AT the beginning of March, I came to Catania in Sicily with financial help from my Highland community to improve my Italian. On March 11 Italy almost at a stroke went into lockdown. My language school was shut and for three weeks now there has been no al fresco coffee, no shopping, no eating out, no jogging in the park. I went into two weeks’ “auto-isolation”. It finished last Tuesday. Last Wednesday I had a fight from here back to the UK, “a flight to get home”, but I did not take it for five reasons.

The first is that almost everyone in my Highland village is over 60 and therefore more vulnerable. The second is that the flight was via Heathrow – my better half is a GP in London and she sees the real inside track there daily. The third is that my onward flight from London to Inverness had been cancelled and I would have had to take the train/bus, possibly polluting everyone en route. The fourth is that, in contrast to here, I am watching the Westminster government make a complete Horlicks of handling this virus. And the fifth is that the UK press is peddling platitude not fact.

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The facts are that this country has been hit by the virus like no other. But it is not equal Italy-wide. Lombardy has two-thirds of the cases and deaths. It has been devastated. But, partly, for internal political reasons and not least to stop southern Italians working in the north going back to mama, the national government decided and very quickly to shut down the whole country. 

Moreover, in addition the Sicilian Government decided effectively to shut its border, the Straits of Messina, to the rest of Italy. From Catania there is one train and one flight per day. Neither can be taken without a mask and police authorisation. They both go to Rome and that is it. We are almost completely sealed in. I am safe here.

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And the result is that Sicily, three weeks further along the virus timeline, with a population the same as Scotland’s, yesterday had 894 cases, a few more than you at home but exactly the same number of deaths, 33. Moreover, it seems likely that next week this will change. Scotland will begin to overtake Sicily and by some margin, with the reason being lack of action now. To try to keep numbers down Scotland needs to take its own measures and cut all but minimal links externally with the UK’s Lombardy, London, and, internally even with Scotland’s own Lombardy, Lanarkshire and Glasgow. That should also mean, like Sicily, controlling the border.

And now I turn to financial issues. I am an economist by training and the Westminster financial response has been based on neoliberal, not Scottish mutual thinking. Instead of the complicated arrangements proposed this week, which seem more concerned with cost than cover, Scotland should be following the Irish model – and not just as of yesterday on lockdown. It is about taking care of all its own. We now have a separate tax system and all Scots, ie all those choosing to live and work north of the border, should through it and National Insurance numbers and HMRC accounts therein be paid a weekly allowance per person by bank transfer or cheque back-dated to the beginning of March, for as long as it takes and without the complication of who is deemed to deserve it or not. I suggest £500, eventually taxable.

In addition it is now time for banks to make their contributions. In 2008 we dug them out of a hole and have continued to pay for it ever since. Bank customers need to know that they will not run out of money. The interest rates on all loans, mortgages, credit cards and agreed overdrafts should be reduced to zero. The banks’ money-men might not like it, but it now should be pay-back time. And just think of the PR for banks that really do “care and share”.

Ian Campbell Whittle
Polbain/Catania

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