Loss of Calderwood’s credibility means her position is untenable

However, if she has one glaring weakness it is, I believe, that she seems unable to act against women who fall short of the required standard, and I say that as a woman.

How relevant her passionate advocacy of women in the workplace is here, I can only speculate.

READ MORE: Dr Catherine Calderwood banned from coronavirus briefings

In a matter of weeks we have seen two prominent women in Scottish Government service fail to tender their resignations as appropriate. They have both compromised the Scottish Government, and on their failure to step down voluntarily Nicola Sturgeon should have insisted that both resign or she should have sacked them.

Leslie Evans should have been removed from post months ago on Alex Salmond’s successful and costly litigation of her stewardship of the Scottish Government’s enquiry against him. But, because she still remains in post in the aftermath of Salmond’s exoneration, she will once again weaken the Scottish Government as they scramble to defend her.

READ MORE: Nicola Sturgeon says it would be 'damaging' to fire Catherine Calderwood

And now Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government have been compromised again by a prominent appointee. An appointee who not only showed an exceptional lack of judgement by not following her own official government advice, but who continues to lack judgement by believing an apology is good enough.

As the face of the government’s “Stay at Home” advice, her loss of credibility is more than significant. Her position is untenable.

Derek Mackay’s abrupt resignation I thought would be catastrophic for the Scottish Government, and yet waiting in the wings was a very competent deputy able to step up at very very short notice.

I cannot believe that Evans and Calderwood are not similarly supported.

Nicola Sturgeon must dispatch these officers and, woman or man, replace them from what I am sure is the talented pool of personnel waiting in the wings.

Without decisive action, she runs the risk of being compromised by their lack of competence.

I Easton
Glasgow

LET’S get this out of the way from the outset – the lady was bang out of order and has rightly apologised abjectly. We now have the usual suspects – Jackson Carlaw, Monica Lennon, Willie Rennie inter alia – calling for her resignation or sacking. Have they perhaps not paused to ask themselves a few questions?

Did she transport an entire retinue across more than half the UK with the suspicion that the person at the centre of the circus could well be carrying the virus?

Did she immediately commandeer tests to be delivered to her holiday home, at the expense of front-line NHS staff?

Did she requisition the presence of a much-needed medical team to travel immediately to her holiday home to administer the tests?

Perhaps if she had, it might have been discovered that she was indeed infected, but with a severe case of SNPbaaaditis, picked up from repeatedly being seen in public in close proximity to Nicola Sturgeon.

I await the condemnation of the other guilty party by Carlaw, Lennon, Rennie et al and the concomitant calls for a public apology from Charles Windsor, or his “resignation”, with less than bated breath.

Ian Duff
Inverness

ONE mistake you might forgive, but to do the same thing twice is unforgivable. We are supposed to follow her advice, so is it all right now for others to visit a second home? No, didn’t think so.

She will have to go now, she is becoming the story. An apology just doesn’t cut it anymore. Stupid, stupid thing to do.

Marie Clark
via thenational.scot

NOBODY can have any confidence in the Chief Medical Officer’s announcements or respect for her now.

The reports are correct that she went to her second home, took her whole family, stayed the night and went out for exercise in the local area. There is no acceptable excuse for her whatsoever. This is not an unthinking or casual breach of the present restrictions on movement, as she and her husband had spent time there at the previous weekend.

As we saw at 2.30pm at the First Minister’s press conference, the CMO has become the only story.

It does not matter how important her presence is to the Scottish Government, she has lost the confidence of the public.

She must resign or be sacked.

John Jamieson
South Queensferry

REGARDING Catherine Calderwood visiting her second home in Earlsferry in Fife.

Earlsferry and its neighbour Elie throughout the winter have been like ghost towns due to themvery large percentage of second homes and holiday homes. Since the coronavirus scare both villages have suddenly become very busy with the streets full of Range Rovers, Mercedes, Porches and other prestige vehicles. Most of these second homes are owned by wealthy people from Edinburgh and England.

This is in marked contrast to the caravan parks throughout Fife, which are all closed.

Yet another example of money talking.

Harry Key
Largoward, Fife

I NOTICE in today’s media they were castigating Dr Calderwood, our Chief Medical Officer, for visiting her holiday home.

However the same media is now silent about the monarch’s son staying in his holiday home. Worse still, I understand his mother in her television speech this evening will thank us for our self-discipline in observing the rules to try to control the spread of the coronavirus.

N M Shaw
Edinburgh

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