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The Scottish government is facing a fierce backlash after Nicola Sturgeon announced a crackdown on indoor alcohol use in licensed facilities, as a senior adviser said more needed to be done to ensure people abided by the rules in their own homes.
Scottish pub, bar and restaurant owners expressed their anger and despair over the new “catastrophic” and “scapegoat” regulations that are scheduled to last 16 days across the country, and people in online forums condemned the “ban” which would result from more severe restrictions in central Scotland.
Starting at 6pm on Friday, all pubs and restaurants in the five health areas where infections are accelerating the fastest – Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Arran, Lothian and Forth Valley – will be required to close, Both indoors and outdoors, although they can still serve takeout.
Pubs, bars, restaurants and cafes in the rest of Scotland will not be able to serve alcohol indoors and will only be open between 6:00 a.m. M. And 6:00 p.m. M. For food and non-alcoholic beverages. Licensed venues away from the center belt can continue to serve alcohol outdoors until the 10 p.m. curfew that was introduced last month.
Mario Gizzi, director of the DiMaggio restaurant group in Glasgow and a member of the Scottish Hospitality Group, described the mood in the sector as dejected. “Hospitality is being bothered, with no Scottish government data showing how broadcasting is taking place in bars and restaurants, despite our asking,” he said.
A Scottish government evidence document released Wednesday to coincide with Sturgeon’s announcement at Holyrood states that between late July and early October, 26% of people who tested positive for Covid-19 reported visiting places of hospitality. However, it is impossible to know exactly where a person has been infected.
Speaking on BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland program, Deputy Prime Minister John Swinney said the government had to “stop opportunities for interaction where the virus can spread, which appears to be emerging from some aspects of the hotel sector.”
But Gizzi said his restaurants had served more than 1.8 million customers since July and only had 17 confirmed coronavirus cases on staff.
He said that more than 25% of the group’s staff were under the age of 25. “These young people are using it as a career or a stepping stone or to support themselves in college. There is a real danger that they will become a savage generation, ”he said.
Steven Reicher, a professor of social psychology at the University of St Andrews who has advised the Scottish and UK governments on adhering to coronavirus guidelines, said that regulating people’s behavior in the home remains key and that Better and more consistent messages are needed to cut through natural assumptions that it is safer to be at home with people you know.
“The question is: [closure of pubs] lead people to do other things they shouldn’t do, like meet at home? You may not be able to go to the pub, but if you are unhappy, you will invite people “
Reicher said he had seen figures from the Scottish Police that showed they had been summoned to very few family gatherings of more than 15 people. “Part of the problem is that the way things have been portrayed, this horrible demonic ‘other’ of young people having house parties, makes everyone else feel complacent and so they don’t take things seriously.”
With central Scotland now primed for the toughest restrictions anywhere in the UK, Reicher also said that any sense that the new rules are unfair would undermine compliance. “It’s not fatigue, it’s the feeling that if it’s justified they will. The good news is that confidence levels are higher in Scotland than in England, and it is still true that most Scots still want to do more.
