Amazon want to fill the skies immediately above our heads with buzzing, swishing drones carrying packages (Amazon to test drone delivery in partnership with UK government, theguardian.com, 26 July). It is reported that the government’s transport ministry is happy to be a partner; and they see this mainly as a matter of sorting out safety issues (we look forward to hearing their plans to deal with terrorists’ use of this technology once the skies are full of “legitimate” drones).
But do we, the people, get any say at all? Chris Grayling, the new minister of transport, was a leader of the leave campaign. The population voted leave in protest that unaccountable elites in Brussels were taking decisions behind our backs. Citizens were urged by Mr Grayling to “take back control”. If Amazon had announced this as an EU-backed plan to fill the air with drones, would Mr Grayling be queueing up to smooth its path through government?
For the whole of human existence and all of our lives so far, the sky has been free for us all to look up to for quiet pleasures and the sense of freedom it evokes, captured so memorably in Wordsworth’s opening lines in one of our nation’s favourite poems, “I wandered lonely as a cloud / That floats on high o’er vales and hills”.
The unaccountable elite of Amazon are attempting to use their connections with ministers in Westminster to take control away from us all to serve their commercial interests. Amazon want Mr Grayling to give them control of our skies. That would mean the pollution and spoiling of one of our most precious freedoms, with no democratic consultation.
Simon Szreter
Professor of history and public policy, University of Cambridge
• It is encouraging, to say the least, that someone in authority has at last noticed that all the so-called “energy firms” do is meter supply and send out bills – and they don’t even do that very well (Energy firms’ profits too high, says inquiry head, 25 July). These companies have, for far too long, stood as unhelpful intermediaries, essentially parasitic, between those who actually produce energy and the consumer. It is, after all, the same gas and electricity coming down the pipes and wires, regardless of whom we settle our bills with. The energy market is a natural monopoly ripe for exploitation, not amenable to competition, and in desperate need of community ownership. These companies siphon off monopoly profits which should be going into actually “making the stuff” and securing energy supply for the future.
Roy Boffy
Walsall, West Midlands
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