SNP's unfair Covid measures are crushing Edinburgh business - John McLellan

If you believe that the public sector drives the economy and private enterprise exists primarily to generate revenue for government, then it should be no surprise that given the choice wealth creation will play second fiddle, if not third strings, to whatever decisions your administration will take.

In dealing with the pandemic, this presents little philosophical challenge for politicians on the left like Nicola Sturgeon, but as everyone accepts a government’s first duty is to protect its citizens, even free-market libertarians like Boris Johnson are being dragged down this path. It has given authorities around the world carte blanche to, as the Prime Minister said, “do what it takes”.

When Governments put their citizens lives in harm’s way, they are usually in uniform and have volunteered for roles in which risk is part of the deal. Ordinary citizens don’t have that choice.

As government decisions throughout the pandemic have demonstrated every day, thousands of people have little control over their fate as the next tactic designed to tackle the virus is deployed, our politicians acting like Canute’s courtiers with a seeming belief it will go away if we all just keep ourselves to ourselves.

It has led to a situation where governments believe good intent trumps wreaking needless havoc in thousands of lives, and in few places is this being played out so clearly as Edinburgh.

For unexplained reasons, with a lower rate of infection than most urban centres, the First Minister is forcing us to accept the second highest tier of her new lockdown system, despite only having 85 infections per 100,000 by this week compared to Dundee, in the tier below, having 178.

Tier three means carnage in the hospitality sector on which thousands of people depend for their livelihoods, with pubs shut and alcohol banned in restaurants and cafes. The city is effectively living in a new era of public prohibition, but the Roaring Twenties this ain’t.

This bureaucratic totalitarianism denies restaurants the mark-up on wine they need to make ends meet, so as council officers force the closure of well-run businesses like Café Grande in Bruntsfield, Maccy D’s and KFC are packing them in. Eating out is the backbone of the hospitality industry in the off-season, yet for the sin of selling alcohol it is being pushed to the wall and with it the staff, suppliers and taxi drivers. 6pm closure kills it completely.

By Tuesday, of 1100 people in Scots hospitals with Covid-19, only 118 of them were in Lothian, so less than a tenth of the cases in an area with more than a fifth of the population, skewed by higher levels in West Lothian. And there is no proof they became ill as a result of having a glass of wine while eating out.

The evidence points to victims either being in a confined space with poor ventilation and an infected person, or in a care home where infection has become rife. The answer lies not with crushing every hospitality business but in better standards; imposing blanket bans and expecting council trading standards to become the Covid police isn’t tough love but the easy option disguised as strong leadership.

But our supine council leadership just sucks it up because it comes down from SNP high command. At least local Conservative politicians across England are standing up for their communities.