Scottish COVID-19 Inquiry|2 Dec 2024

Testimony by the Federation of Small Businesses.

The inquiry now moves onto business and welfare impact hearings.

Introduction

Testmony by The Federation of Small Businesses. Founded in 1974 Colin Borland is currently Director of Devolved Nations for FSB since 2008. FSB's mission is "to help smaller businesses survive through these difficult times and ultimately achieve their ambitions". FSB operates across the UK. There are around 150,000 members, of whom around 15,000 are in Scotland.

Testimony highlights

The ‘COVID’ tunnel vision continues. As Sweden and other countries like Belarus and many states in the US remained open… in Scotland, representatives of our small business owners who were CRUSHED by pseudo-scientific lockdown policies even in 2024 are none the wiser. The main culprits are:

‘‘When we emerged from COVID we had a brief respite and then we had..

• The inflation crisis

• Cost of energy crisis

• Cost of doing business crisis

• Ukraine war

‘‘In the first year of the pandemic we lost 20,000 businesses from the Scottish economy and the vast majority of them were small.’’

‘‘We did have people who were incredibly distressed who were worried they were going to lose everything they’d worked to build up over decades.’’

‘‘The idea that was expressed to us was we’re the public health guys we don’t need to worry about the economy could you imagine if that was reversed and we said we’re business we don’t care about public health it would be disgraceful.'…it’s not a given that the economy is going to survive…there is a wider harm beyond the narrow questions of hospital numbers.’’

Thoughts

As small businesses have been permanently affected without recovery there have been no such issues for the big corporates like Amazon.

I noted the mainstream media very quick to report on the Scottish COVID inquiry when it suits blaming ‘the pandemic’ instead of the ‘‘strategic response’’ aka lockdown. Reminder families giving evidence for months, care home managers and the health and social care hearings 2024 closing statements detailing out rampant medical neglect and human rights abuses is clearly not for public consumption.

From the Scottish COVID inquiry ‘‘Let’s be Heard’’ survey evidence.

‘‘COVID didn’t crush the economy. GOVERNMENT crushed the economy.’’

-South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, the incoming secretary of Homeland Security

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End

Link:

Full video- Youtube-Scottish COVID-19 inquiry|Impact hearing | Business and welfare | 2 December 2024 (morning session

Full statement- https://www.covid19inquiry.scot/sites/default/files/ev-documents/sci-wt0514-000001.pdf

https://www.fsb.org.uk/resources-page/20-000-scottish-businesses-vanished-during-year-of-crisis.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3we675x41do