The stupid lockdown must not be repeated

BORIS Johnson says he is now hoping that he does not need to impose another national lockdown. Is he trying to kid himself, us, or both? There will definitely not be another national lockdown – because it would bankrupt the UK, and everybody who is not panicked senseless by the doom-mongering collusion of media and Government, knows it.

Indeed, National Lockdown 1 was a massive exercise in stupidity, driven by politicians gullibly panicking when they realised that their initial inaction regarding the coronavirus entering the UK was potentially disastrous, and only compounding this panic by taking from the choices offered by their expert advisors, obviously nonsensical predictions of the apocalypse which had no chance of happening.

They should have just had us do what we’re doing now with social distancing and enhanced hygiene.

National Lockdown 2? What a joke.

Philip Adams, Crosslee.

I FEEL for those who complain about numbers presently permitted for funeral. As a Church of Scotland minister I cannot understand the reasoning behind the different regulations.

All services of worship take place to give glory to God in prayer and praise, whatever the circumstances. In that respect there is no difference between what takes place on a Sunday and what takes place at any other time. And yet at a service of public worship on a Sunday 50 members are permitted to attend, while a service of public worship where members give thanks for the life of another parishioner is limited to 20.

So far, neither the Scottish Government nor the Church of Scotland has given me a reason, theological, scientific or practical why these different limits are in place for church services.

Rev Catherine Collins, Dundee DD5.

IN your front-page lead article (“Unsafe masks destroyed after falling apart on doctors’ faces”, The Herald, July 21), it should be stated more clearly that these defective masks originated from a UK PPE stockpile, handled by Medline, based in the US state of Illinois and in the English West Midlands, that had been allowed to expire. The 2021 expiry date stickers covering earlier ones were added in the warehouses in England, by staff employed by a US company profiting from the supply of expired PPE equipment, before they were dispatched to frontline doctors in Scotland. There was no Scottish entity that re-labelled the PPE. This was a Uk-wide scheme that failed to protect frontline healthcare workers. Leah Gunn Barrett,

Edinburgh EH10.

WE have reached a dangerous juncture in the battle with Covid19. The outcome of this battle will determine whether we endure another lockdown, which would have dire consequences for the recovery of our hospitality and many other sectors of our economy which are dependent on safe personal contact.

These sectors are precisely the ones which provide employment for many of our young people and they would suffer disproportionately the economic consequences of a rollback of the present freedoms or another lockdown. Yet this same demographic sector, which has the most to lose economically, is putting at risk the containment or eradication of the disease and the health of their families and friends, by their hedonistic behaviour. This must be the message we get across to them.

James Beckett, Renfrewshire.