Johnson could take lesson from Sturgeon – Letters

First Minister gets it right on Covid-19 battle, says reader
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (Picture: Fraser Bremner - WPA Pool/Getty Images)Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (Picture: Fraser Bremner - WPA Pool/Getty Images)
Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (Picture: Fraser Bremner - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

It’s official. England’s Covid-19 toll is five times that of Scotland.

One reason, apparently, is that Boris Johnson is a libertarian. He bristles at the thought of imposing things on people. Where possible he trusts people’s common sense.

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A very old friend in Carlisle told us she was laughed at for wearing face masks in shops. She stopped wearing them. Michael Gove tells us that wearing masks is the polite thing to do.

But what if common sense tells people it’s impolite? Then can you trust common sense? Were businesses in Leicester which continued with sweated labour during the height of the pandemic showing common sense?

Nicola Sturgeon has worked hard to remove all trace of ambiguity in her approach. She deserves our high esteem. Some voters think that despite Boris Johnson’s failings as a pandemic manager he is still better than others for managing the economy.

This is wishful thinking. Indecisive leadership which risks a second shutdown threatens the economy as well. The indecisive tend to be all rounders – good or bad at everything, because everything is connected.

Andrew Vass, Corbiehill Place, Edinburgh

Belt up, protesters

For those of a certain vintage, the arguments of those opposed to wearing face coverings during the coronavirus pandemic are eerily similar to the comments of those opposed to the compulsory wearing of seat belts when that was implemented all those years ago. I was one of them.

Looking back now, I realise how idiotic my complaints were. Untold thousands of lives have been saved.

Much the same will be the case, I am certain, with face masks.

Alexander McKay, New Cut Rigg, Edinburgh

Confusion for sale

I am at odds with what is happening regarding the instruction that face coverings are required to be worn when in a shop. Over the weekend I went to two separate supermarkets. At the first a customer in the queue was refused entry as they did not have a face mask. This customer was understanding and left.

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At the second supermarket I saw four customers in the store who were not wearing face coverings.

I queried with a member of staff as to why they were allowed in the store. He said that they may be “exempt”. He could not tell me what constituted an exemption but said staff had been instructed not to question customers as to why they were not wearing a mask.

It makes the directive to wear a mask in a shop not worth the paper it is written on if, in a hypothetical situation, all of the customers attending this store could enter without a mask.

There must be some instruction as to the policing of this directive.

Peter G Farquhar, Mayshade Road, Loanhead, Edinburgh

Safe dentistry

Your front-page article on the current issues in dentistry in Scotland yesterday (“Covid disarray threatens a dental health disaster”) identifies one of the causes of the slow return to normal practice being the lack of personal protection equipment (PPE) for Aerosol Generating Procedures (fillings, crowns, root canals, some hygiene procedures).

Dentists are currently required to wear PPE to a standard that is the same as that used in intensive care units where patients are suffering from Covid-19 – at a time when the risk of meeting someone who has Covid-19 is low and getting lower.

This risk could be reduced to almost zero by testing dental staff regularly and testing patients the day before an aerosol-generating procedure – there is excess capacity in the testing system at the moment. Infection control in non-Covid dental practice is already of a very high standard and normal dentistry should now be resumed.

This would allow patients immediate access to a dentist and prevent a number of dental practices from going out of business and closing. Plans could be made for moving to the higher standard PPE if numbers increase again and the risk level changes.

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The present route map for dentistry is moving a public health emergency into a new public health crisis for dental health and urgent steps need to be taken to ease the regulations as a matter of urgency.

(Dr) Drew Smart, Muirs, Kinross

Short-term lets

The headline of Saturday’s editorial “Time to regulate short-term lets” expresses a view that many people would agree with. However, the accompanying text states that only one in 477 short-term lets have the proper planning permission, perpetuating the notion that planning permission is actually required.

The Scottish Government website Short-Term Lets: Consultation, 28 April, 2019 states that planning permission may be required (not “is required”) and that there is no definition of what constitutes a material change of use from residential to short-term letting.

