I AM baffled about the many ridiculous reasons why people are reluctant to take the Covid vaccine. It would be easy to say that for most people the reluctance is based on ignorance of the facts.
However, the people who astonish me the most are the healthcare workers, who you would think would have no doubts about the efficacy of the vaccines.
This week, I heard about one nurse from Dundee who refuses the vaccine because she is allergic to kiwi fruit. To make matters worse, her daughter, who works in a care home, refuses the vaccine because she claims to be allergic to bananas.
Both of these reasons, to my mind, are plain stupid.
It does raise the serious question, though, as to why healthcare workers are permitted to refuse the vaccine and then continue to have contact with patients.
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I have heard the argument that being forced to take the vaccine goes against people’s rights. How about patients in hospitals and care homes who should have the right not to have the virus spread by unvaccinated staff? It perhaps sheds light on why so many elderly people died in care homes when so many care home staff will not take sensible precautions.
I believe that for all healthcare workers, vaccines should be a precondition of employment.
I am 72 years of age and am very happy to have had both of my vaccines. Following both injections I had vague flu-like symptoms for two or three days but that was no big deal. Rather the vaccine than getting Covid and ending up on a slab.
Harry Key
Largoward
I WAS lucky enough (in these stressed times) to have been in Woodend Hospital in Aberdeen to get a right knee replacement. May I say our NHS is second to none from the surgeons, nurses, physios, catering staff, cleaners, trainees and anyone else I have missed. I am sure these wonderful people and all of Scotland would have a great future being a independent country.
The road would not be easy but in my heart I am sure it would be better than being ruled from people at Westminster.
Why are they so desperate not to give us a vote referendum, if we are that bad (as they say) why try to keep us!!!!
Scots are loved around the world, a lot more than I can say about another nationality.
Graham Penny
Aberdeen
IAIN Forde’s letter (May 2) was most interesting in regard to Hamish MacPherson correcting “bias that has arisen from Scottish history until recently being seen through an English lens”. Most unfortunately he then, however, proceeds to promulgate absolute and unresearched bias to malign
St Margaret for “Romanising the Catholic Church”!
This blatant, post-reformation revisionist history has persisted, although challenged by historians with a more forensic approach to the subject. There is an excellent book on this important issue by Malcolm V Hay, A Chain of Error in Scottish History, which I have in my possession. Also a book by a Presbyterian minister, The Celtic Church and the See of Rome.
Both completely and extensively debunk the myth of the so-called “Celtic Church” not being in full communion and obedience to Rome, as the following quote adequately illustrates to the less jaundiced reader: “It should be obvious to the reader that ‘Rome’ would not confer sainthood upon schismatic heretics!
“There were minor differences in practice, over the years, such as the ‘tonsure’ and the date of Easter, but in all matters of faith and doctrine the Celtic saints held true to Rome’s authority in spiritual matters and had not need to be ‘Romanised’.”
James Cameron Stuart
Falkirk
IT is difficult to comment on Derrick McClure’s authoritative and lucid letter on St Margaret (May 3) without it sounding like a quotation from “1066 And All That”, the cheerfully illustrated and unauthoritative history book.
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My source said that subsequent to Margaret’s death in 1093: “The claimants all ruled in turn – Donald Ban was proclaimed King by the Highland law of Tanistry, but Duncan II deposed him a few months later. After a brief rule, Donald and Edmund had Duncan killed, whereupon Donald stepped in again, only to be exiled by Edgar, who threw his brother Edmund into jail at the same time. By then it was 1097, and Edgar reigned for ten years but was slain by his brother Alexander I.”
This is from HRH Prince Michael of Albany, in “The Forgotten Monarchy of Scotland” who says, “If ever there was a personal divide created within the Scottish nation it was created by Margaret Atheling.”
Prince Michael is the head of the House of Stewart, lives in Scotland, and actively supports a written constitution to uphold the rights, liberties and welfare of the nation.
Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell
Aberdeen
CALL me cynical, but was the Jersey debacle deliberately concocted by Number 10 to coincide with a by-election and council elections in England? The result in Hartlepool would indicate it was a wizard wheeze! Watch out Scotland!
Davie Watson
via email
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