FINANCIAL assistance for businesses announced by the UK Treasury in light of the Omicron variant is to be welcomed, but unfortunately it does not go anywhere near meeting requirement. As a minimum we require “furlough” to be back on the table, otherwise many businesses will simply fold.

The Chancellor’s announcements fell well short. For example, businesses can claim employee sick pay of £96.35/week (Statutory Sick Pay Rebate Scheme), a fair move until you read further! It only applies to companies with less than 250 employees and employees who are sick with Covid-related absences, for up to two weeks per employee! What about employees who are suffering long Covid – are employers expected to meet their sick pay?

READ MORE: Sunak confirms £1bn package for Covid-hit firms – with just £80m for Scotland

The Chancellor may want to reflect that it is not only businesses that are suffering. Many employees have been made redundant, are working shorter hours and suffering large cost-of-living increases, so we need measures put in place urgently by the Chancellor to assist employees and those who have become unemployed. This pandemic, a public health emergency, is here for the foreseeable and we must get support in place for all sectors, employer and employees alike.

And we must not forget those who suffered a 20% drop in their incomes when the Conservative government at Westminster removed the £20/week uplift to Universal Credit, a move which must be reinstated. There is much the Chancellor could do to assist with immediate effect, one of which would be to reduce VAT or even abolish VAT on fuel bills, a move that would put some warmth into Christmas.

Catriona C Clark
Falkirk

IT is an astonishing thing that the process of inoculating the population of a country that is so badly governed is being done with such success. Not only has the speedy design and approval of the vaccine proved to be effective protection against the disease, but the side effects seem to be few. The means of administrating it and the production/distribution of equipment also seems to be smooth. But these are but the application of mass production techniques to medicine by big business, and are very profitable.

READ MORE: Boris Johnson government 'paralysed by internal division' amid Omicron surge

The arrangement of inoculation centres, however, is a credit to the NHS. If considered in detail it is extraordinary. Venues have to be identified and analysed for suitability and availability, access, parking, cost, and these have to be approved and eventually paid for. Staff have be found, layouts planned and executed. Direction signs have to be worked out, printed and positioned. Presumably emergency services have to be kept informed and all the parties previously mentioned also kept up to date. Even the key-holder has to remember to get up in time in the morning and to lock up at the end of the day.

Those who have had to wait for hours may not agree. My natural cynicism is revealed if I add that the good old British ability to form an orderly queue is not one to be sneezed at.

Iain WD Forde
Scotlandwell

REGARDING your piece (December 20) about Scottish Government’s new fire alarm policy, the imposition of these new fire safety laws could surely have catastrophic consequences insurance-wise. For instance, how might flat owners with block insurance be affected following a serious fire incident? What if one or two flat owners in a property with block insurance don’t have these new alarms? Would this nullify the insurance of the whole block?

Some owners may be unable to afford these new smart safety devices; some may take a chance, and not bother; and some may reasonably imagine that the working smoke alarms they already have will cover them.

READ MORE: SNP ministers urged to delay new fire alarm rules as homeowners 'not ready'

What would be the legal rights and means of owners to establish which neighbouring properties have or have not had this safety equipment installed – and insist upon it? What would be the rights of property factors?

Would the owners of flats who had installed the necessary alarms be adequately covered by their insurance if a widespread fire in their block started in the flat of an owner who had not done so? This has all the making of a major problem for owner-occupiers.

The government cannot simply dismiss this issue as a matter “between insurance companies and the people who hold policies”. It has unleashed this, and must in all decency postpone for a lengthy period the implementation this well-meaning but ill-considered policy for further examination of its consequences – and until there is greater availability of the new alarms and of tradesmen.

Domestic fire alarms are of course a vital fixture; I imagine most homes already have one or more. So – in this year of the Scotland-hosted COP26 world environment conference – are all these working but non-interlinked safety devices now all to be consigned to the scrap heap?

Mrs C Lincoln
Edinburgh

THE article concerning the “rewilding” of some of the land and foreshore owned by the royal family, plus a few others who appear to own large chunks of this little country, led me to speculate what will happen in the case of Scotland gaining independence (Calls for royals to ‘step up’ and rewild their land, Dec 17). Will we have to buy all that land back? Will they donate it to us freely?

As l understand (someone will correct me if l am wrong), people who originally lived and worked this land where persuaded that Cape Breton and Nova Scotia were better places to live, and assisted to move by clan chiefs and other wealthy type who then cut down the trees and brought in a few sheep, then eventually used the spare areas to shoot things such as grouse and deer.

I do not doubt in the present there will be screeds of handwritten deeds and volumes of velum proving ownership to all this land by all current owners, but l doubt if any of them come from Cape Breton or that area!!!

Looking forward to very long long court battles.

James Ahern
via email