Business

Last week I met with Peterhead Business Forum and a few days earlier I answered questions at a forum in Turriff organised by the Federation of Small Businesses.

In Peterhead I found a wide range of matters aired. Despite the negative effects on individuals of closures such Cleveland and Crosse & Blackwell, unemployment doesn’t appear to have risen in our area. It remains below the Scottish average.

But that can’t be the whole story surely? And it ain’t.

We are now below the national average wage because although there are still jobs around, many are part-time or lower skilled.

But there are local success stories too. Score Europe and ASCo are big players in Peterhead and contribute hugely to the whole economy in the area.

Today’s small employers are our major employers. And some at least will become tomorrow’s majors – if we create the environment they need to grow and prosper.

And there is the rub that concerns all the business people I have been meeting.

We have a long tradition of working at sea. We don’t have the biggest white fish port in Europe by accident. And the many processors on shore were orginally utterly dependent on our trawlers.

Today men and women from the North-East can be found all over the world exploiting the skills they acquired here.

But we can feel the hands around our neck. The RAF Buchan run-down is in progress. Several factories are shrinking and the prison is under threat.

So our business people are focussing on how we might be left behind. We have poor roads, no railways and new internet technologies like ‘broadband’ are far distant.

But we developed a few ways to put our area on the map. Perhaps the wackiest – mine – was the idea that we could generate some publicity and perhaps get some of the thousands of Irish tourists flying to Aberdeen to come further North. We ask Ryanair to name one of their new aircraft after our area. There’s no such thing as bad publicity – they say.

Back to School

My office manager Stephen is a vital link back to the local community when I am down in Edinburgh. Even more so when Committee meetings take me as far away as the Solway Firth. I was there on Monday.

So it wasn’t surprising that it was he who elected to come with me on a visit to his old school, Longhaven Primary.

Every member of Primary 5 to 7 asked me a question. “Do you know any pop stars?”; Yes – SNP MP Pete Wishart from Runrig.

“What don’t you like about the job?”; The seven hours a week I spend driving between Whitehills and Edinburgh.

“What do you do?”; the difficult one which took five minutes to answer.

But if the engagement and curiosity of these bright youngsters is anything to go by we’ll see levels of voting rise in years to come.