Council is hiding over the climate emergency VIEWPOINTS
COUNCILLOR Nigel Murphy’s concerns about social distancing and calling on Extinction Rebellion protesters to ‘rethink’ their proposals would be more credible if it were not for the fact that the council appears to be hiding.
I was there on Tuesday and noted that 98 per cent of people there were masked – speakers were issued with sterilised visors and the microphone was sterilised between speakers.
People were reminded to distance and there were sterilising facilities well advertised.
People were responsible, knowing that trolls would as ever be all to quick to attack.
This is in marked contrast to the only public lavatories in the city centre in the side of the Town Hall extension being closed. The Library and Town Hall extension was shut.
(I asked a policeman who put out a call and ended up advising me to go into a coffee bar – one wonders what homeless people do.)
It’s also in marked contrast to what you find increasingly in Manchester shops where struggling businesses are loath to offend customers.
And how long did it take some supermarkets to get hand (and basket) sterilisation in place in the first place?
I don’t recall Coun Murphy going out to tackle this with PCSOs, trading standards officers and press officers to educate Mancunians.
Or perhaps we’re in a selective three monkeys situation – ‘hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil’.
Where were our councillors? Surely a council that has declared a climate emergency and accepts Conservative politicians and fêtes Chinese President Xi Jinping ought to celebrate and welcome those challenging businesses and the government for their ecological irresponsibility?
Is it that the council are so wedded to growth and ‘getting things back to normal’ that they feel threatened by the implications of their principled stand for sustainability and radical action? Meriity Vecolm,
City centre where we could and we are ruining our wonderful planet with our waste.
We must think long and hard, we must think out of our cosy boxes, we must think of our children and grandchildren, we owe it to them to mend our ways.
Things will never be the same again, and should not be, but there is no reason why we should not have comfortable and well-ordered lives while at the same time looking after the planet for the generations to come.
We are all creatures of habit and look forward to life’s little pleasures, like the weekend papers, but thanks to the action, no doubt irritating to many, by Extinction Rebellion, we have been jolted out of our complacency and reminded that we all matter and all have responsibility.
Rod Slater, Lymm