Be patient Scotland...we are almost there

Nicola Sturgeon always said decisions on lockdown will be driven by data not dates.

Boris Johnson said the same except he issued a slew of potential diary appointments for the end of lockdown in England which raised expectations that Scotland should do the same.

The First Minister responded yesterday with some definite dates and offered something more than amber traffic lights on the road out of lockdown.

Some people will go along with Sturgeon’s instinctive caution which has been the hallmark of her response to the pandemic.

Others, particularly the hospitality industry, will be desperate for the limitations to be lifted.

Can it be fair that drinkers in England can start sipping outside pubs on April 12, a full fortnight before Scotland?

No more fair than Scots having their locks chopped by qualified hairdressers a week before people in England can have their roots tinted the right shade.

The differences have to be tolerated and, having come this far, the impatience of drouthy drinkers and publicans has to be borne.

The April 26 seems a long way off for businesses with overheads bearing down on them but having dated signposts on the road out of lockdown is a good move.

It makes us believe in the possibility, as Sturgeon said, that brighter days are ahead of us.

Deadly error

If Boris Johnson’s big idea to save the Union is to put more Trident missiles on the Clyde he may find the nuclear reaction is explosive.

Many Scots are against the imposition of the Armageddon’s angels on Scotland.

Nuclear weapons are inherently immoral – their use guarantees the end of humanity.

Every move on the political chessboard should be towards reducing their number, not some chest-pounding defiance of international conventions.

But Johnson knows Faslane and Lossiemouth and defence spending in Scotland create an awful lot of well-paid jobs in totemic industries such as shipbuilding on the Clyde.

But by casting an eye to far horizons to find a role for Britain in the post-Brexit world he helped create, Johnson is in danger of overlooking the blunders and mis-steps he made on his doorstep that could be a far bigger threat to the United Kingdom.

Cutting international aid, pulling the curtain down on Europe, and stockpiling nuclear weapons is not the basis for winning friends and influencing people in Scotland.