Dear Brian Monteith, stop sniping at Sturgeon over Covid-19 response – Letters

It’s all too easy to sneer from the back seat, says a reader

Was columnist Brian Monteith unfair on the First Minister? (Picture: Neil Hanna)

Brian Monteith has excelled himself in his virulent hatred of Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government (Perspective, 1 June).

Nothing she does will ever satisfy him. Everything she does is wrong. When she was making these supposedly fatal mistakes, why did we hear nothing from him? Where was he at that time, pointing out these deadly errors? Waffling on about the success of Brexit! We all watched as Italian and Spanish hospitals appeared to be overrun by Covid 19 patients. We had lots of elderly patients in hospital, largely unable to be treated, taking up beds.

What did Mr Monteith say then? Nothing, because, like most people in an emergency, the government did what they thought was best.

It was a terrible decision to have to make but I am quite sure they did it in the hope that our hospitals could cope with the expected influx. Hindsight is a brilliant weapon for ex-politicians but now, he should just put up and shut up! Let the real politicians do the work. I have tremendous sympathy for Ms Sturgeon in these circumstances and am heartily fed up with sniping and snarling from people with no ideas of their own.

Brian Bannatyne Scott, Murrayfield Drive, Edinburgh

Spike ‘inevitable’

Brian Monteith repeats Sky’s Sophy Ridge’s farcical claim that Scottish care home deaths are twice as bad as in England, but most academic and EU accurate measures of excess Covid-related mortality show that England’s Z figure is almost three times higher than Scotland’s over a period of 20 weeks.

On Radio Scotland, care home owner Tony Banks indicated that the discharging of patients from hospital probably didn’t bring Covid into care homes with adequate isolation measures, but staff did.

Some care home staff may have unwittingly introduced and spread the virus perhaps because, anecdotally, many low wage earners who didn’t have symptoms didn’t want to take tests in case they lost wages. The UK as a whole rarely mentioned asymptomatic transmission in March so it is easy to be wise after the event.

Also, it is worth noting that Covid-related deaths are twice as high in private care homes compared to not-for-profit and local authority-run homes.

Thanks to Boris Johnson’s gung-ho approach and mixed messages in the UK-wide media, a new spike looks inevitable, but if individuals refuse to obey the rules including wearing face masks in shops then they are hardly in a position to blame Nicola Sturgeon.

Mary Thomas, Watson Crescent, Edinburgh

Forget elsewhere

The First Minister, interviewed on Sunday morning on Sky News,was pressed on the calamitous number of deaths in Scottish care homes. It is without doubt that it was a grave error in policy to discharge a large number of the elderly (the most susceptible age group) into care homes without being tested. The First Minister has commented on the benefit of hindsight and she will elicit some support for that view.

However, whenever she is under any pressure on the likes of the NHS and education policy in Scotland, her default response is to immediately declare that all is worse in areas in England. This was highlighted again when she blamed the high death rates in Scottish care homes as an “under-reporting of deaths” in England. Why does she not understand that if you are a relative in Scotland grieving for the loss of a loved one, any comparison with what is going on in England – or indeed, anywhere else – is an absolute irrelevance? Her responsibility is for what is happening in Scotland only, and across all areas of devolved responsibility she needs to concentrate on Scottish performance.

Richard Allison, Braehead Loan, Edinburgh

Spurious claim

Kit Fraser ( Letters, 30 May) repeats the spurious claim that the UK delayed lockdown, resulting in 60,000 excess deaths. According to John Hopkins University statistics the UK Covid-19 death total to date is 562 per million population. Italy and Spain, which both had a faster resort to lockdown, have death rates so far of 550 and 590 per million.

China, on the other hand, which, I would guess, had the slowest response in relation to initial outbreak, has a death rate of just three per million and even Sweden, which has had no lockdown at all, stands at 435. As I have noted before, the only useful purpose of what I have mockingly called prescient hindsight is to produce numbers for political point-scoring – and there sure has been plenty of that in the current situation.

Even informed predictions can be wildly out. Unless my memory fails me I recall there was a warning made to the government some time ago that the number of UK deaths from the corona pandemic would be in the region of half a million – a very far cry indeed from the current 38,000.

(Dr) A McCormick, Kirkland Road, Terregles

What fore?

