Be patient, we’re almost there...
NICOLA Sturgeon always said decisions on lockdown will be driven by data not dates.
Boris Johnson said the same except he issued a slew of potential diary appointments for the end of lockdown in England which raised expectations that Scotland should do the same.
The First Minister responded yesterday with some definite dates and offered something more than amber traffic lights on the road out of lockdown.
Some people will go along with Sturgeon’s instinctive caution which has been the hallmark of her response to the pandemic.
Others, particularly the hospitality industry, will be desperate for the limitations to be lifted.
Can it be fair that drinkers in England can start sipping outside pubs on April 12, a full fortnight before Scotland?
No more fair than Scots having their locks chopped by qualified hairdressers a week before people in England can have their roots tinted the right shade.
The differences have to be tolerated and, having come this far, the impatience of drouthy drinkers and publicans has to be borne.
The April 26 seems a long way off for businesses with overheads bearing down on them but having dated signposts on the road out of lockdown is a good move.
It makes us believe in the possibility, as Sturgeon said, that brighter days are ahead of us.
A TEENAGER fell victim to the sick “swatting” craze after a hoaxer told cops the boy planned to carry out a mass shooting in Edinburgh.
The 17-year-old, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was identified to officers in the Midlands as a would-be gunman. Police Scotland were notified about the threat and sent police to the schoolboy’s East Lothian home.
“Swatting” involves making a hoax report of serious criminality – often a murder or hostage situation – to trigger an emergency response at a victim’s home.
The term is derived from Special Weapons and Tactics teams in the US.
The teenager ended up at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday in the wake of the callous prank. The court heard he’d been targeted by swatting on several other occasions, each time producing a police response to his door.
Fiscal depute Callum Thomson told how the teen became “aggressive” at the latest incident and threw a bottle of bleach towards an officer’s head.
Defence agent Chelsea Martin said the pranks had been “very distressing” for the teen and his family. Sheriff John Cook deferred sentence until next month.