Charlatans

Only someone with an inbuilt, deeply held and utterly unreasonable prejudice against Boris Johnson could ever come up with the sort of diatribe launched by Stan Grodynski (Letters, 2 May). While the rest of the population saw a man who was earnestly talking about dealing with Covid-19 with caution to save lives, and thanking the NHS for saving his own life, Mr Grodynski sees a “self-serving charlatan”.

Having the great benefit of the retrospectoscope, Mr Grodynski knows everything that should have been done in advance to deal with Covid-19 before we knew it existed, or what its effects would be. What a genius! If he was so well able to say how the government should have prepared, why was he not writing letters outlining exactly what they should have done in advance himself?

A plague that hits us could be of any kind, from a smallpox, or ebola outbreak to an avian flu, or Sars, which have already been dealt with, in case he hadn’t noticed.

His argument is impenetrable, as he wants preparations to be made, which costs money, but almost immediately attacks the Government spending it, because it is “our money”.

Perhaps he should ask Holyroodtospendsomeofthe£450 million of “our money” the SNP have already been given by the Government to spend north of the Border, but which is sitting in the bank, plus the £155m Westminster have added to that vast cash-mountain for local government spending,

which they are also sitting on?

If he wants to talk about charlatans, we have a number of them at Holyrood who also have the gall to tell us how to live our lives.

PETER HOPKINS Morningside Road, Edinburgh