Funny findings

There is something perplexing and deeply worrying about the findings of the Yougov poll published this weekend:

How well did the Government prepare for the pandemic? Well – 22 per cent. Badly – 67 per cent. Was the timing of the lockdown right? About right – 29 per cent. Too late – 62 per cent.

Yet in the same poll: How well is the government handling the outbreak? Well – 61 per cent. Badly – 33 per cent. Who would you trust more to lead Britain through the outbreak? Boris Johnston – 48 per cent. Keir Starmer –19 per cent.

Clearly, the government’s propaganda machine has worked miracles in persuading the public the crisis is not largely of successive Conservative governments’ making.

Yet blame clearly rests with Boris Johnson and before him Theresa May. Their decisions against similar preparations to South Korea, Germany and Belgium, along with years of cuts to National Health Service budgets necessitated a strategy aimed not at beating the virus but protecting our overstretched hospitals.

The poll also demonstrates that Sir Keir Starmer has failed to lay a glove on Boris Johnson and, of course, unbelievably in this time of crisis, the Lib Dems don’t actually have a leader.

KIT FRASER Belhaven High Street, Dunbar

So proud of Hyndland Secondary School, my alma mater, and their scrubs hub volunteers (“Scots NHS staff gifted ‘funky’ new scrubs”, Page One, 2 May). The scrubs look amazing!

ALISTAIR ALLAN Drymen Road, Bearsden