Scotsman Letters: Matt Hancock so wrong on Covid lockdowns

The farce that is the Covid inquiry continues. Matt Hancock has spoken and has said that right at the beginning of Covid, “what everybody missed in the Western world was that lockdowns were going to be necessary”.

Well, he should read the recent scientific paper by Kevin Bardosh, who did a review of 600 previous papers from around the world on the effects of Covid non-pharmaceutical interventions including lockdowns, and says that many predictions by independent scientists came true including “a rise in non-Covid excess mortality, mental health deterioration, child abuse and domestic violence, widening global inequality, food insecurity, lost educational opportunities, unhealthy lifestyle behaviours, social polarisation, soaring debt, democratic backsliding and declining human rights”.

Geoff Moore, Alness, Highland

SNP successes

Former Health Secretary Matt Hancock leaves the Covid-19 Inquiry hearing this week (Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

All opinion polls conducted on the subject show that Robert Scott is very much in the minority if he thinks Holyrood performs worse than Westminster (Letters, 29 June).

The successes are far too numerous to list and, despite UK austerity mainly caused by Brexit, we have a far better performing health service with more doctors, nurses and beds per head of population. This helped Scotland to deal with Covid. We have much better welfare provision that helps our poorest families more than elsewhere in the UK, plus free childcare and free school meals. If run by Westminster we would have a disastrous private water company and a poorer rail service.

Only narrow-minded British nationalists would complain about Scotland being represented abroad to promote trade and cultural exchanges which have resulted in higher inward investment than the rest of the UK.

Not content with overturning democratic majority decisions by the Scottish Parliament, it transpires that when Humza Yousaf met with EU commission vice-president Maros Sefcovic, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly ordered the UK’s top ambassador to the EU to sit in on the meeting to check that Yousaf did not talk about matters which are reserved to the UK Government, even if Sefcovic asked. Further evidence that the Tories want to reduce Holyrood to Tony Blair’s parish council.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh

Missed information

Imperiously dismissing concerns about the absence of an economic and financial case for leaving the UK, Robert Farquharson tells us that we have “an abundance of information” about the secessionist cause’s plans for a future Scotland in websites such as Business for Scotland, Common Weal, the Scottish Currency Group and the Alba “wee book” (Letters, 29 June).

This last is an updated version of a propaganda publication, “The Wee Blue Book”, which produced a series of misleading claims about Scotland and the UK before the 2014 referendum. The Scottish Currency Group is based on Modern Monetary Theory, aka the Magic Money Tree, which tells us that governments can borrow without limit and spend, spend, spend. Common Weal promotes Scottish separatism assiduously. Business for Scotland isn’t a business organisation at all. It is an SNP propaganda front organisation that issues dishonest separatist propaganda in simple soundbites and brightly coloured graphics to attract the gullible.

Mr Farquharson mentions the four papers produced by the SNP to promote secession. These are flimsy and insubstantial, with no answers to the questions that would face a separate Scotland. The economics paper was so risible Prof Richard Murphy, a tax expert and longtime supporter of Scottish secession, said it was “so wrong” that, on the basis of it, he would support Scotland staying in the UK.

None of these outfits provides realistic answers to the big questions facing those who want to leave the UK. The Scottish Currency Group has produced a wacky plan for a separate Scottish currency that doesn’t survive close examination. Among other things, it claims that a Scottish groat would rise in value from par against the pound sterling. No-one who is serious about financial matters would agree. The big questions remain: what would your currency be? How would you establish a functioning and respected central bank? Who would be your lender of last resort?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Fossil fools?

In a Scotsman article earlier this month Dr Richard Dixon rightly lamented the abuse of human rights and environmental degradation associated with the mining and processing of the many raw materials needed to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles, the three poster boys of the so called Green Industrial Revolution that he clearly supports. It is therefore puzzling as to how he reconciles these conflicting aspirations. While he appears to want all North Sea oil and gas extraction to cease (Sustainable Scotland, 28 June) how does he imagine these dilute and transitional technologies will be manufactured and operated in the absence of the high density energy of fossil fuels? Renewables cannot even begin to produce the hundreds of everyday items we are familiar with that come to us courtesy of hydrocarbons.

With his credentials as an environmental consultant I imagine Dr Dixon may have approved of the World Economic Forum’s climate change initiatives in 2021 which encouraged the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka to ban the import of fossil fuel-derived artificial fertilisers and pesticides and directed the nation's two million farmers to go organic. Political and economic collapse swiftly followed, crop yields plummeted and mass starvation and civil unrest ensued. This may be an extreme example but it is indicative of the negative consequences that lie in wait for the global family of up to 10 billion people if we don’t continue using fossil fuels for the forseeable future as we pursue the quest for viable alternatives.

Neil J Bryce, Kelso, Scottish Borders

Things fall apart

Rail Union leader Mick Lynch is understandably delighted that the SNP/Green coalition administration has decided to take over the sleeper service from Scotland to London. He may well be the only one.

Mr Lynch has not seen at first hand what the present Scottish SNP/Green administration and those before it have done to the best-laid plans for our shipbuilding industry’s reputation. He has not seen their running and botching of the Census; their venture into ferry-building; an airport; and a whole series of other disasters and dreadful decision-making, too numerous to mention. Let’s just be kind and say everything with which they become involved inevitably falls apart.

Unfortunately, Mr Lynch, to paraphrase Private Fraser in Dad’s Army, the London sleeper service “is doomed”.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Pity the PM

I feel sympathy for Rishi Sunak, beset as he is with poor polls, striking workers, high food inflation, high interest rates-affecting mortgages and a collapse in the coalition of voters who had been keen on Brexit. He is trying to get banks and food companies to ease the pain. He is trying to sort out labour shortages by having immigrants from far away countries. But there is a widespread feeling that Conservative inclinations are supportive of profiteering while deprecating trade unionised public sector unions for trying to avoid being left behind as living standards fall.

The Conservatives may come late to the realisation that their neoliberalism is a failing economic strategy, but that for the moment is hidden behind the wise approach of trying to keep government spending down so that the markets accept that policies are costed, focused and not cavalier.

Pity Brexit was such a cavalier strategy causing ramifications for food prices, exports, and labour shortages in key sectors. Pity privatisation is now finally seen as a sop to profiteers as 30 years on from the abandonment of nationalised companies their replacements are seen as glaringly inefficient. Can the problems be sorted? We can’t go back into the EU with the terms we had before and Labour doesn’t want to irresponsibly have further regular referenda but a Norway option may yet be agreeable.

Pity the government can’t afford to seem weak to its core supporters and so can’t change its attitude to trade unions, price controls, or so-called illegal immigrants.

And all this means that Labour can take its time so as not to become encumbered with ideas which seemed good yesterday when what is needed is pragmatic solutions for tomorrow. But can the government stand up the claim that their approach is best because of its economic good sense? That remains to be seen. But if inflation does not come down quickly the focus will be on the weaknesses in Tory policies, not the strengths.

Andrew Vass, Edinburgh

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