Flying High!

BRIGHTEVERYDAY Flying High!

Alas, there are now however worrying old habits highlighted today, irregularities, and sabotages around the dispensing and allocation of Public Funds! Why would we and not their shareholders or indeed the countries in which they are based, support or be responsible for their airlines. Is it not the same Principals and shareholders who were happy to gamble with the exponential rise of their empires, relying on the upward curve lasting forever? Coronavirus is not responsible for their demise, rather, greed, and companies constantly and selfishly pursuing their Global share in a market built on shifting sands, without care or interest in their environmental and social impact.

Virgin Atlantic are looking for a large bail-out from us, the taxpayers, after Virgin Australia were refused an Australian Government bail-out, quite rightly, refusing to finance their wealthy shareholders, citing foreign ownership, and their Three-Billion-dollar debt! And guess what? Airbus, Rolls Royce, and Heathrow Airport amongst others are mounting a frantic commercial lobbying campaign to secure taxpayer financial support. Disgusting! Lobbying has no place in the democratic process. It is an unsavoury, often corrupt attempt, to coerce elected representatives using their commercial might for economic and political gain. People elect Governments! The Airline industry depicts a model of an insatiable appetite for expansion in a forced, falsely created global market. It has fashioned a demand for the selfish world of unnecessary and gratuitous travel. They are not alone as an industry in the ethos of relentlessly pursuing commercial greed and domination at any cost.

An immediate audit, forensically detailing the vast sums made available by the Government, would indeed show conclusively how these funds were dispensed and apportioned. How much funding for small and medium businesses, how much for the banks to facilitate loans, (and what percentage they have released of that), and how much to prop up friendly conglomerates and the old school-tie network! Is it perhaps only a coincidence that many major industries and businesses, including the banking sector, were already struggling before Coronavirus, and how public funds are now made so readily available to them? Are long-suffering taxpayers and the small business sector paying for this? We were a Nation of Shopkeepers and small businesses were the backbone of the country. That all seems a bit hollow now. One wonders whether Easyjet received their emergency funding in a timely manner, and if so, perhaps a spokesperson for the Government could explain the delays and hardship suffered by small businesses and sole traders who face and receive the usual humiliation and disdain. Perhaps this is a new dimension of, and, insight into, the “levelling out” and the “One Nation” spirit, so vaunted in the recent election manifesto!