A vibrant Perthshire needs leadership to promote the vital ‘can do’ mentality?

Aug 1 2008 by Mike Beale, president of Perthshire Chamber of Commerce

PERTH 800...the interest in city status for Perth...and the Ryder Cup are just three examples of a vibrancy about Perthshire.

Add to that the Perth area’s reputation as one of the finest places to live in Scotland and the fact that we experience the country’s fastest rate of inward migration and one feels that there has to be a really strong basis for a continued strength in the economy of Perth and Perthshire.

In the recent past, there have been significant successes in drawing people to visit. T in the Park, Elton John, The Game Fair, Etape Caledonia and the Enchanted Forest are but a few examples.

Add the mountains and lochs, the natural environment, the golf and the food all offering genuine world class opportunities to promote our own environment in a way that can only add to the general prosperity.

Is there any hint that my optimism is misplaced or misguided? Or do I have concerns that as a region we are unable to deliver in reality what appears to be so obvious in potential?

Vision, leadership and delivery spring to mind as potential obstacles. In a city and environs of our size, where is the vision spawned? Where is the font of leadership to promote the ‘can do’ mentality that gets things done? What are the optimum vehicles of delivery?

The reality of life is that a community thrives when man’s natural tendency for pessimism and lethargy is overcome by the drive of a community that has confidence in its own strengths and its own identity.

To galvanise that energy requires all sectors of the community to be involved, to ‘buy into’ the ideal and to resist any temptation to criticise those who are prepared to put their heads above the parapet and try to provide the essential vision and leadership. No one person or body can achieve that alone.

In practice, therefore, action not words are needed. In the Chamber, there is a will to seek the vision of Perth in 2020 and beyond, to identify the potential obstacles and to work to remove such obstacles in the interests of the future prosperity of Perthshire as a world class place to live and work.

If, as a reader of this article, you are interested in any way in the concept then my door is open. If on the other hand, your heart is filled with pessimism or cynicism, then I hope that events over the next little while in and through the Chamber and elsewhere will encourage you to be more optimistic.