Reasons to be cheerful? Ever since 1979 when Ian Dury penned the song of that name inspired by a near-fatal accident to a roadie, it strikes me as better to live life seeing the glass as half full.

This came to me as I contemplated the opportunities Birmingham faces today, particularly now with the prospect of an elected mayor.

Should Birmingham vote “yes” in May’s referendum (and the Chamber is campaigning for a yes vote), whoever is elected in November will inherit the stubborn problem of unemployment.

Birmingham creates jobs but not enough of them are filled by residents. Of all the English core cities, we have the largest percentage of working age population with no qualifications.

When you add that, after Liverpool, Birmingham has the lowest percentage of people educated to degree level and the fact that household incomes are low, you can see why unemployment in the city is running at 12.5 per cent – far too high.

These challenges are city-wide. Employment in Birmingham is below the English average for all ethnicities, including White, Indian and Pakistani/ Bangladeshi.

So why should we be cheerful? I believe there are many reasons that we should be extremely optimistic about Birmingham’s prospects. Look at the city’s strengths.

We have the biggest percentage of people engaged in entrepreneurial activities, at least for the working age of 24-plus. The challenge here is to crack the 18-24 band, where unemployment is around 25 per cent.

And the challenge here is underlined when you consider that Birmingham has more under-25-year-olds that any other major city in Europe.

This entrepreneurial spirit means we can regard ourselves as the “plug and play” capital of the UK. In other words, we are Europe’s USA. Ninety per cent of California’s Silicone Valley population did not start out as American citizens.

They arrived with ideas and creativity which they plugged into a welcoming USA. Within five years, they had become American. It’s not possible to do this in too many places. For example, you can never become Japanese and it’s really hard for a Polish plumber to be accepted into a Russian way of life.

Google was started by two Russian university kids who arrived and were embraced for the quality of their idea, demonstrating that America is the world’s leading “plug and play” centre where you can arrive, plug in your ideas and play.

Birmingham can claim to be the UK’s plug and play capital – and it’s really easy to become a Brummie. We are a young city – around only 200 years old – with few third and fourth generation citizens. And most of us arrive as a result of employment or to start a business.

Birmingham’s business base is well spread and whilst we are having to shrink our public sector back from the 30 per cent share of Gross Value-Added that it has represented, the task is not as daunting as it is in the North-East or Wales, where the public sector accounts for in excess of 40 per cent of local GVA.

Our largest sector is still business and professional services, which accounts for about 30 per cent of the city’s GDP. Behind that comes distribution, hotels, catering, manufacturing and transport.

And we have the largest retail destination outside London’s West End.

Then look at our growth sectors. We are top in the UK for appeal to businesses looking to enter the green automotive sector.