Untenable position
When people living in flats with no gardens are asked to stay indoors on sunny days, the least they can expect is that the officials demanding their compliance live by the same rules. It is astonishing, then, to discover that Dr Catherine Calderwood, the Scottish chief medical officer, simply ignored them.
She drove from her home in Edinburgh to her holiday cottage by the coast, where she was seen out for walks with her family. Would that the rest of us were allowed such latitude. Dr Calderwood has been among the daily procession of officials telling everyone else that how they behave will determine the spread of the coronavirus.
What is equally astonishing is that anyone should consider that she should stay in post. Dr Calderwood is being protected by Nicola Sturgeon and others in the Scottish Government because her contribution is said to be critical to tackling the disease.
Yet she has wilfully disobeyed the very restrictions she placed on others. People from England were told in no uncertain terms that if they had second homes in Scotland they should not visit them. The people of Scotland, and the rest of the country for that matter, can no longer have any faith in Dr Calderwood’s judgment. She should go.
Her attitude must be especially galling to those who left their isolation – often spent in flats without gardens – to seek some sort of solace in the weekend sunshine. This was once again marred by heavy‑handed policing. The rules are that we can go out to work, to shop, to seek medical care and for exercise. It is this latter provision that is proving problematic.
Breaking up large gatherings is one thing and can be justified, but pouring water over the barbecue of a couple sitting in isolation on a beach is quite another. It is easy for those with private outdoor space or who live in the countryside with access to rural walks to impose demands on families stuck in high‑rise flats that they do not have to meet themselves.
If the Government’s understandable concern is to stop local green spaces becoming overcrowded then why not urge councils to devise ways whereby entry is staggered and monitored? If we are really “all in this together” then it is incumbent upon those imposing the controls to help people cope with them not merely adopt ever more draconian postures. Yet rather than find a way through this conundrum that everyone can live with, the response from officialdom is to threaten to close the parks.
That would be a mistake people will find hard to understand or forget.