@Bytheloch
That and the COP26 later in the year. There's really no way that could go ahead with anything but minimal restrictions, and though we're talking 5 months or so in the future, they must have more than half an eye to needing to avoid the embarrassment of having to cancel or scale back massively at the last minute.
Remember, COP26 is not the domain of the SG. (They embarrassingly tried to muscle in on last year saying that their HQ should be next to the SECC). It’s a global conference, enabled by the U.K. as host, Glasgow is the venue. The SG can set out the terms for Glasgow health and policing around the event, but let’s be clear- NS and her PA are not the meeting organisers. Just like the Commonwealth Games, it’s a fantastic chance to portray Glasgow and Scotland as welcoming and positive hosts on a global scale. It’s the SG job to ensure everything is done relatively safe to where we’re at with covid in relation to the U.K. status at that time, as much as they will hate having to accept that.
Yes, that's true. It must be a difficult tightrope for them to spin, though (she says, mixing her metaphors to death), assuming the rules surrounding it are different to those applying to the rest of the population (quarantine for people entering the country, for example, I assume will be modified if it hasn't been changed by then anyway). Do they go for the "it's a good and worthy thing to be doing, so we're happy to turn a blind eye, and even encourage attendance, even though there are risks involved" approach, or the "the UK is making us do this and we think it's really risky but we have to go along with it" approach?
I really hope it's the former... just because I'm sick to death of the latter, and it would be nice to see some actual positive collaboration on a thing that is a huge honour and potential benefit to both the UK as a whole and Scotland individually.
I'm just hoping everyone can hold their nerve if cases start creeping up again around september/ October like they did last year. I'm assuming the UK (England) gov is less concerned as they seem happy to accept the vaccine leading to fewer serious cases is sufficient reason to tolerate the numbers increasing slightly without resorting to universal restrictions. ScotGov may move to that approach of course, but we're not there yet.