Should we have been surprised at the cluster of cases of Covid-19 at an Aberdeen bar?
Hadn’t Nicola Sturgeon ever heard of a pub crawl when she lifted restrictions covering such places?
It’s almost like saying: “We don’t know if you have the virus but, even if you have, feel free to take it from bar to bar.”
We remember the old saying: “There’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
Try telling that to the owners of the Hawthorn Bar, where an inordinately high number of positive results were recorded before we learned of a link to Soul Bar on Union Street.
Is there a coronavirus catastrophe just around the corner?
The owners of various drinking establishments clearly believe it is a real possibility, which is why a raft of them have now wisely closed their doors as they recognise the risk in continuing to welcome punters.
Better to get your retaliation in first by shutting up shop, just in case the First Minister steps in and does it for you. Which she did.
The alarming pictures of hundreds of revellers swarming round the area outside Soul Bar told the story that inviting people to consume alcohol in crowded places during a pandemic isn’t the best of ideas. How do you persuade uninhibited drinkers to keep their distance?
There were no reports of on-the-spot fines being dished out by police officers on the scene, although the potential for a riot might have been in the air had they started down that road.
The stark reality is that trying to keep Covid-19 in check, especially in venues where people gather in substantial numbers, borders on the impossible.
At best it’s asking for trouble.
This Aberdeen spike is a reminder that returning to normal is not on the horizon and, as businesses close, jobs are lost and events are cancelled, we have no option but to accept that we are trapped in a scene from the movie Contagion, in which we’re all extras.
We could be here for a long time.
Staggering sight in the early evening
It was just as well there was no reply from the neighbour whose door I knocked at the weekend having found a young woman resting peacefully on the path a few feet from the house.
Except it wasn’t her home, because when I inquired if she was hurt, she rose to her feet and staggered away from the building and off down the street.
It seemed that, at 7pm, she was sleeping off phase one of her Saturday outing.
Reality TV show is pretty hair-raising
Pre-bedtime channel flicking took me to a jaw-dropping programme on the BBC’s Scotland offering – Mirror Mirror – where a “hidden camera behind the mirrors of Scotland’s hairdressers” transported viewers to where they should not have been taken.
It’s here that we watch and listen to barbers, hairdressers and their “clients” – some of whom we can understand – discuss the issues of the day.
Yes folks, watching someone get a short back and sides is deemed good enough for viewers north of the border.
The BBC buckled under pressure from the SNP to provide a “Scottish Six” – a national and international bulletin at 6pm with a Scottish perspective. Instead we were given The Nine, where two excellent broadcasters, pictured top, pad out 60 minutes of news for the benefit of a couple of thousand viewers.
There are many within the BBC’s Glasgow premises still wondering why their chiefs embarked on their £32m-a-year digital journey.
Join the club.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Express website. For more information, read about our new combined website.
