Will our world-famous friendliness survive trend for ‘No cold calling’ notices?

I am seriously disturbed to find that “No cold calling” notices have been erected at the roadside entrances to a Scottish Borders village; that “the scheme runs in conjunction with Police Scotland who are ardent supporters”; and that a door-to-door consultation resulted in almost 100 per cent approval.

Now, I do greatly appreciate the determination of the local Community Council to do something to prevent even one more vulnerable resident from being defrauded by bogus workmen, and also to protect young mothers with children. But to warn off the passing general public is to abandon our ideal of being warm, welcoming communities and is surely one of those well-intended changes that will lead to damaging, unexpected consequences.

It has been put to me that “No Cold Calling” notices are being erected elsewhere and that this practice may become the norm. Can this be the case? Is fearfulness of strangers becoming a trend that will change Scottish social customs for the worse? Satirist Armando Iannucci has recently expressed disappointment that people nowadays are diminishing their lives by avoiding engagement with others whose views they might be uncomfortable with, while a report about depressive illness and suicide among farmers suggests as a reason that they work on their own, without the company of labourers and community excitement of harvest celebrations that were once the norm.

Knowing I am a retired parish minister, someone tried to reassure me by saying this “No Cold Calling” scheme would not interfere with “pastoral visitation” and that the village would be alerted when Christian Aid Week was due. But the fact is that many of the most welcome and warm door-todoor visits I made over decades to all sorts and conditions of people in Edinburgh, Dundee and Leith began with a “cold call”. Whither Scotland now? Here is a contrast. When the traditional nomadic life of a Bedouin group in far from risk-free Jordan proved definitely unsustainable and the government built houses for them to settle in, the new residents insisted that a huge coffee pot be erected in the central square so as to make sure strangers knew that although they had had to abandon their black tents they had not departed from their traditions of welcome and hospitality.

(REV) JACK KELLET Dyers Close, Innerleithen