Waterford
City was last week left shell-shocked, by the terrible news that the Waterford
to London Luton air route will yet again be pulled, cancelled and withdrawn,
from our regional airport. This now means that the regional airport has once
again been left floundering in a desperate search of yet another European carrier
to fill this cavernous void.
The BIG
question is, “Is there another carrier out there?”
It is a glaring
fact, that the very fast, traffic light free M9 has made it so much easier to
travel north, towards all things Dublin, and the cheap flight options which this
brings. There are very few people, south of the M7 corridor, actually
travelling back down the M9, towards Waterford airport and all things “Sunny
South East”!
If you were
in any way up to speed with this carrier’s business profile, you will have
known that they have been in financial difficulties for some time now. With
mounting, unsustainable losses, it was realistically only a matter of time
before the inevitable happened and the business effectively ceased trading.
This bitter
pill to swallow was, I am sure, discussed at last week’s full Council Plenary
meeting. However I was made aware, via a media twitcher, that in the midst of
yet another crisis that will adversely affect our FDI profiling and the economic
stability of the city, county and region in general, some of our Councillors put
forward an implausible motion (please note this motion was not passed) calling
on our patchwork quilt of a Government to, and wait for it, as you are reading
this correctly;
“Ban
take-away coffee cups, asking the Government to introduce some sort of “Cup for
Life” plan, similar to the plastic bag scheme!” Because as we all know a cup is
not just for Christmas it should be for life!
Are we
really going to ask all our citizens and visitors alike to carry a mug from
home or a “Cup for Life” around with them whilst in work or at play? NO!!!!!
Can you imagine
in 2017, tourists coming to Waterford after a weary trip down from “Up North” (the
regional airport having failed to receive Government funding to extend the
runway and thus attract a viable carrier). Are said tourists, expected to
wander around the City Centre and dropping into one of our excellent coffee
shops only to be met by someone saying to them, “I can’t serve you coffee
unless you’ve brought your own cup!”
Now think
this through to it’s obvious conclusion. Coffee shops could sell a “cup for
life” to the customers but that might add another €3 or €4 to the price of a
coffee and besides when you are on holiday the very last things you want to be
looking after is a bloody coffee cup for life!!!!!!
The
customer is without doubt going to think they have arrived in a banana republic,
that has clearly lost all sense of reality.
Imagine
yourself on holiday, in the sunny south of Spain, and you are presented with
the same scenario by the tanned smouldering barista? The answer would be “Feck
Off!” or at least words similar to this phrase, but maybe with a different
vowel here and there! You would laugh and walk away never to return to that
coffee emporium again. Or better still you would present the barista with a
bucket, telling him this is your Cup for Life, and asking him to fill it to the
brim, with his expensive coffee!
Clearly,
then some of our Councillors have far too much time on their hands. Should they
not be getting on with the business of making Waterford an economic powerhouse?
“A Cup for
Life” – don’t make me laugh!
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