Cities need a free hand to rise again

THE wealth of cities comes and goes – one only needs to look at Edinburgh to see this. Edinburgh once had nearly 30 breweries thanks to the quality of the local waters – but there's only one brewery left in the city now. Edinburgh used to be famous not just for its writers – but for publishers like Blackwood's and Nelson's and the accompanying printers and bookbinders. Now the printing trade is a shadow of itself and a small one at that.

And yet Edinburgh is now more prosperous than it has ever been, more people are being supported and at a higher standard of living than ever in the city's history. How did this happen, why did Edinburgh not collapse in upon itself, overburdened by the social collapse of its industries?

This week David Cameron's favourite think-tank, the Policy Exchange, asked if there was a future for Northern English towns and gave a resounding "NO", just as he was about to start a political tour of the once great Northern cities. Policy Exchange is now probably his least-favourite think-tank.

I think the policy wonks deserve praise for asking such difficult questions and daring to give uncomfortable answers. I don't happen to agree with their prescription – that the three million new homes planned for England should all be built in London, Oxford and Cambridge and that northerners should be encouraged to move south – but it has made people sit up and think, face up to the reality of economics in some once great but now dormant cities and what best can be done to help.

My answer is firstly to say that we should not equate quality of life with wealth – there is far more to it than that! I've lived and worked in London but I'm glad I'm back in Edinburgh and I know many people who find the quality of their lives enhanced by not being in our great overcrowded and expensive metropolis. Such things as cultural amenities and a beautiful environment on your doorstep, or living in a recognisable community rather than an atomised disparate collection of people that look past each other in the Tube, just can't be measured but makes living more pleasurable.

Secondly, the decline of once great cities and their re-emergence under a new guise (there's evidence that Liverpool is turning itself around and Glasgow is strong as a retail centre) or the evolution of cities that have never really declined but have completely transformed (such as the success of Edinburgh, Manchester and Newcastle) shows that there's a real future for urban centres north of the Watford Gap.

But the biggest mistake is to believe that these recoveries can be centrally planned – such as encouraging people to move south – and so Cameron's old friend's are just as wrong here as the Soviets of Russia or the Socialists of Islington. It was the free trade of men using a town's local skills, position or natural resources that made the prosperity in the first place and turned them into great cities. The last thing they need is more political meddling – be it Tory or Labour.

Bear on the loose
Under the distraction of the Olympic opening in Beijing, the Russian Bear has been rampaging around Georgia, mauling innocent civilians and revealing that while it may no longer be a threatening Communist bear, Putin's ambitions hardly make it a cuddly animal.

Russia sees its future as a provider of gas and oil and is intent on using those supplies to neighbours such as Ukraine, Poland and Germany as a tool to force their subservience. Russia's treatment of malevolent intimidation of British Petroleum executives recently has now been followed by an attempt to bring down the Georgian president and replace him with a more compliant puppet so as to control the pipeline that runs through it to Turkey.

As usual, Europe was exposed as divided and confused, there being no such thing as a European national interest, just 27 competing national interests.

Gordon Brown's approach to Russia has been supine. Yet again we have to look to the USA and Condoleezza Rice to show some balls and tell Putin he risks taking us back to the Cold War of the past.

Gained in translation
The BBC has announced that it is to launch a digital Gaelic TV channel called BBC Alba – good news for Gaelic speakers and Scottish taxpayers alike.

It must be obvious to Gaels that their mother tongue will benefit from having TV programmes using the lyrical language – but why a benefit to the taxpayer? Well, it's not so long ago that grandstanding MSPs were outbidding each other with ideas for an all-singing, all-dancing souped-up Gaelic Broadcasting Commission costing over £24 million, paid for by non-Gaelic speakers (there are only 60,000 Gaelic speakers).

By using the benefits of digital TV production costs can be brought down and the BBC can deliver the service from within the existing licence fee. Of course, we could go one step further and move the BBC over to a subscription-fee system, liberating it from the financial straightjacket of it's own making.