Labour candidate Michael Marra showed the approach needed if Dundee city centre is to be revitalised and reinvigorated.

He said: “It’s not the SNP’s fault that the internet exists and that people are shopping online.”

In uttering these words, he showed a mature and party-political-free response to the various problems besetting the City of Discovery.

Fixing the issues impacting us and other towns and cities, a top priority for voters, needs cross-party cooperation locally and nationally and some of it can only be addressed in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.

It also must involve businesses and everyone else who want to see our centres thrum and thrive with life and with trade.

For starters, there are things which can be done immediately to make the centre a more attractive destination.

Begging should be banned and police resources redirected to ensure that violence or the threat of it is snuffed out instantly.

I confess to hypocrisy here in dropping some coins into the cap of some beggars in the streets out of a sense of guilt.

But I’m aware that – in some cases – all I’m doing is........

© The Courier