The sun doesn’t set in Aberdeen until past 10pm in the summer. The long twilight that bathes the city is rather like the slow fade that Scotland’s “oil capital” has experienced over the last decade as the North Sea oil and gas industry, on which its economy relies, has wound down.
“Aberdeen used to be the place to be,” says Alison, a taxi driver in her late fifties who has picked me up at the airport. “But now it’s a ghost town. Just look at Union Street…it’s really sad what’s happened.”
Donald Trump – who has long encouraged the US and allies to “drill, baby, drill” to ramp up fossil fuel production – seems to share Alison’s view. Last week, the US President said he had given outgoing UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer “some pretty good advice”.
Shorts
“I said open up the North Sea, go to Aberdeen, which was the hottest city of the whole continent. It was the oily city of Europe, and they closed everything. It was terrible. I couldn’t believe it.”
