Letters / ‘First world’ pod problems
Your article about the protest and petition against the Nort boats pods shows protestors taking no account of others’ needs or the bigger picture.
“I hope NorthLink listens to our concern’ – online petitioner writes to ferry company boss
Of course prioritise cabins for the sick, elderly, those with additional and working/driving needs the next day, but what about people who cannot afford a cabin never mind the likes of me as a single traveller, who actually prefers a pod.
It seems there are those in Shetland who still deny that we, to our eternal shame, with all our oil, and soon, wind millions, have poor in our midst, who cannot afford a trip sooth, never mind a cabin or pod.
Whilst a very small minority, their numbers are likely to grow given the entirely unnecessary spiralling cost of living caused by the same old villains – a greedy oil and gas industry, global corporates, a Tory government and the Putin’s Russian mafia.
The current cost of living crisis is of course an extension of the Lib Dem backed Tory austerity programme of 2010-15, still in place today.
Again, completely unnecessarily, they permitted rising poverty through not ensuring the banks we bailed out by investing our money – public debt printed by the Bank of England and loaned to us in the UK.
The money, our money, was then not invested in us, our country, our manufactory, our R&D, our infrastructure projects (tunnels?) but invested by the banks in China, Dubai, Brazil, India, Turkey, Indonesia, Africa, anywhere with a very cheap labour market, where a fast buck could be made and hidden offshore in tax havens by our neo-liberal monetarists, the ‘new’ capitalists.
So, perhaps some perspective also about our ‘first world’ pod problems, whilst the poor, the planet and the last vestiges of democracy go to hell in a handcart!
Maybe it will take greater Scottish and Shetland autonomy to create a community owned ferry company to fully meet the accommodation and cost needs of our entire community.
Will the pod and indeed freight pleepsers take the big decision to back greater Shetland autonomy and Scottish to ‘axe fur whit we want’?
James Paton
Lerwick