That only one in 477 holiday lets have been granted a change of use should therefore come as a surprise to only the most naive.

The government consultation resulted in a decision to allow local authorities to implement a licencing scheme for short-term lets from spring 2021.

To imply that 476 out of 477 short-term lets are operating illegally is at best disingenuous.

Malcolm Stewart, Bath Street, Edinburgh

Parking plot?

Edinburgh Council has a great new plan to virtually wipe out short-term parking in Bruntsfield Place, Morningside Road, Easter Road and a whole raft of other busy shopping streets in the city.

At the very time when businesses are closing regularly – just look at the To Let signs in the affected streets – and shops are struggling to keep going, the council wants to narrow the streets and restrict parking. Shoppers in these areas will not be able to park and businesses will take another hit on their ability to keep going.

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Yet more shopping parades will have shops and offices sitting empty.

It’s frankly rare for me to concede that Glasgow has a better solution – but it clearly does. Buchanan Street and other main shopping streets are about to have one-way pavements with signage showing pedestrians in which direction to travel. This is effective, inexpensive and quick. It works in Cardiff already and it could and should be working here in Edinburgh.

Perhaps Edinburgh Council has an ulterior motive – an “emergency” plan railroaded through in double-quick time without proper consideration and scrutiny by councillors.

Less short -term parking and narrowed lanes for cars and delivery vehicles penalises businesses and their customers; it produces significantly increased congestion on the road and – surprise – a shot in the arm for the council’s aspirational congestion charging scheme.

So I say no to Edinburgh Council’s wholesale suspension of parking spaces on our busy, essential shopping streets and suburbs in the plan.

They should take a leaf out of Glasgow’s plan instead.

Alasdair Seale, MD, Trinity Factors, Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh

Change of focus

William Loneskie (Letters, 11 July) suspects that the upper echelons of the SNP, having looked again at the economic case for independence based on the Growth Commission report, have shuddered at the anticipated austerity and “taken a sensible step back”.

I think he’s right, and this may be the reason for a supposed change of focus recommended by Ian Black, convener of the Scottish Independence Commission.

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“It is misguided to assume,” he tells us, “that if people would look at the facts rationally, they would conclude that Scotland should become independent”.

Thoughtful and rational thinking is “hard, takes lots of energy, and often leads to confusion”. Seemingly of the opinion that the Scottish people are not up to this, he suggests, therefore, that nationalists should instead use “more stories and feelgood messages and less facts”!

I said “supposed” change of focus since in the eyes of many that is exactly what the SNP have done all along. So it is not the statement which is surprising but the source. But at least now it’s official. And that’s a fact.

Colon Hamilton, Braid Hills Avenue, Edinburgh

Monetary theory

Mary Thomas seems to be familiar with Modern Monetary Theory (Letters, 13 July) when she states that under MMT, a Scottish government with its own central bank issuing a Scottish currency doesn’t have to raise taxes before they can spend on the NHS, education, massive housebuilding, green energy projects, R&D, transport infrastructure, etc.

The bit she misses out is that the SNP Government does not want monetary independence. It wants to join the EU and the price of that would be to accept the euro, which Gordon Brown rightly rejected.

They want to discard a 300-year old Union to become a minor part of the European project, taking orders from the Commission, which of course would have monetary sovereignty.

Crawford Mackie, Keith Row, Edinburgh

Politicians’ lies

In his column about politicians’ honesty and openness, Brian Monteith (Perspective, 13 July) made the astonishing understatement that “the possibility that we have also knowingly been told lies by politicians is also likely”.

A few years ago he did not comment upon the deluge of dishonesty which preceded the Brexit vote so, in view of that campaign’s success, he must not be surprised if other politicians adopt the same approach.

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His final comment is, however, applicable in many contexts: “We need to identify the real successes – and failures, but most of all we need to be prepared to do it again but differently.”

(Dr) P M Dryburgh, Falcon Avenue, Edinburgh

Write to The Scotsman

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