THE courts crisis, anti-mask revolt and the long awaited revival of the property sector were topics debated by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Scotsman

Kate Wallace, chief executive of Victim Support Scotland, said Scotland’s move into phase 3 of easing lockdown was to be welcomed but there was little to celebrate for victims of crime.

It has been reported that some courts will take three years to clear the backlog of crime committed before and during the pandemic, she said.

“Victims and witnesses have been left with uncertainty about when, if ever, their case will go to court,” she said. “The devastating impact of this on mental health cannot be emphasised enough.”

She said Victim Support Scotland had recorded a ‘staggering’ increase in the number of people contacting them with suicidal thoughts during the pandemic.

“As part of the Coronavirus (Scotland) Act, emergency measures announced by the Scottish Government permit the early release of prisoners to prevent a potential outbreak. This includes providing updates to victims of eligible prisoners through the Victim Notification Scheme (VNS).”

But, she said, VNS does not guarantee to provide support for victims.

“The justice system may not be the most obvious casualty in a pandemic to some,” she added.”But by listening to the needs of people affected by crime, and by being open to change to meet the challenges of life in post-pandemic Scotland, the justice system in Scotland can recover without sacrificing the needs of victims and witnesses in the process.”

The Guardian

Owen Jones said the anti-mask revolt on the right was a global occurrence.

“In Texas, anti-mask activists believe such an imposition belongs in a “communist country”, while the Oklahoma city of Stillwater backed off from imposing a compulsory mask order after threats of violence,” he said. “On one level, this is just another expression of dog-eat-dog individualism: to hell with the common good if it requires sacrifice on my part, however minor. But it is entirely in keeping with another phenomenon: of the modern right’s embrace of victimhood.”

He said we are living in the era of the sore winner - from Donald Trump’s intermittent Tweets about ‘Presidential harassment’ to rightwing commentators complaints of society’s institutions being rigged against them.

He said the rightwingers are, in fact, supported by ‘most of the press’ - notably the Daily Mail and the Sun in the UK - and, in the US, Trump is supported by ‘nearly every Republican officeholder and has his own cable TV propaganda channel in Fox News.’

“But the right’s claim to victimhood does not need to be based in reality to be successful: rightwing politicians have long understood better than their leftwing counterparts that politics is more about sentiments than facts,” he said. “Better to be seen as the victim than the aggressor. This is not just the tactic of the modern right: it is their art form.”

The Daily Express

Leo McKinstry said the ‘doom-mongers’ warning about the property crisis at the height of the pandemic ‘turned out to be as mistaken as much of the others.’

“Far from collapsing, the property sector has roared back to life since the relaxation of the lockdown,” he said. “Only this week, the latest official statistics revealed that construction rose by 8.2 per cent in May, more than four times the overall rate of growth in the economy.”

He said the Chancellor’s decision to suspend stamp duty on transactions less than £500,000 had added ‘rocket fuel’ to the recovery.

“In this new climate of optimism, property websites and mortgage brokers say that interest from potential buyers is up by almost 50 percent since Rishi Sunak’s statement,” he said. “Increasing sales mean more work for removal companies, furnishers, decorators, landscapers, electricians, designers and estate agents. Similarly, it is estimated that there are three million jobs in the construction industry, 10 percent of the whole national workforce.”

However, he warned about building too much on ‘our green and pleasant land.’

“The answer is to improve the quality of the buildings,” he added. “Urban expansion should deliver more than quick profit.

“It should also bring lasting civic pride and pleasure.”