We’re running out of patience with virus rules
Where do we go from here? As the headline on Peter Hitchens’s column last week said: ‘The dictators have taken over and we didn’t even notice.’ I believe
Boris Johnson’s hands have been tied by Messrs Hancock, Whitty and Vallance. He has been placed in an impossible situation but how can so few people make decisions that affect so many people?
People have been more than tolerant with all of the UK Government’s draconian actions but patience is wearing thin.
M. Barnes, Withernsea, East Yorkshire
A lockdown now will only result in a resurgence of coronavirus later, as has been repeatedly demonstrated. The virus is not going to be ‘defeated’ – we must learn to live with it. It may not be the last such threat to confront us and we cannot hide behind closed doors for ever. Let the vulnerable, of whom I am one, take responsibility and precautions as they feel are appropriate to their risk.
Eve Thacker, Fleet, Hampshire
It isn’t just Tories who were opposed to a second lockdown in England. I’m a Labour councillor and feel that such measures are blunt instruments that take no account of the impact on people’s livelihoods and their mental wellbeing.
Tim Mickleburgh, Grimsby
I live in what was a Tier 1 area and now find myself locked down with the rest of England. Why is the population in my area being punished for the idiots who didn’t follow the rules?
C. Rosenberg-Fox, Stevenage
Under First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s dictatorial ‘stewardship’ and during the course of this year, the SNP has presided over shambles after shambles. Her latest grandstanding that ‘the buck stops with me’ over Covid restrictions is nothing but hollow rhetoric. This was apparent when she was asked about her Government’s catastrophic policy of sending Covid-infected elderly patients from hospitals into care homes. Her reaction was to deflect responsibility for this to clinicians. Throw in the revelations around the Salmond inquiry, the exam results fiasco and student virus outbreaks, and it is apparent this minority administration wants responsibility for everything but will accept responsibility for nothing.
Eddie McNeill, Fauldhouse, West Lothian
The extension to March of the furlough scheme fills me with dread, though I understand the hardships that would result from mass redundancies following its cessation. My concern is that a large proportion of our working population is now getting used to being paid for not working. Anyone who remembers the malpractices of the 1970s will know it does not take much for many people to down tools. One flight I know about in August from Romania to the UK was almost entirely filled with fruit-pickers destined for UK farms. Could these jobs not have been done by our own out-of-work personnel?
John Stephen, Dyce, Aberdeen