Culture needs a fair chance to recover without further delay, says Brian Ferguson

At long last, the Scottish cultural sector has been given a glimmer of genuine hope, if not much more than that just yet.

The country’s festival and event organisers, theatres, concert halls, comedy clubs and cinemas have been promised they will finally be given news on how and when they may finally be able to come back to life.

Lockdown restrictions may have eased many weeks ago for other sectors of the economy, such as retail and hospitality, but for most of those working in live entertainment a return to any kind of normality has felt a long way off.

The Scottish Government has promised to tackle two of the biggest hurdles to recovery for the live entertainment sector next week, following four months of lobbying and campaigning from promoters, festival organisers, performers and venues.

It was back in March that the then culture secretary Fiona Hyslop declared that the government would be working to support the return of major events in Scotland over the summer, at a time when their prospects of returning from their hiatus looked remote.

When a reopening date of 17 May was later announced for venues, there was a fair assumption that live events would be reopening shortly after hotels, bars and restaurants were able to return in April.

However, during the pre-election period, the government imposed an absurd two metre social distancing restriction on live events, making them virtually impossible for all but a handful of heavily subsidised events and venues.

This would be hard enough to stomach were it not for the fact that operators of bars and restaurants secured permission to operate with one metre distancing last July, ahead of the initial reopening of the hospitality sector.

The opening of a vast beer garden in the guise of a football fanzone for up to 6,000 people on Glasgow Green after the event secured exemption from the city’s strict Covid rules has merely rubbed salt into the wounds of event organisers and venue operators who have spent months grappling with guidelines routinely described as impossible to work with.

An early June deadline for meeting a pre-election pledge to review these restrictions came and went, but First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has given the strongest indications yet that they will finally be eased in the near future.

In her latest Covid update at Holyrood, she acknowledged the frustrations over “perceived anomalies” and pledged that next week’s review would be of “particular interest” to the cultural sector.

At that point, she will also explain how Scotland will get to the point where it can “lift all, or virtually all, of the remaining restrictions.” This is expected to be the trigger for full-capacity events to return to stadia, concert venues and theatres in Scotland.

Intriguingly, the next big date for restrictions to ease in Scotland is 19 July, the same date Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been forced to work towards in the face of the new Covid variant.

Despite Ms Sturgeon’s famously cautious approach to the easing of restrictions, Scotland has never been that far behind England with its lockdown rules – except over live events.

Bringing them into line with the hospitality sector without any further delay after next week should be the first step to put them back on the road to recovery.

After weeks spent attempting to agree a "four nations approach” to hotel quarantine arrangements for international travellers arriving in the UK, the Scottish government decided to go it alone in making hotel quarantine mandatory for all arrivals at Scottish airports from 15 February. If the UK government had done the same for all arrivals at English airports, it is possible that the importation of the Delta (formerly “Indian”) variant could have been kept to minimal levels and we would not now be talking about a third wave of Covid-19.

When Pakistan and Bangladesh were added to the Red List on 9 April, India was not added in spite of the infection rate there already being out of control and deaths approaching 1,000 per day.

Apparently, according to UK government spokespersons, the fact that Boris Johnson was scheduled to fly to India to discuss a new trade agreement did not influence the decision.

From the start of this pandemic Boris Johnson and the UK government have been slow to act. Not only did he initially insist on not wearing a mask himself but nearly all restrictions have belatedly followed those imposed by the devolved governments, including the wearing of face masks.

While the Scottish government adhered to the triedand-tested approach of local/ manual contact tracing, the UK government committed to a “world-beating” app that turned out to be a complete flop.

When scientific advisers proposed a temporary lockdown in England last September, to avoid a second wave” of infections, that advice was ignored and the Alpha (formerly Kent) variant spread so rapidly that even more lives were lost across the UK than during the first wave.

We should not wait until 1922 before preparations for a comprehensive four nations public inquiry begin if we wish to avoid the devastating effects (health and economic) of perhaps vaccine-resistant fourth and fifth waves.

STAN GRODYNSKI Longniddry, East Lothian

Nicola Sturgeon announced a further delay to the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions in Scotland until at least the end of July.

Unbelievable, but [Sturgeon] will still let fans go to the football I don’t know why I bothered getting the vaccine.

Lynn Taylor Right decisions being made by the experts, not the government!

Andy Littlejohn

Just following her boss in Westminster!

Fiona A Sampson

Two deaths out of 5.5 million people and they’re still keeping restrictions, couldn’t make it up.

Martin Haldane Letting fans go to football has slowed our progress and punished the rest of us waiting for our freedom.

Lioslaith Rose Christmas is already cancelled, this stops when the people stand up and make it stop.

Neil Gow To all hysterical, gullible lemmings demanding forced masks, lockdowns, isolation and vaccination, well, here's the current global state of your so-called "deadly pandemic" according to the World Health Organisation: 3.69 million (alleged) deaths and 500 million infected, out of a global population of 7.9 billion. That is only 0.04% of the entire world's population, and it has a 99•9906% survival rate.

John Lords

Well, if Boris had shut the borders we would be like countries that did.

Doug Copley

Not the delta variant, it's now called the Johnson variant.

James Watt.

10 week delay is the rumour.

Stuart Cunninghame