Readers' letters: Sturgeon’s Covid debacles surpassed only by Johnson

I completely agree with John McLellan (Scotsman, 31 October) describing how the SNP government mismanaged the Covid pandemic, in particular its decision to release thousands of hospital patients like his father into care homes without widespread testing, with devastating results. This is precisely why the Covid Inquiry needs all the detailed evidence available. It’s a disgrace that messages promised by Ms Sturgeon have conveniently been erased including it seems her own. Prof Jason Leitch, for example, must release his diary and others primary evidence demonstrating how and why decisions were made.

Governmental use of WhatsApp messaging continues to be controversial on both sides of the Border (Picture: stock.adobe.com)

The Tory administration in Westminster was at least as profligate and panic-stricken at the beginning of the pandemic. It appears that Mr Johnson’s wife was more decisive than the “flip flopping” of husband Boris, as chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance described him, leading to Civil Service supremo Simon Case suggesting it was Carrie Johnson that was really running the country. Mr Vallance’s diary reveals that Mr Johnson was willing to let old people contract the virus and by implication risk death to protect the young and the economy. If proven he must face justice.

In Scotland Douglas Ross was as much concerned about the exposure the SNP enjoyed through daily news conferences than he was in challenging SNP mistakes like the care home fiasco, failure to mitigate the spread of the most deadly delta variant and the lack of PPE before it was too late.

In seeking to learn lessons, the Scottish Government owes the Inquiry and victims whose loved ones died, like Mr McLellan, the full evidence. Failure to do so is the biggest dereliction of duty of any government.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Document facts

It is the job of the media to inform public debate, not simply inflame it), particularly when doing so toys with the feelings of those already traumatised by the many awful outcomes of the pandemic. When covering rows about document discovery (as lawyers call it) it would help when reporting to keep in mind the basics:

All large organisations, in order to get a handle on the millions (billions, often) of messages they generate, have document retention policies that allow for the routine deletion of messages. That would include the Scottish Government and the company that owns this newspaper.

Everyone has a right to delete messages, including politicians and government officials, unless there is a law expressly forbidding it. We all do it. Our inboxes would be out of control if we did not.

Timing is everything. Deletion after (or in anticipation of) a do-not-destroy notice is inherently nefarious. Beforehand, not so much.

Adam Oyebanji, Edinburgh

Time to apologise

Rather than throwing mud around and hoping some will stick, opposition MSPs should be apologising for insisting that Nicola Sturgeon and Jeane Freeman followed Boris Johnson’s Covid strategy which was prepared to let the elderly die and let Covid run riot through the population. It was UK Public Health advice to move people from hospitals into care homes, provided they had suitable safety measures in place.

The UK Covid inquiry has revealed that the Tory Government disrespected the devolved administrations and felt they couldn’t tell the truth at joint meetings and it turns out that Nicola Sturgeon prompted Boris Johnson into a lockdown earlier than he intended.

As an island, the UK should have closed its borders in early February 2020 and had Scotland been independent, we can safely assume Nicola Sturgeon would have done so. It was only after the Scottish Government diverged from the dysfunctional UK Covid strategy that we got on top of the pandemic and ended up with fever deaths, fewer Covid cases and fewer care home deaths per of population than in England or Wales.

The Scottish Government did not use WhatsApp for Covid-making decisions and messages deemed to be specifically created in order to conduct government business were uploaded to the eRDM (Electronic Records and Doc Management System), 13,000 of these were supplied to the UK inquiry, which only requested additional WhatsApp messages in September 2023.

Fraser Grant, Edinburgh

Transparency

Nicola Sturgeon claims she is “committed to full transparency” with the Covid inquiries. She then immediately refuses to say whether she has deleted WhatsApp messages. Then she asserts that she did not use WhatsApp to manage Covid and was not a member of any WhatsApp group (Scotsman, November 1). I am wondering if I am reading Alice in Wonderland! If she did not use WhatsApp in relation to Covid then she could not have deleted any messages, so why doesn't she just say that?

