Framing of 'Big Help Out' on coronation bank holiday sticks in my craw

Well, maybe a paid holiday would be good, but just who’s holidaying and who’s paying? There were noises off indicating it might be a scaled-down affair. Did that mean less horse-drawn carriages? Perhaps people carriers could be hired for the minor ranks. How silly! These aren’t people: they’re royalty, nobility. Maybe the scaling down is to be less expenses for them, not us. No robes or coronets needing hired, no need to get the jewels out of hock.

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Yes, I do enjoy a good parade along with the rest. I remember the Students’ Day Parades in Edinburgh from my childhood, and the parades to kick off the Fringe. Policing had to be paid for, but you’d see first-aid volunteers. Then there was the emergence of “stewards”, frequently volunteers. Now that bit about the coronation really sticks in the craw. A day of volunteering, billed as the “Big Help Out”. It’s the Bank Holiday, so it won’t really be a day off, will it? Our society is built on volunteers and their unpaid work.

It has been so for years: doing, sharing, caring. Just how far removed are “they” that volunteering is something new to be explained as “helping out”. Volunteers don’t help out, they work alongside.

The majority of us in the real world know only too well what would happen if volunteers stopped doing what they do. Society can’t afford a single day without our volunteers. At the same time, I can’t see the royal family working a full day as volunteers, can you?

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It’s all very well saying that one can apply via a national ballot for “free tickets” for that big bash that’s going to happen in the grounds of Windsor Castle. But who’s paying the “world’s biggest entertainers”? I doubt if much or any hard cash will come from HM’s private purse. Last time round I heard, it opened just wide enough for the cost of a fridge to escape. No, we will pay, the public pays.

I’m not a killjoy. So I hope the sun shines and there will be families and friends together doing the things they want and can afford. And I hope it goes well for those working throughout: transport, street cleansing, police, hospitality and the rest.

It’s very well trying to equate spectacle to an outdated heritage that wants to be revered as it allegedly modernises. Or even attempting to establish a direct correlation to an increase in tourism. But not as the UK is again rocked by political scandal and corruption, experiencing workers’ strikes and price increases as living standards fall and poverty and homelessness are on the rise.

Or are we at the point of being told “let them eat cake?”

Selma Rahman
Edinburgh

A NOTE to the wealthy “few” who think they are better than everybody else.

Without farmers you would have no food.

Without builders you wouldn’t have anywhere to shelter.

Without health professionals you wouldn’t have medical support.

Without the emergency services you would not be protected, or rescued.

Without teachers you would learn nothing, and neither would there be a workforce.

Without a workforce you would have no business, or people to do things for you.

Without delivery people you wouldn’t be able to receive things.

Without miners you wouldn’t have any mineral resources to make things.

Without scientists or engineers

you wouldn’t have machinery.

Without public administrators there would be anarchy.

Without an energy industry you would be cold and in the dark.

Without a communications infrastructure you wouldn’t be able to communicate.

Without society you would have no customers, or people to help you.

If we had no finance industry we would revert to barter, which means everybody would get fair exchange for their efforts.

Who really are the most important people in any society and keeps that society functioning?

Nick Cole
Meigle, Perthshire

SCOTLAND is either part of the fourth or (by slightly different calculations) the seventh richest nation in the world, yet on Tuesday night we hear on public TV news that our paramedics answer at least 44 call-outs every day to the public for patients suffering from what is diagnosed as hypothermia.

This is an emergency you might reasonably expect to encounter amongst well-equipped adventurous youth in the hills of our Highlands, not in urban houses that are poorly heated and insulated.

Our politicians – both MSPs in Holyrood and our MPs in Westminster – should be ashamed they are unwilling to prioritise their (usually older) constituents so that their lives are not threatened by the variations of winter, a season we have every year, often milder than that in Scandinavia or Canada.

Norman Lockhart
Innerleithen