#CargoOfBricks 2: Graham Brownlow on economic recovery from #Covid19 must be long sighted and ambitious

Slugger O'Toole

In this week's episode of Cargo of Bricks, I'm talking with Graham Brownlow who is a Senior Lecturer in Economics at Queens Management School in Belfast about the economic effects of Covid 19, and what he thinks our response needs to be.

Some of the themes we talked about include:

• Rise of internet-based giants like Amazon poses huge business case challenges for local retail calling into question its capacity to continue providing services to local communities, leading to downward pressure on commercial rents...
• Northern Ireland's economy remains disproportionately reliant on low waged and low skilled workers who are suffering disproportionately during the crisis by taking on higher health risks and a more uncertain future.
• Belfast, not Derry, is the outlier in terms of economic performance, so the recovery plan must invest long term ambitions to overturn demographic and geographic imbalances through early years learning, clean budget planning, and infrastructure.