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Have any government policies had a direct impact on your life lately? If so, talk about the policy that’s affected you most and the impact it’s had.

Seriously? In Scotland, we have been under a hard government lockdown for FOUR MONTHS. The entire country shut down on 26 December 2020 and IS STILL SHUT DOWN AS I WRITE ON 23 April 2021. I struggle to make my American friends and relatives appreciate the strictness and length of this lockdown. All sports facilities, cinemas, theatres, restaurants, bars, churches, hairdressers, barbers, libraries, coffee shops, and all retail except homewares & groceries, ARE CLOSED. EVERYTHING has been closed for FOUR SOLID MONTHS. You have to wear a mask to go to the supermarket. (No mask, no supermarket.) You drop your pet outside the vet and sit in your car. Universities are teaching remotely. You can order takeaway, but you are not allowed inside to pick it up - it is handed to you through a hatch or dropped outside the door. We are not allowed to travel outside our local area. We are not allowed to cross the border into England. If we fly internationally, when we return to Scotland we will be met at the gate by a security agent who will escort us to a quarantine hotel, where we will stay for 10 days, at our own expense, before being allowed back into the country. Up until two weeks ago, we were not allowed to meet outside in groups of more than 2 people from 2 different households. (Now we are allowed to visit, outside, with up to six people from 2 different households - I think - the numbers change weekly.) The one exception to this hard lockdown has been that our schools are open. The children have been back in school for most of this academic year. It is very interesting to me, and a little baffling, that we have managed to keep our schools open but shut down everything else - it feels a bit like the opposite has happened in the USA. But that's just an impression. We are "opening" on Monday, 26 April 2021. This means that pubs and resataurants will be open, for OUTSIDE seating only, until 8.00 p.m. And we will be allowed to visit with more people OUTSIDE. And retail shops and gyms and hairdressers will be open again, with social distancing measures in place. And we will be allowed to cross the border into England, though international travel is still unavailable. Even with this gradual opening, we will still be in lockdown.