The coronavirus pandemic may be easing but need is still rising
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COLUMN: The Way I See It by Jim McGillivray
I was very interested to see a photo of my late father in the Northern Times of December 24.
It was a picture taken when he was very much in his prime in the mid-70s, pushing Achany hill lambs through the ring at Lairg Mart when it too was in its prime.
The image caught him, as was his wont, expounding his wisdom to an audience of shepherds and crofters amongst the pens.
He left his half-dozen offspring with many an admonitory saying. The one which lingers long with me is his advice that you are only a week from being hungry, and a month from starving.
We may have dined occasionally on roadkill as bairns but were never without food. Innocent times.
A half-century after that photo, we suddenly live in a very uncertain age. There is a sequence of challenging factors which surround our lives, over which we have no control – Brexit, Covid, rising food prices, dramatically increasing fuel prices, and now Putin’s military destruction of Ukraine, all set against a backdrop of global warming and climate change.
It is hard not to feel helpless when confronted by planetary problems and an evil rampaging psychopath.
Ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things, as we have witnessed over the course of the pandemic when everybody mucked in to help those most in need.
The pandemic may be fading in intensity, but the need if anything increases.
Inflation has become established again, food prices rise accordingly, and electricity prices seem destined to soar by 50 per cent, a situation which will traumatise many a family budget.
But this is nothing compared to the life and death trauma now faced by Ukrainians.
I am chairman of the Sutherland Food Poverty and Fuel Poverty groups. We get monthly updates from around the county to provide as full a picture as possible of the increasing need in this area.
But data on its own makes no impression on the problem, and all we can do is lobby MSPs and MPs to highlight the dire straits that a significant number of families are now entering.
There would seem to have been some response. Scottish Government has committed to £150 aid per household for band A-D properties.
Though this is not means tested, it is tied in with the council tax system, and is a sticking plaster rather than a cure.
For its part, Highland Council has agreed to pay £180 fuel support grant to each household in receipt of council tax reduction, plus some others who fall into certain exempt categories from council tax.
Also, those in serious distress can apply to the council for emergency assistance via the Scottish Welfare Fund.
But much depends on what happens in Ukraine from now on. Will the economic ripples of Brexit, Covid and international inflation suddenly become a worldwide economic meltdown?
Zelensky, very much an ordinary man, leads his people from the front line, gun in hand. Putin skulks safely in his palace.
God help Ukraine. Nobody else seems able to.
Councillor Jim McGillivray lives in Embo and represents the East Sutherland and Edderton ward. He has confirmed his intention to stand again in the upcoming local authority elections on Thursday, May 5.
