Just some perspective.

Leeds is the third largest finance centre after London and Edinburgh and is the second largest business, professional and financial services centre after London. Leeds has nothing to learn from either Belfast or Cardiff. What a stupid comment by Chris Cummings

He's hardly a Cardiff hater FFS, total opposite in fact, it's just that some people see his comments in the wrong way.

I do think you've missed the point on what the bloke was saying though Jantra, absolutely nobody has compared Leeds with Cardiff in terms of where it is at the moment or where it's likely to be in terms of the number of quality of financial services jobs.

I've spent a lot of time in Leeds over the years with work and on social visits and yes, Cardiff is light years behind Leeds commercially. You'd have to be downright fucking stupid and blind not to see that. You've only got to approach the city by train to see the evidence that more is going on in that regard.

I'm not convinced yet on this enterprise zone as we haven't attracted a single new company or built many speculative offices as part of it, and I won't be until I see shiny new offices completed and occupied by new rather than relocated from elsewhere In the city jobs. There does seem to be an effort to do something about that. I don't know how that effort is perceived by those that matter at organisations that are likely to expand their businesses outside of Wales, which is all that REALLY maters actually, but if this guy seems to think a decent job is being done to at least try and attract new business then it's not a bad thing is it? He's an outsider after all, and it's views from people like that which are important. It's no good our politicians or people like us close to the city think everything is great (or shit) because our views are a little distorted.

There's a long long way to go until we can compare ourselves with some of the big regional cities such as Bristol, Leeds and Manchester, at least as far as business is concerned, but it's positive to read any good news story.

Leeds has got a shit football team though.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/regional-accounts/regional-gross-value-added--income-approach-/december-2010/rft-nuts3.xls

Jantra,your ridiculous anecdotal 'analysis' is less rigorous than a Namibian driving test. Look at Table 2 on this xls and you will see that Cardiff and the Vale's GVA per head is marginally below Leeds' and Manchester's and marginally above Birmingham's, Liverpool's, Newcastle's and Sheffield's. Compared to London's all of the UK cities are as rubbish as your 'anal'ysis. You don't even live in Cardiff so please shut up. Can't you join a Vale forum?

Look at house prices in Cardiff and compare them to other UK cities.

Find a MEASURE which shows that Cardiff is doing badly compared to your beloved English cities.

Cardiff is beautiful whereas Manchester and Leeds are as ugly as their women (especially the mancunian munters).

I’m not sure what I’m meant to be looking at since there are 18 worksheets. I’ve taken GVA per capita from worksheet ‘table 3.2’. Leeds is 22.671 and Cardiff’s is 20.864. Leeds has 8.7% higher GVA per capita. I also seem to remember that Wales has 1 public sector worker for every 3 private sector worker whereas England has a ratio of 1:4. Not only that but Cardiff has a higher than average ratio in the Welsh context. Whilst public sector workers don’t directly contribute to GVA they will stimulate local demand with their wages. Basically, without the public sector Cardiff and Wales would be a lot lower than it is.

you also need to appreciate that the metrics only go up to 2009. I reckon that since Cardiff is far more reliant on public sector work than Leeds, the resultant metrics will widen as we move towards 2013. this is pure speculation on my part of course.

My evidence is anecdotal but quite often you can only go on what you can see. You should never form the basis of your argument on statistics alone (the average person will have 1.992 arms and even less legs. A statistician will tell you if you sleep with your feet in a fridge and head in an oven on average you’ll feel comfortable). Leeds is a big city – twice the size of Cardiff. Leeds has many big businesses located there with divisional offices that Cardiff cannot hope to have at this stage of its evolution. That isn’t a criticism of Cardiff, that is just pointing out where we are in our development.

Perhaps you could try and appreciate that seeing Cardiff has shortcomings is very different from thinking Cardiff has no potential. If you think we are fulfilling our potential then you’re mistaken. We are nowhere near what we can achieve.

can you also define success? you have provided GVA as a measure so i'm going to take a punt on you mean wealth. So you think Cardiff is wealthy vis a vis successful. Just so we can understand this wealth, can you let us know when Central Square - the main entry point and first impression of Cardiff most visitors will have - is going to be brought into the 1980s? Cardiff has done well in many respects, but its council has no money, its flagship enterprize zone can't attract any businesses, assembly square - the home of its national government - has empty office space and derelict land next to it, its prime CBD development is 15 years in the making and only half complete.

It would be useful to have a dose of realism in what it is we can expect from Cardiff at this stage. we don't have a rampant private sector, we are subsidised with public sector jobs over and above even the Welsh average. businesses tend to see the city as a call centre capital and not a place to send your best and brightest talent. Leeds and other similar cities have plenty of speculative development going on as the developers have faith that business will be interested in the final product. Our only speculative development in Cardiff has been on go slow for three years such is the fear of having to pay empty building rates as no business has expressed an interest.

NB your final comments are petty. You know full well my wife is from Manchester so we’ll leave your petty playground insults and put them to one side for now. If you can’t discuss sensibly then perhaps you need to leave this threads for the adults and go and post on the one direction thread instead.

That is a quality rant that says quite a lot about your mysogynism and xenophobia. However can we out a pin in it and let it hang there for a while - we will come back to your issues later. In the meantime is there any chance you could answer the points raised?

Oh God, what have I started?

Some of us do try and keep it civil Paul