Readers' Letters: Plan needed to avoid new pandemic carnage

While reflecting on the five years since the first Covid lockdown this week it’s also important to look forward and learn lessons. It was extraordinary knowing that people were told they “must stay at home” for an indeterminate time with little or no contact with the outside world. I remember that going to the supermarket was a release even if being tailed by a police car.

The Covid inquiry drags on and it seems little has been learnt since leaders and practitioners from the devolved nations gave evidence last year. It was concluded that a UK-wide approach would have been better even if devolved powers were somewhat limited anyway. We learned that rather than working together to save lives, Nicola Sturgeon’s special advisor or “thought-partner”, Liz Lloyd, would rather engineer an “old-fashioned rammy” with the Tories. Secretary of State Alister Jack was no better, largely leaving dealings with the SNP government to Treasury colleagues.

There was the mindless decision to move hospital patients to care homes without testing. Boris Johnson went on to break his own rules many times, while those following them were unable to attend funerals of loved ones or meet in care homes. Children were deprived of education and exams, even though cases fell to a trickle over the summer. A mental and public health crises ensues to this day.

Then first minister Nicola Sturgeon gives a Covid-19 press briefing at St Andrews House on March 27 2020 (Picture: Michael Schofield - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

This omnicrisis emanated from politicians getting in the way of senior clinicians leading a coalition of the experts. The unnecessary lockdowns, we learned, were led by political, not medical, advice and we were left to look on as countries like New Zealand were able to mix with crowds of 40,000 plus at sports events by closing their borders and quarantining. Instead, 220,000 in the UK died needlessly, and without a plan we may face such carnage again.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

EU, shoo!

Martin Roche makes a case for the UK to rejoin the EU (Perspective, 25 March). In so doing he ignores the punitive rejoining and extortionate annual membership fee a gleeful EU bureaucracy would impose upon us.

Also ignored is that an unreformed and unreconstituted EU will continue to have the very faults that caused us to leave in the first place; namely a total lack of democracy (not one of its five Presidents is elected by the people); the absurd Shengan agreement that permits the free movement of thousands and which accounts for most of the Channel’s “boat people” (ironically desperate to leave EU’s welcoming shores); and the steady erosion of national sovereignties in an attempt to create a United States of Europe.

The USA shows the problems of maintaining the unity of a nation that already has just one language, a shared culture, legal, economic and religious tradition. Europe proudly has none of these and vive la difference! A bas le EU!

Tim Flinn, Morningside, Edinburgh

Day of reckoning

Is it all over for SNP hype? (“Almost half of Scots back an end to free university tuition”, 24 March). Free tuition was a cornerstone of SNP policy along with generous welfare payments, actual and promised. Given the current crackdown on benefits at Westminster, the money coming to Scotland for the same will surely diminish. That leaves the SNP scrambling around for another source of income.

Could it be that tuition fees will be applied, but to the broadest shoulders only as usual, and could this be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Taxes cannot keep going up for middle class Scots while welfare payments rise too.

The day of reckoning for the SNP fast approaches.

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Democratic failure

I agree with Grant Frazer’s comment in his letter of 25 March about “a desire for freedom to decide Scotland’s future destiny”. I would add that there is also a desire for Scotland to become a full democracy for the first time in its history as a nation. Scotland cannot achieve this within the UK, which shows no sign of abolishing the House of Lords, its unelected second chamber that is essential to the passing of UK laws.

On 24 March the Lords had 25 non-sitting members and 831 sitting members. The House of Lords Library report of 5 September 2024 on “Second Chambers around the World” states the Lords’ membership is “higher than all other second chambers”, and is “the only upper house in the world that is larger than the lower house to which it is linked”. The Electoral Reform Society noted in a report of 10 December 2023 that the UK sticks with “a feudal combination of nobility and church and only the UK and Lesotho mix appointment and hereditary seats without any elected element.”

Have you ever voted in an election for the House of Lords? The answer is “no”. The constant claim that the UK is a democracy is untrue.

E Campbell, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

High potential

Grant Frazer is correct to rebuke those who would seek to misrepresent the pursuit of self-determination as “narrow nationalism” rather than a laudable desire to join together with other independent and truly democratic nations free to build their own international trading relationships.

Not one of the 65 countries that achieved independence from Britain has sought a return to UK governance. When the global financial crisis hit in 2008 tiny Iceland (population 393,000) not only weathered the economic storm but appropriately applied the law to jail fraudulent bankers.

Brexit, which Scots did not vote for, has not only stifled growth but is significantly damaging to Scotland. In spite of relatively huge, oil, gas, wind, wave and tidal resources, people in Scotland, as well as Scottish businesses, pay some of the highest energy prices in Europe when they should have the cheapest, fuelling faster economic growth and better public services.

While the UK wealth gap has widened to obscene levels, Westminster has racked up a record debt of £3 trillion, with associated interest of around £100 billion per year (Scotland’s “share” of the interest is equivalent to building 50 new dual-fuel ferries every year).

UK democracy is also broken, with the current Prime Minister having totalitarian control over Westminster from the votes of only 20 per cent of the electorate, an electoral system that has delivered prime ministers Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and could deliver Donald Trump’s puppet, Nigel Farage, as the next Prime Minister with the power to dictate a bleak future for most of Scotland’s people other than the wealthy.

While some have been critical of the Scottish Government producing the “Building a New Scotland” papers it seems clear that many would benefit from reading them and becoming better informed rather than persistently regurgitating simplistic soundbites which grossly underestimate the potential of the people of Scotland.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Sort out roads

Peter Heubeck of the Campaign for Borders Rail (Letters, 25 March) argues for better connectivity through extending the railway to Carlisle.

How about a campaign for the Borders roads, especially the A68, A7 and A697 cross border routes? While Amey and BEAR have made big improvements to the A68 and the A7 in recent years, much requires to be done, especially on the English side of the Border. The A7 from Longtown to the M6 has required resurfacing for years, while the roads from Carter Bar to Burtree Gate on the A1(M) and on the A696 to Ponteland are scandalous.

And as for the A697 from Carfrae Mill to where it joins the A1(M) near Morpeth, words fail me. It has more patches than Windows Vista, crumbling edges and a surface so coarse and noisy that ear defenders are advised to avoid labyrinthitis.

William Loneskie, Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire

Speak softly

We agree with Sharon Murray of Gillespie Macandrew that words matter when working out arrangements for parenting children after divorce or separation (Law, 24 March).

Our adversarial legal system embeds the language of conflict, of winner and loser, while insisting all the time that the “interests of the child are paramount”.

Our casework shows repeatedly that the slow pace of proceedings can often create new grievances that did not exist at the time of the separation. In the meantime relations between one parent – maybe both – and the children involved can be altered beyond repair.

Sharon's advice is good not only for professionals but for the parents themselves. We encourage the fathers, mothers, and grandparents who get in touch with us to use “BIFF” in communication between them.

BIFF is short for Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm. However hostile the text or e-mail you receive, you don't have to fire straight back. Choose to de-escalate. You will need to be a parent long after the case is over, the battle won or lost, and the solicitors have closed the file.

Kevin Kane, Chief Executive, Share Parenting Scotland, Edinburgh

Ball play

I would like to thank John V Lloyd for his letter in which he said Neil Lennon “took Hibs, languishing in the Championship, into the Premiership, Europe and left them one of the biggest clubs in Scotland” (Scotsman, 24 March).

In these dark and troubling times, we all could do with a jolly good laugh.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

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