Do we expect visitors to carry on regardless? - Kevin Buckle

Nicola Sturgeon’s plea for people to “please stay at home as much as is feasible” did not go down well with shops on Thursday.

The Christmas Market remains popular, despite Nicola Sturgeon's plea for people to stay at home.

While the message was a general one for all of Scotland, for Edinburgh – which currently has a good number of visitors – it was hard to see how this advice should be applied.

Certainly as I left work the bars on the Waverley Market roof looked a little quieter and while I waited for my bus the majority of those around me were clearly visitors, from a group of French kids to a Spanish family of five.

There had been a lot of English visitors in the shop either about to return or just arriving and for the latter group I’m not sure what is expected of them. As my bus passed by the Christmas market it again looked quieter than normal but was by no means quiet.

For shops this weekend was looking to be the busiest in the run-up to Christmas with just enough time left to shop without the blind panic that often takes hold in the last couple of days.

With deliveries often taking ten days to arrive Avalanche had started to run out of stock of our best-selling T-shirts and a huge order arrived that I had hoped would see us through to the New Year just an hour before Nicola’s statement.

Record companies thankfully are delivering in a couple of days and there the problem is them actually having titles in stock. With a similar amount of stock to arrive the next day what had seemed like a restock in the nick of time suddenly looked liked it might be a bit of a gamble.

Now this is all stock that will sell eventually so from that viewpoint we are lucky in that the worst that will happen is that money is tied up for a while. Loss of takings is of course another matter and while we have been lucky enough to have had a good enough Christmas so far to see us through a late dip other shops rely on this time of year and will be closely monitoring their sales to see how badly they are affected.

Even those who do most of their Christmas shopping online traditionally spend the last weekend looking to complete their gift buying on the high street so it isn’t clear if they are now expected to stay at home and surf the net for any remaining gifts or whether it is considerd reasonable for them to head for the high street.

What is definitely unclear is what behaviour is expected from the thousands of visitors to Edinburgh. Do they just carry on as normal leaving the locals to isolate themselves whenever feasible?

No politician wants to be seen cancelling Christmas but the fear among many businesses is that they may be faced with another order to shut down immediately afterwards or possibly even worse be allowed to stay open but without customers or compensation.

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