I’M tired of Unionist politicians and supposedly impartial journalists rubbishing every aspect of the Scottish Government’s response to coronavirus, eg care home deaths and vaccination rates. Having noticed a pattern of Scottish daily death totals consistently being barely 5% of the UK total, I investigated the comparative death rates for Scotland and England since the start of the pandemic, using figures published on the UK Government website on January 23.

This revealed that the number deaths which had occurred within 28 days of a positive test were 5,704 for Scotland and 85,423 for England. I then calculated the coronavirus deaths per million population (a standard metric) for Scotland and England, assuming populations of 5.5 million for Scotland and 56 million for England.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson warned UK has long way to go in tackling Covid

This indicated that for Scotland, deaths per million are currently 1,037, and for England the figure is 1,525. Both figures are horrifyingly high, but the rate for England is 47% higher than Scotland.

On the basis of these figures I would recommend that the Westminster establishment and their acolytes deal with their own mess before trying to find fault in others.

Keith Garland
Edinburgh

IT seems that PM Johnson never misses an opportunity to proclaim what he considers to be “world-leading” resources, capabilities and developments of the UK, yet remains uncharacteristically silent on what the UK has achieved in determining how exactly the highly infectious and more fatal “London variant” of Covid-19 developed and thus how the development of an even more deadly variant can be prevented in future.

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The relatives and friends of those whose lives have been lost to this devastating variant deserve answers, not more soundbites and proclamations.

Stan Grodynski
East Lothian

YOUR item in Saturday’s paper titled “The ‘spy’ bill that could soon be harming indy cause” refers, in the context of the transportation of nuclear weapons, to “Aldermaston – now regularly, for some reason designated by the name of the village at its gates, Burghfield”.

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Aldermaston and Burghfield are in fact separate establishments but both are parts of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE). AWE Burghfield is more of a production and maintenance facility for the warheads carried by the Trident missiles and AWE Aldermaston is more of a research facility. Both are south-west of Reading, with Burghfield closer to Reading, and both sites can be found and are named on Google Earth imagery. The details above are contained in the Wikipedia entry for AWE!

Andrew Parrott
Perth

MARTIN Hannan’s article about David Hume in Saturday’s National states that the philosopher “was born, lived and died in the capital” (Devine brands Hume decision a ‘shambles’, January 23).

READ MORE: Tom Devine brands Ediburgh University's David Hume decision a ‘shambles’

All that is true, of course, and without presuming to take away anything from the intellectual reputation of the Athens of the North, I would like to speak up for Berwickshire and point out that Hume spent much of his early years at the family estate of Ninewells and began his education in Chirnside. Indeed, playwright John McEwen has described Hume as one of the four or five cleverest people ever to come from Chirnside.

Bruce Baker
Paxton

I READ that Airdrie postman Nathan Evans, whose rendition of old New Zealand sea shanty “The Wellerman” on TikTok has gone viral, has now signed a deal with Polydor records (Viral TikTok shanty singer quits day job, January 22). Well done Nathan – who nevertheless seems sensible enough to know that fame can be fleeting: “if nothing comes of it then I can go back and continue being a postman.”

READ MORE: Scots sea shanty star quits job to pursue music career after TikTok success

I’m reminded of the fame of another singing postman way back. Allan Smethurst’s songs, written and sung in the Norfolk dialect, were hugely popular in the mid-1960s. I still have his four-track EP containing his signature tune, Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy, in a box in a cupboard.

His Wikipedia entry says that Smethurst left in music industry in 1970, citing stage fright and arthritic hands, ending up penniless, spending his last 20 years in a Salvation Army hostel in Grimsby. He died in 2000. But for a while his self-penned Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy? was never off the radio and, according to Wiki, won an Ivor Novello award in 1966. Smethurst even appeared on Top of the Pops. Off to give his EP a dust and a play...

Mrs C Wilson
Edinburgh

WHAT’S all the panic about children missing school time? In much of Europe children start at seven years old and eventually add three languages into their curriculum! Are our kids so different?

Brian Clark
Dunfermline