Greatest gift Poor show

It was good to read in your report (November 19) that the First Minister says she is at last going to “treat people like grown-ups” over Christmas.

I hope she makes this change in attitude a one - off gift to a grateful nation and quickly starts to treat us like children again before the New Year celebrations get underway. Despite the clear medical risks, getting to be with family or allowing those on their own to see a friend at Christmas is probably a necessity for our mental health. But given our culture of excessive drinking at Hogmanay there is no justification for taking additional risks over the New Year.

ALAN BLACK Camus Avenue, Edinburgh

An opinion poll yesterday suggests that significantly more S cots think Nicola Sturgeon has handled the Covid pandemic better than Boris Johnson. It is a pit y that the p oll did not ask about Nicola Sturgeon’s performance compared with those of similarly sized European countries of 5 million. Sadly, Scotland’ s death rate from Covid is significantly higher than four Europe - an countries with such popu l at ions,ie Denmark, Finland, Slovakia and Nor way. Indeed, Scotland’s death rate is 10 times worse than Norway. With Scotland’ s geography and population density, Scotland should at least be doing as well as these countries but it has contrived to do worse, eg by sending elderly people, sick with Covid, back to care homes.

The myth about Ni cola Sturgeon’ s C ovid performance needs to be exposed. Failure to do so will assuredly add to S cots’ mistaken belief that it would be better if Scotland were independent from the rest of the UK.

TIM JACKSON Whim Road, Gullane, East Lothian