HAPPY Halloween! When I was a wean the thought of Halloween being at the weekend, rather than on a school day was one of the most exciting prospects I could imagine. You only get a couple of them in your young guising years, so it’s a shame for kids missing out on it this year. It is yet another thing – like summer holidays abroad, big weddings, birthday parties and so much more – that we’re used to coming around every year and bringing a bit of joy that the ongoing pandemic has disrupted.

We’ve been dealing with this endless disruption for so many months now and fatigue with it all is understandable. But – if we want as little disruption as possible going into the festive period, we must grit our teeth and follow the guidelines that are in place. It is horrible, but it is necessary.

After Halloween swiftly comes Bonfire Night. With the usual fireworks displays across the country cancelled, many will be choosing to set off some fireworks in the garden. Please, if you’re doing this, be extremely careful. It only takes a small mistake and a split second for these events to go from a good time, to a tragedy. It’s also important to consider the animals that are terrified of fireworks every year, some are literally scared to death. Please consider this when you’re thinking about how many fireworks to buy and what time you want to set them off.

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The things I’ve mentioned above are what some call “second-order” effects of the virus. First-order effects relate to the actual catching of the illness and what that does to a person. The second-order effects of this virus are incomprehensibly massive, and the most obvious one and the one felt closest to home are the effects on the economy.

When lockdown was introduced in March there was a lot of talk about governments across the UK putting the economy “on ice”. That, by covering people’s wages and providing grants to businesses suddenly and forcibly no longer able to trade, once the virus was under control, we could all head back to work and resume life as we knew it and the economic fallout would have essentially been avoided altogether (or at least, it would have been minimised to the point that it could easily be fixed). This, of course, relied on not just getting the virus under control, but that it would be by that point entirely controllable with a mixture of extensive testing, tracing and treatment. The spike in cases across Europe in recent weeks has shown that the virus is not yet controllable by these measures alone.

The economy was taken off the metaphorical ice as lockdown restrictions started to ease. Now, restrictions are back in place across the UK (at different levels) and the ice seems to have thawed. The Institute for Public Policy Research released a report this week that showed almost half of Scottish workers have seen their pay reduced during the pandemic. The Job Support Scheme which replaced the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme provides less support. The £20 uplift to Universal Credit (that was already a mess, leaving people worse off than the old system) has yet to be made permanent.

We were promised that austerity would not be used to deal with the economic impact of Covid-19, but it looks like that is exactly where we’re heading. In fact, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that throughout this crisis those who were already well off have been increasing their savings, while those who are struggling are having to use the small savings they have or plummet into debt to stay afloat. The exact same thing happened with the 2007 financial crisis and the Tory-LibDem coalition’s austerity response. The rich grew obscenely richer, while the poorest had every penny possible squeezed from them.

The IPRP state in their report that if the UK Government is planning to keep on as it is, it must deliver the power to the Scottish Government to deal with these issues itself. It is a call that has been mounting since this crisis started. We have a Scottish Government which is willing to take a different approach, putting dignity and support for everyone at the heart of the response, but it needs the power that Westminster holds to do it.

The UK Government talks about the “broad shoulders” of Westminster providing financial support to protect jobs but the truth is, it is money the UK Government have borrowed on our behalf. The Scottish Government could just as capably borrow money – and arguably invest it better than the UK Government has – if Westminster gave us the powers.

Westminster won’t give up that power, but Scotland can see how necessary it is to choose its own path. Yesterday, the 11th consecutive poll was released to show vast majority support for Scottish independence. The default position in Scotland now is that we can and should do things differently. Too many simply cannot afford to live through another bout of cruel austerity.