Scotland’s vaccine passport scheme will end on Monday (February 28th) and the rest of the country’s Covid restrictions, including the mandating of face masks, will end on March 21st, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced – nearly a month after England’s ‘last’ restrictions are lifted on Thursday and nearly two months after England’s mask mandate was lifted on January 26th. Guidance will remain in place, including the advice to self-isolate (which has never been a legal requirement in Scotland). BBC News has more.
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said people would still be advised to wear masks in shops and on public transport.
But all legal restrictions on people and businesses will end as part of an effort to “return to a normal way of life”.
Meanwhile, the country’s vaccine passport scheme will end on February 28th.
The plan is part of a new strategic framework the Government has drawn up for dealing with the pandemic in the future.
Ms Sturgeon said it would see Scotland move away from legal restrictions, relying instead on “vaccines, treatments, and sensible adaptations and good public health behaviours”.
The move comes after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that England’s restrictions will be lifted on Thursday, with the requirement to self-isolate dropped and free mass testing to end in April.
Ms Sturgeon expressed frustration at Mr Johnson’s approach, calling for clarity about how the testing system – which operates U.K.-wide – would operate in future.
However she said the level of infection and hospital admissions were falling sufficiently to set a timetable for the easing of the curbs still in place in Scotland.
The Covid certification scheme – vaccine passports which are required when attending large events including concerts and football matches – will come to an end on Monday February 28th.
And the remaining legal restrictions will be phased out on March 21st – including the requirement for people to wear face covering in enclosed spaces and on public transport, and rules for businesses on collecting customer details and taking measures to reduce the spread of the virus.
With England lifting measures this week, and Denmark doing so three weeks ago, why is Scotland waiting yet another four weeks? What is four more weeks of suspending civil liberties supposed to achieve? What is the evidence to support this policy? None was presented.
Worse, Scotland is to extend the powers underpinning face mask and vaccine passports until September, and is also keeping the vaccine passport apps live so that venues can operate voluntary systems. Ms Sturgeon defended this saying it was necessary to have “contingency measures” for use in future as it was highly likely the country would face a threat from new variants, and that it was “proportionate” to allow firms the choice of using vaccine passports, saying some might see an advantage in “making people feel more confident about going and using their services”.
Worth reading in full.
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If anyone really thinks that our elected representatives run the show then I have a bridge to sell them. Ministers can go along for the ride whilst enjoying their perks but woe betide anyone who tries to push anything through the blob that they don’t want to do.
A bit strawmanny.
I doubt many of the tinfoilers like me think that getting rid of Raab was a conspiracy.
Not all court intrigue is conspiracy, sometimes it’s just ideological.
The ouster of Truss was a bit of both.
The installation of Sunak was mostly conspiracy.
“I doubt many of the tinfoilers like me think that getting rid of Raab was a conspiracy.”
I have no idea, tbh. I don’t see how we can know unless we have some way of getting inside the heads of the main protagonists and access records of every conversation they ever had. It’s entirely speculative. What’s not a conspiracy theory is that the establishment is now dominated by the political left.
You are right. It only takes enough cultists agreeing on principle that someone they don’t like needs to be attacked into unemployment for it to happen.
Is that a conspiracy? I suppose it’s an open one.
Good summing up..
“we very frequently overlook the middle ground between the views of the tinfoil hat wearers on the one hand and the anti-disinformation guardians of sensible technocratic soft-Left centrism on the other. ”
Seems to me the “other hand” from us “tinfoil hat wearers” is neither sensible, nor “soft” left nor is it properly technocratic. Covid, “climate change”, wokeism, Ukraine war are all lunatic, fanatical, dangerous, evidence-free cults.
Spot on.
Damn right..
It’s the usual “It’s OK when we do it”. When scientists disagreeing with the mainstream narrative on climate change are harrassed, or there’s a pile-on on Andrew Bridgen, that’s not bullying.
A bit like “breaking the law.”
My piece on the WHO treaty refers.
Unfortunately, we now seem to be back in an age where power and privilege are decided solely by the elites. The challenge from the prosperity generated by free thinking individuals engaged in private enterprise has virtually disappeared as a result of globalist and elitist policy; this was the route that opened up and democratised society in the first place.
British society got democratized because a leader of a faction of the house of commons convinced a king to create enough new, politically suitably aligned peers to turn the house of lords into the function-free relic relic it remains to this day. Sorry, nothing that came from free thinking individuals engaged in private enterprise.
For once I think that the Americans have the best idea. After a presidential election the White House is cleared out and the victors brings in their own team of staff.
A first class article.
One caveat – suggesting civil servants got rid of Raab leaves a big question unanswered – what input did Fishy have?
If Fishy was not involved who then is running the Civil servants?
Move Civil Service departments outside London, perhaps starting with somewhere in Ashfield.
The bastards have now had a victory, this will get a lot worse very quickly
Seems that we need to bring in sortition not just for MPs but also for all judges.
Can’t get any worse or more arbitrary than currently, that’s for sure.
As for conspiracies, I am with Peter Hitchens:
“Of course there are conspiracies in Westminster. They are called lunch and dinner meetings.”
The so-called human rights act is a bit difficult to digest, but I think the meaning regarding the right to family life is as follows
1) Someone the secretary of the interior deems to be a foreign criminal has no right to a family life regardless of his personal situation before the secretary of the interior made this decision.
2) People economically dependent on him also don’t have a right to a family life as they could always live on welfare instead.
ie, such a decision by the secretary of the interior effectively nullifies any family. It would be much more honest to state that foreigners can never become part of a family for the purpose of the European Convention on Human Rights, or, yet shorter, that foreigners are – by legal definition – not human. They exist so that the secretary of the interior may utilize them for demonstrational purpose as he sees fit and in the meantime, they’re supposed to be grateful to be allowed to pay taxes.
Considering that the secretary of the interior will hardly make such decisions himself but rely on the input of the associated civil service departments, that’s a landgrab of the administrative executive which believes the judical executive is just too bothersome, or, to put it into more commonly used terms, it’s really about two different branches of the so-called technocracy fighting a turf war.
How this would relates to Raab’s behaviour in a completely different function in 2019 is still entirely unclear.
Civil Servants act like our masters
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And to prove the points made by Dr McGrogan, the spineless amoeba that is the Prime Minister didn’t have the guts to support Raab and tell the blob to wind in their necks and do what they are, very well, paid to do – support the Government
Why would he.. he’s a blobette after all..
A masterly description of the utter mess we are in.