The claim to a “commitment to full transparency” has worn so thin it is threadbare. On the same day a report from a conference in Glasgow states that the SNP government took nine months to allow access to patient records needed to analyse Covid. Professor Andrew Morris, former chair of the Scottish Government Covid advisory group, said that the slow access to data “prevented life-saving research and decision-making”. On the previous day an OECD report stated that, apart from Romania, Scotland was the only one of the 50 participating countries to refuse to publish results of centralised exams. So much for judging Nicola Sturgeon on her “transparency.

Colin Hamilton, Edinburgh

Political showers

After the appalling revelations about the behaviour of our leaders in Edinburgh and London during the Covid crisis, I am minded (especially in this climate) to paraphrase the unforgettable words of the late great Terry-Thomas: “What a shower – what an absolute shower.”

Rodney Pinder, Kelso, Scottish Borders

Wilderness years

You have to love Marjorie Ellis Thompson’s enthusiasm for, loyalty to and delusional view of Alba (Letters, 1 November).

Anyone who watched Ash Regan’s inaugural speech at its recent conference could appreciate how uplifting it was for the couple of hundred people in the “packed hall”. But Conor Matchett was on the button (Scotsman, 31 October) with his judgment that, in political and parliamentary terms, Alba is going nowhere.

Its “Scotland United” attempt to engineer some kind of separatist electoral pact is utterly doomed. Why would the SNP ally with renegades? Alba may have parliamentary representation at both Holyrood and Westminster now, but that is only because the relevant representatives were elected as SNP MPs/MSP. Without the – albeit now depleted – SNP machine behind them, neither Neale Hanvey nor Kenny MacAskill has a chance of retaining their seat at Westminster next year, and the same will apply to Ash Regan at the 2026 Holyrood election. It may be that the other parliamentary Alba sympathiser, Angus MacNeil, independent MP, will have enough of a personal following in the Western Isles to retain his seat, but his splitting of the nationalist vote suggests otherwise.

Good try, Ms Thompson! But in a couple of years or so Alba will have no parliamentary representation and will be stranded in the wilderness.

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Cranks anonymous

Ash Regan has boasted to anyone who'll listen that her new besties Alba have much more diversity than most parties.

So has the Official Monster Raving Loony Party, and for much the same reason. When beggers can’t be chosers, you’ve got t0 take in every crank, chancer, carpetbagger, has-been and never-will be intown. Just ask the Greens.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

Avoiding scams

In all his advice as to how to avoid scams (Scotsman, 28 October), Martyn James, like other advisers, omits to mention that telephone scams can easily be stopped by the use of a call blocker.

We have one on our landline and are never bothered by scams as only numbers on our pass list get through. Scam calls may be tried but they must be put off by the interrogation they get. A genuine caller who is not on the list, only has to say who they are for us to let them through. I believe that a call blocker can also be added to a mobile phone.

One of us banks online but only has a basic mobile. Theother has a smartphone but never conducts banking with it. We live a scam-free life.

Steuart Campbell, Edinburgh

Carbon capture

Elizabeth Tweedie says “Carbon capture can be net zero game-changer” (Scotsman, 30 October). She would, wouldn't she since she is employed in the lucrative climate industry.

There are only 18 direct air capture (DAC) plants in the world which remove carbon from the air and store it underground, capturing less than 10,000 tons of CO2 a year – about the carbon footprint of just a few hundred people. There are eight billion people on the planet so do the sums for how many DAC plants would be needed for say four billion. Why not just buy up all the fizzy drinks that are manufactured using CO2 and store them underground? Silly idea? Yes I agreem but so is spending £trillions on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) when countries responsible for 80 per cent of greenhouse gases are not interested in CCS or reducing their emissions and are still ramping up their consumption of fossil fuels.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

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