Seating in St John's Centre

Jan 8 2010 by Alison Lowson, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

Dear Editor, – I have been following, with growing interest, your readers' letters of the past few weeks concerning the seating in St John's Centre. It strikes me that if the removal of a few seats and the necessity of purchasing a cup of coffee to spend hours watching the world go by is the greatest concern of Perth's pensioners then they are, indeed, very lucky individuals.

As we mark the passing of 2009, hundreds of shops have gone out of business, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs, and thousands of families have lost their homes. A little perspective, I feel, is needed here.

Your most frequent writer on the subject, A M Lindsay, paints an exaggerated picture of pensioners being cast out and abandoned by a greedy shopping centre. Another writer seemed to think it suspicious that visitors to the shopping centre were, shock horror, being encouraged to spend money while there. Are they really all so naive to think that our economy can run on fresh air alone?

I would urge those pensioners to think again: if they spend money in our local shops and cafes, they help create local jobs for local people and ensure the survival of these businesses even through the toughest of times. These jobs, and these businesses enable people to pay for their mortgages and stay in their own homes. Their taxes enable local councils to pay for better care services for older people in their latter years.

The alternative is: no spend, no shops, no jobs, no homes, less taxes and less money for caring for the elderly.

As they say: what goes around, comes around.

C James, Perth.