Can Boris Johnson only count up to three? - Susan Morrison

Why have our English cousins only got three tiers and we’ve got five? Are they being shortchanged? Or is it that Scottish drive to make simple things more complicated, like frying Mars Bars?

Is the difference in the number of tiers south of the Border because the Prime Minister cannot count any further wonders Susan Morrison

Look at country dancing. The English seem happy with Morris dancing, which is simply men wearing ribbons and hitting each other with sticks. Perhaps they hit Morris. Also, it's largely a spectator sport.

We, on the other hand, have dances so complex it requires a sort of air traffic controller bellowing instructions to drunken revellers and no-one gets to sit out the Gay Gordons.

Perhaps Boris can only count up to three. Or it's the number of fingers they hold up to check Dominc Cummings eyesight when he can’t get to Durham.

It’s a policy that our plague ridden ancestors would instantly recognise as Tier One ‘Lock Your Doors’, Tier Two ‘Lock your Neighbours Doors’ to Tier Three, ‘Bring out your Dead’.

All they need down there is a man with a cart and a bell, and you’re not telling me Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t look the part. That man is one battered top hat away from the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Childcatcher.

Is Boris turning England into one vast historical theme park, do you think, ready for when the tourists come back? Is South of the Wall becoming a sort of huge Dickens World, down to refusing to feed poor children over the Christmas holidays?

Perhaps Covid-19 can count and Nicola thinks this is a great way to outfox it. After all, the Bishop of Paisley thinks we can negotiate a Christmas Day truce, so clearly we can reason with a virus. Not.

It’s a medical thing. I could have asked my fabulous oncologist when she called late one evening, when I am quite sure she’d rather have been home. She called to catch up and reassure, well past a working day.

There are those who think NHS Scotland is somehow ‘slacking off’ whilst Covid shuts our wards. It isn’t. The people in our health service, like my wonderful oncologist, are working later, harder and longer just to keep up. They deserve not just applause, but our roaring support and if you don’t think so, stay out of my way, looking at you, Three Tier Tory Amigos, Jacob, Dominic and Boris.