COULD someone from the Scottish team of medical advisors please explain the Covid rules to test and trace.

I was under the impression that if you had symptoms or were waiting for a test you had to self isolate, which meant persons who were also close to you also had to self isolate until you had the result, or is this wrong?

Also if you have had Covid, are you no longer at risk of recatching Covid from close contacts.

The reason I am asking is that I know people who had Covid and then weeks later tested positive again and told go to work. Also people who had Covid but then their partner tested positive but told you can go to work.

We all wonder how Covid is on the rise but maybe it’s because test and trace has been as much use as a wet paper bag or as Mr Swinney has been as education minister.

Until this Government gets testing done properly and ensures everybody who arrives in Scotland is tested or quarantined, then this virus is going to win.

TR

Via email

IT would be a great idea if the utility giants gave something back to the people who are paying unbelievable amounts especially during these terrible times as we are kept indoors most of the time.

The BBC could follow by freezing the TV licences for lockdown especially after all the repeats that are constant, please give something back at least to those who cannot afford it and make it some kind of gift to us all.

Isobel McVey

Via email

IT was striking to note the restrictions between Scotland and England over the festive season, and to highlight that it was almost 70 years ago to the day that the border between the two nations was closed for the first time in 400 years.

That of course was due to the return of the Stone of Destiny to Scotland, when four student nationalists removed the ancient artefact from Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day in 1950.

The incident happened nearly seven centuries after the stone was taken from Scone by King Edward I during the Scottish Wars of Independence and placed under the monarch’s chair in the abbey.

When news of the stone’s removal broke, the authorities closed the border between Scotland and England. It was ultimately recovered from Arbroath Abbey, where Scottish nationhood had been asserted with the Declaration of Arbroath in 1320, 700 years ago this year. It was returned to Westminster Abbey in 1952.

This action also coincided with attacks on postboxes in Scotland in a dispute over the title of the new British monarch, Elizabeth II, there being no Elizabeth I of Scotland.

Interestingly, it has recently been revealed that James Stuart, Conservative Secretary of State for Scotland recommended in 1953 that the stone be returned to Scotland, but Churchill’s government vetoed this seeing it as rewarding a small minority of hardline nationalists.

Alex Orr

Via email