Why are so many big-money public projects allocated Edinburgh’s way?

THE announcement that Leith has been identified as the home of a major film and television studio for Scotland demonstrates a complete failure of the so-called creative imagination (“Sunshine On Leith as dock site is cast as nation’s new movie studio, The Herald, December 7).

The majority of Scots appreciate the need to maximise the potential of the leisure and creative industries that command an increasing share of the national economy.

The decision to site this facility in the overheated Edinburgh area is dreadful and utterly regressive, both in terms of initial investment cost and subsequent economic activity.

It will not only allow more public as well as private resources into an area that least requires it but it will also impose further burdens on the capital itself, for example, from travel congestion, house prices, labour shortages and other pressures.

This is merely the latest in a long line of short-sighted decisions to concentrate facilities and investment, for example HMRC’S centralisation of Scottish jobs in New Waverley last year and going back to the the Scottish Parliament and new Scottish Government buildings, also in Leith.

Has the Scottish Government learned nothing from the devastating imbalance that over centralising the UK in London has created?

It has distorted the economy, denied vital opportunities to other areas and yet continues to greedily consume much higher levels of public investment than any other part of the country.

This locational choice also carries huge opportunity cost, denying the economic boost to many post-industrial areas that are increasingly deprived and left behind.

My own former mining community of Levenmouth is falling further behind. We can see Leith clearly across the Forth and we have large industrial sites available and more unemployed people.

Yet only two per cent of workingage adults here are employed in Edinburgh because we are denied the modest investment to reopen the short stretch of mothballed railway line.

If not here, then many other struggling post-industrial areas in Lanarkshire or Ayrshire are much more deserving of such investment and redistribution, which would secure an economic benefit.

All of these fine government policies on inclusion are being sold out.

Stuart Mcintosh,

Kirkland Walk,

Methil.

WHEN is the Scottish Government going to address the inequality of opportunities given to Edinburgh in preference to the other parts of Scotland?

I read that an industrial building in Leith has been earmarked by Screen Scotland as a movie studio.

I have no doubt the begging bowl will be in evidence looking for funding from Creative Scotland.

Has Edinburgh not had enough taxpayer privilege at the expense of other parts of Scotland? Government, civil service, financial services and tourism jobs; tram line investment; airline routes; the list goes on.

The River City set in Dumbarton provides the basis of what could be a centre of film and television production.

We have had enough of this Edinburgh-centric myopia. Remember, the majority of the electorate is still based in the west of Scotland.

Robert Gemmell,

14 Bramble Wynd,

Port Glasgow.