Hector’s house

I do wish Nicola Sturgeon would drop her hectoring virtue-signalling about coronovirus and get the economy restarted. The longer the lockdown continues, the deeper the recession will be. Ms Sturgeon seems to think that financial support from the UK government will continue indefinitely. It cannot. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has already transferred £9 billion in furlough money to Scotland and in addition £3.5bn in Barnett Formula consequentials, as well as the regular Barnett largesse which provides £1600 extra in public expenditure per Scot per year. But with England going

back to work with safe staff practices, social distancing and enhanced hygiene, why should Mr Sunak stump up more to allow the Scottish lockdown to be unecessarily extended?

It would appear that Ms Sturgeon has put herself in a position in which she personifies the Scottish Government, with

its other ministers distant or invisible. To her supporters in and out of the media she may have morphed into a Dear Leader, but to the business and commerce community she has become a fetter leading Scotland to mass unemployment. Not only that, but there are questions of individual liberty as well. Transmission

of Covid-19 outdoors is highly unlikely yet she has decreed that travel be restricted to five miles for leisure and recreation, and is prepared to legislate to that effect. Are we therefore heading for a police state with roadblocks and police checks? I have to agree with former Justice of the Chief Supreme Court Lord Sumption when he says “We have to ask ourselves what kind of relationship we want with the State. Do we really want to be the kind of society where basic freedoms are conditional on the decisions of politicians? Where human beings are just tools of public policy?” WILLIAM LONESKIE

Justice Park Oxton, Lauder

The First Minister’s threat to increase lockdown legislation if people “fail to do the right thing’” reeks of paternalism. We are already three weeks behind the rest of the UK with regard to the lockdown.

The Snp-led Scottish Government has lectured us for over a decade about our eating, smoking and drinking habits, to no avail for the most part. A bloated body of NGOS, third sector organisations and charities in Scotland is testament to this. Perhaps a revolutionary tactic of treating Scots like autonomous adults, responsible for their own actions and the negative consequences of said actions would be a better course during the lifting of lockdown.

Alternatively, target the endemic minority of feckless serial offenders, rather than the entire Scottish population.

DAVID BONE Hamilton Street, Girvan