impact of tourists and events on the city with “ugliness” and “extremism.”
He hit out at online “attacks” based on the nationality of individuals and said he had been personally targeted simply for coming from Paisley.
Speaking at the annual Edinburgh Tourism Action Group conference in the Assembly Rooms, Mcvey also hit out at suggestions there were “two tiers of Edinburghers” based on where people living and working in the city came from.
Mr Mcvey also urged the tourism industry to take steps to tackle the spread of misinformation and fake news about the industry head on.
And he said he would prefer that the city was still “grappling” with the tourism industry’s growth and success in ten years’ time rather than see Edinburgh become “so insular as to think ourselves of just another city.”
Mr Mcvey was speaking a week after hundreds flocked to a public meeting in the city to protest against the growing “commodification” and “commercialisation” of the city for events and tourism.
The SNP politician drew comparisons between antitourism sentiment in the city and the Brexit debate, saying he believed there were clear “synergies” between some of the online attacks he had noticed with “things that were painted on the sides of buses and printed in leaflets that were less than honest.” He cited recent anti-english and anti-welsh attacks on council officials and business leaders as specific examples of how “extremism had seeped in.”
Mr Mcvey said: “When you live in the city, you are a resident of this city and you are a citizen of this city. Whether you are from Europe, or anywhere else in the world you’re welcome in this city.
“It is the embracing of the painting of the other which has seeped in (to the debate) quite unfortunately now.
“I don’t say that to try to put people back into their box. I am not painting those that are raising legitimate concerns with the minority extremism of people who hold those views. We cannot just rely on economic good sense to tackle the issues that so many other cities around the world are dealing with in order to combat any potential backlash.
“We have to look and listen to what the concerns are and be willing to respond to them, not to respond to what is said, but try to understand the motivation for why it is being said.
“We are one city. Businesses and residents are not in some sort of separate vacuum.”