Social distancing rule in Scotland? Two metres. Once their courses eventually open, the number of golfers Edinburgh Leisure will permit to be on a green, (say 20 x 20 metres) at any one time? One! Can they explain the reasoning behind this apparently absurd rule?

John Wann, Greenbank Crescent, Edinburgh

Double trouble

The letter from Brian Barbour is generally fair and balanced (Letters 1 June). He says it doesn’t matter whether Dominic Cummings was “two miles or four hundred miles away if he went into quarantine or isolation”. It is also fair to say that taking the virus closer to Scotland is not relevant. The celebrity with the dubious honour of taking the virus into Scotland is HRH Prince Charles, another high-profile individual who set an extremely bad example by flouting with impunity both the letter and spirit of the coronavirus legislation (regulation 6). And there’s the point, Prince Charles took the virus to Balmoral and Ballater. Dominic Cummings, a man who earns more than the PM, is apparently so friendless and impoverished, he took the virus to Durham because he could not organise childcare in London. Also, as other contributors have mentioned, it is not true to say that deaths in Scottish care homes are double those in England. As bad and tragic as the deaths here are, at least they are an accurate representation of reality, which will need to be rigorously interrogated in time. Research by the LSE has indicated that the figures reported in England are grossly undercounted and the actual toll is liable to be double that being reported.

Gill Turner, Derby Street, Edinburgh

Making Hay

Last September, friends and I were lucky enough to find a house to rent right in the centre of Hay-on-Wye. We booked for seven days during the Hay Book Festival ... and then came Covid-19. The Hay Book Festival had to be cancelled. It took only a phone call and an e-mail to have our accommodation booking (all had been paid in advance) carried forward to 2021. Some airlines could learn lessons!

Then came the glad news that there would be a Hay Digital Festival. A fabulous programme was available, and ten days of pure enjoyment put in the diary. From vaccines to statistics, from the history of the East India Company to new novels to enjoy, Hay is ever-stimulating. It’s been different: some regulars missed their annual camping; most missed the coffees and chats, not to mention pitchers of Pimms and the local ice-cream. But thousands of new visitors were welcomed online: from all over the world, and maybe even from the International Space Station (or was that someone’s inspired alter ego?); lots of people who could not afford the time or money to attend before; and many disabilities proving far less of a deterrent than usual. The virtual queue had a chance to chat while waiting for events, with the invitation to “Say something nice”. Barnard Castle received a fair bit of publicity and may benefit from staycationers if lockdown is lifted further. The Ask a Question button allowed for audience participation. At least two speakers I heard were not physically in the UK – the technical support must have been amazing.

May 2021 beckons already. It seems probable that a digital element will continue, and an even better Hay Festival emerge. But I will look forward to enjoying warm Welsh hospitality; browsing in the many bookshops; walking along Offa’s Dyke, as it meanders in to England from time to time, Hay being a border town; and of course the company of real, live people.

Moyra Forrest, Starbank Road, Edinburgh

Ride to ignorance

When Robert Cormack (letters, 1 June) asks that cyclists be protected from motorists, one can easily understand why. The inequality between (say) a 4 x 4, or a bus and a person on a bicycle is clear to anyone. He is also quite right to say that pedestrians must be protected from cyclists. Indeed, I had been intending to write about my own experience towards the end of last week. I was walking along the south Balcarres Street close to Morningside Station with my wife and we stopped. Traffic at that time in the afternoon was light. I turned to point out a feature of the 19th-century block beside the Bank of Scotland building when my wife suddenly alerted me.

Without any warning and travelling at 15mph or more, a young, male cyclist whizzed past me on the pavement and continued thereafter on the wrong side of the road, heading towards Comiston Road. At no time did he sound a bell or call out to notify me of his approach. Had I been on my own, I would have been hurled with considerable force against one of the low, stone walls that surround the small, front gardens of the flats there.

I was quite shocked at anyone being such an idiot as to cycle at that speed on a pavement and give no warning of his approach. As a result, I did not call out as he sped away.

It is well past time cyclists were required to have number plates on their bikes as there are far too many who opt for the pavement and without any way of identifying them, they get away with it.

Andrew HN Gray, Craiglea Drive, Edinburgh

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