Masks Please

The latest Government ordnance requiring all passengers travelling on public transport to wear face masks from 15th of June further underlines the continuing presence of the Corona virus and its life threatening potency. As we head into the summer with almost unstoppable sunshine - the understandable lure of the seaside brings with it increasing risk of viral infection.

Blackpool is already listed as a location experiencing higher rates of icorona virus nfection when compared to other urban centres in the north. Civic leaders are forthright in warning of the dangers in relaxing restraints on social interaction - even amid fresh coastal breezes.

Blackpool Transport will be diligently applying insistence on all passengers having to wear face masks before boarding buses. Especial rigour in interior cleaning of vehicles has to be a further onerous responsibility placed on operators - along with passenger shelters, seats and notice boards. That we are having to face up to continued protection against an unseen and indiscriminate killer virus in our midst until a vaccine becomes readily available imposes stress and worry on everyone - whatever their work or family responsibilities entail.

Understandably the UK population is showing a frayed patience as the corona virus extends a overhanging presence in our lives. The inclination to relax controls to ease pressures on civil society particularly the economic impact and generational consequences of this pandemic - is understandable. The Government, (any government) has to tread a fine line in measuring consequences of loosening restrictions imposed to control spread of the virus, against exponential costs to the nation's financial condition.

A sort of damned if you do and damned if you don't moment faces politicians of all colours. The killing in broad daylight of a black citizen by a white police officer in Minneapolis has thrown up widespread public revulsion. One which overwhelms pleas for 'social distancing' to be observed - from Australia to Germany and the UK. The Chinese Communist Party's determination to lock down democratic rights of Hong Kong citizens, along with threatening noises aimed at Taiwan - is a further unsettling development with global implications. The repercussions from these daily headlines will become challenges facing millenial generations. The flipside is a surge in awareness of need for action to deal with the globe's inexorable rising temperature and man's deadly destruction of his own habitat from the rainforests of Africa and South America; to the ice caps on which climate change can so easily tilt ever faster. In the meantime one small mitigating contribution can be found in the increasing application of electric power to transport systems worldwide - and consequent restrictions on fossil fuel usage by the road lobby. Oh; and make sure you have your mask on for that next journey using public transport.