HOW petty can you get?
When Scotland’s Test and Protect proximity tracing app was released a few weeks ago, Unionist politicians lined up to put aside political point-scoring and promoted the new tech.
Scottish Tories, Labour and LibDems were united in sharing information about the software, explaining it was quick and easy to set up.
The app, which has now been downloaded more than one million times, will alert you if you have been in close contact with another app user who tests positive for coronavirus and can help in determining contacts that you may have otherwise missed.
READ MORE: Coronavirus Scotland app launched: What is it and how does it work?
It will do the same for others if you test positive while keeping your information private and anonymous.
But all of this just isn’t good enough for the most vociferous of Twitter Unionists.
The UK Government has now launched a contact-tracing app for England and Wales, after months of delay, which does pretty much the same thing.
So instead of downloading the Scottish app and helping the Scottish Test and Protect service understand more about the virus – Unionists are boasting that they’re instead logging into the English version, forging false postcodes in the process.
One user complained that because of travel they would need to download both apps. Another replied: “We’re all paying for a watered down duplicate damaging parliament.
“If there’s another indyref loss for them I suggest we close down Holyrood and go back to the way it was.”
Steady on! You had to spend an extra two minutes downloading an app to protect those around you on cross-Border public transport? Closing down the Scottish Parliament is obviously a logical solution for that.
Other users posted that they had tried to download the English app but it wouldn’t accept their Scottish postcode. They were advised by another account to supply a fake English one – which could disrupt data within the app.
Remember: Whether you’re a Unionist or an independence supporter you can download the Test and Protect app from protect.scot and help keep your fellow Scots safe.
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Callum Baird, Editor of The National
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