Despite what you might read in the rather cynical media
coverage, progress continues with
St Helena
Airport. In fact a new company has
been established specifically to service
St Helena,
Atlantic Star Airlines. It currently only operates a single aircraft, but this
will be sure to expand when its service proposal is processed, see:
http://www.atlanticstarairlines.com/single-post/2017/02/06/Air-Service-Proposal-Submitted-to-St-Helena-Government.
They believe that they can overcome the wind shear problem and have carried out
a number of calibration flights. April the 18th marks the first anniversary of
the first landing by a large jet airliner on
St Helena
and full commercial operations will soon be running. For a while I've been
reporting on how opening St
Helena
out to the world will inevitably change the island's unique human culture,
regardless of the benefits it brings. The signs are already manifesting, such
as
St Helena's police being trained to use tasers, see:
http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/tasers-on-st-helena.html.
In December it was casually announced in a notice that a system of debit cards
will be introduced by the Bank of St Helena. At the end of a general annual
status statement it said:
"The
remainder of 2016/17 and into 2017/18 is set to be an exciting time for the
Bank with the exploration and development of new products and services namely
local debit cards and international pre-paid cards. With an ever increasing
cashless society around the world, the Bank has taken steps to follow this
trend. Local debit cards will reduce the requirement for cash and considerably
reduce the number of transfers manually input by tellers. This in turn will
reduce operational risk of errors occurring and ultimately reduce employee
costs in the longer term." Source, page 16:
http://www.sams.sh/sentinel/Sentinel_161222.pdf.
The Bank of St Helena turns over about 33 million pounds a year and also
operates on
Ascension Island (
Tristan da
Cunha has no need of a branch, see:
http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/tristan-da-cunha-st-helena-plus.html).
Obviously the use of bank cards is now almost globally universal and there's no
justification to actively prevent their use on
St Helena;
not least because of the benefits they can bring. However, as I have explained
many times, there are serious hazards inherent in electronic money relating to
privacy and financial independence, for example see:
http://hpanwo.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/coins-are-dropped.html.
There are no current plans to turn
St Helena into a cashless
society, but such a move would never be done in a single stage anyway. There are
indeed plans to turn other nations cashless, such as
Singapore;
and, even more worryingly,
India,
see:
http://cashlessindia.gov.in/.
India
might just be a single country, but it has a huge population; in fact one out
of every six people on earth lives in
India.
If
India goes
cashless smaller countries will inevitably be sucked in. What chance will poor
little
St Helena have? Therefore I ask the Saints to
think about these issues before agreeing to these proposals. Do your own research
and enter into any now innovations with caution.
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