SIMILAR to most people recently, I’ve been watching the news daily bulletin at 5pm. Saturday was no different – or was it?

I was aware of further tragedies abroad, coffins lined up in hospital wards in the north of Italy, the surge of deaths in New York and the huge death increases in Spain – all extremely hard to digest. As a regular visitor to Spain I enjoy a glass of Rioja Tinto, so the news that the La Rioja region was the worst hit in Spain saddened me greatly.

I awaited the five o’clock bulletin beginning. Normally presented by Boris (or should I say the PM), Saturday’s featured two different presenters: Business Secretary Alok Sharma and Professor Stephen Powis, NHS medical director.

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After updating us on the current welfare of Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock, they began informing us of the latest developments regarding Covid-19.

With worldwide fatalities still fresh in my mind, I was suddenly hit with a “bolt out of the blue” – did I hear that right? As a sufferer from partial deafness, I wondered if my loud speakers were faulty! I quickly clicked on subtitles and to my astonishment, I had heard perfectly well.

The minister had said that if we come through this crisis with 20,000 deaths or less, that would be an acceptable result! My jaw dropped. That’s not right! It can’t be right.

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After some moments the “bolt out the blue” had finally sunk in, so I returned my thoughts to the bulletin and sure enough, shortly afterwards, Professor Powis repeated that 20,000 deaths would be an acceptable result! “Never!” I screamed at the telly!

C’mon folks, who are these people who can treat human life so cheaply! Are they from a different planet? This is not right! One life lost due to Covid-19 is bad enough, but 20,000?

These people cannot properly represent what normal folks want. They don’t seem to value life as any normal person would. I’m utterly appalled that life can be regarded as so meaningless.

A Business Secretary who only seems to deal with figures and money, that’s hardly surprising, but a Chief Medical Officer who has a duty to save lives? This is unforgivable.

This bulletin comes on at five o’clock. My kids, their kids, my granddaughters are seeing this along with millions of others. This is a terrible message to convey to the general public, whether it is right or wrong!

If the Prime Minister and Matt Hancock, already hit with the coronavirus, were to sadly pass away, would we then be saying “that’s fine, we’ve only another 19,900 and whatever to go”?

C’mon guys! Let’s fight for life and not death!

Douglas Hewat
via email

AN excellent article in Bella Caledonia in yesterday’s Sunday National. Mike Small’s summary comment that the politicians who spent four years obsessing over Brexit and the UK’s isolation from the rest of the world have been proven to be “spectacularly useless” just about sums up the Westminster Tory government, not only for its governance of coronavirus but just about everything else since Johnson was elected by his cronies to lead the country back to the post-war years, and what was then (allegedly) Great Britain.

Perhaps those who helped the Tories into a majority government will begin to think differently, particularly our Scottish voters. Now we are approaching a Scottish general election, and where we have seen real leadership qualities from Holyrood throughout this coronavirus period thus far, maybe all Scottish voters will think sensibly and realistically and give our current Holyrood parliamentary government the majority it deserves.

Alan Magnus-Bennett
Fife