Right decisions

It is interesting that those who seem impatient to end the current lockdown in Scotland, either out of genuine frustration or out of a compulsion to impose their own political agendas on events, seek to portray the First Minister as being out of step, not the Prime Minister who is acting differently from all three leaders of the devolved governments.

According to Bill Jamieson (Column, 14 May) “searching questions are being asked as to why First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has insisted on a separate regime”. Such a comment not only infers that he has spent too much time listening to Jackson Carlaw and/ or his ‘mates’ but that he has not been looking at the charts presented at the UK Government’s coronavirus briefing.

Even a cursory examination would reveal that while London has clearly past a significant peak of people in hospital with Covid-19, there have not been comparable peaks in admissions in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

Certainly any objective analysis would not conclude that recent slightly downward national trends in the associated statistics provide confidence for changing lockdown rules in step with London and England.

At the start of the pandemic a key objective of the UK government, as echoed repeatedly by Matt Hancock, was to “flatten the curve”. The fact that the First Ministers of the devolved nations have had more success in achieving this than the ‘First Minister of England’ should not be used as an ‘excuse’’ to bring their demonstrably justifiable decisions into question.

STAN GRODYNSKI Gosford Road, Longniddry