Evening Telegraph (First Edition)
Steve Make us Scotland’s grid city
ALMOST exactly seven months ago, city council leader John Alexander spoke out after Dundee was utterly unfairly not given investment zone status.
It was described as “SNP and Conservative Governments in political carve-up by choosing to direct investment zone status to Glasgow and Aberdeen” instead of Dundee.
This remains the worst thing to happen to Dundee in 30 years.
But John vowed to react. He said “Dundee doesn’t need to wait for doors to open – it needs to kick them in”.
Which doors have you kicked in John?
Seven months ago he said it was “beyond comprehension” Dundee was now the “only major Scottish city without support in the form of a freeport, innovation or investment zone”.
But, he promised: “We are going to make our elbows felt.”
Who have you “elbowed”, John?
National grid investment should come to Dundee but, rather than just criticise, I have a suggestion.
In the news this week we heard that £58 billion needs to be invested in Britain’s national grid.
The new offshore wind farms mean the existing electricity grid isn’t fit for purpose any more. It’s designed around the wrong centres, it was built to take power from fossil fuel power plants close to coal mines.
It’s all going to have to be realigned for wind power.
Look at a map showing the locations of these wind farms – Dundee is fortuitously placed.
Dundee should become Scotland’s grid capital city – indeed Britain’s grid capital city. A massive chunk of that £58bn should be spent here.
Whenever a decision is made, a licence issued, infrastructure planned for operations anywhere in the country, those decisions – and all the
manufacturing – should be done in Dundee.
Holyrood should rule that this is “our thing”, this, at last, is Dundee’s time and they must give incentives and issue edicts that all work on every possible aspect of this new national grid
is done here. Whenever a private company directly involved or in the supply chain is starting up, it should happen in Dundee.
Operate and administer the offshore grid from here.
Have the electricity make landfall here – then we distribute it (hopefully without thousands of pylons scarring the landscape) to the nation.
Get yourself to Holyrood pronto, John. Point out there is a money-laden lorry-load of contracts coming down the road and it is going to stop in Dundee, or you’ll gi’e them a’ a dab in the pus.
This is real. This is the door to kick in. This is where you dig your elbow into someone’s ribs until they cough up billions of pounds-worth of business for your city.
This could be the biggest jobs-creator to hit Dundee in decades. Aberdeen was Scotland’s oil city, make Dundee Scotland’s grid city.
Governments from around the world will crave our expertise.
Add a J to Dundee’s jute, jam, journalism – “jigawatts”.
We are ideally placed, we have the people, and – morally and in all fairness – it’s our turn to be a boomtown.