Leader: Accentuate the positive and Scotland doesn’t seem so bad

BARELY a week goes by without some baleful report on the negative aspects of Scottish life. We are constantly reminded of the dire toll of drug and alcohol abuse; high unemployment; poor housing standards; child poverty; high crime rates; mediocre education; areas of inadequate welfare provision and widespread obesity.

Often it can feel as if Scotland is an afflicted country with appalling social conditions and all the while subjected to cold, wet and inclement weather. Who could possibly want to live here with all these hardships and handicaps?

But while we do have many problems, we need to remind ourselves, too, that we are the envy of many. Not only is Scotland endowed with large areas of stunning natural beauty, with some of the greatest scenery in the world, but there are large areas of the country that enjoy a very high quality of life. For millions trapped in high density urban environments, Scotland is seen as a healthy and highly desirable place in which to work and live. Indeed, many professional people have chosen to move to Scotland and settle here for precisely those qualities.

Validation of this positive view of Scotland comes in the latest Bank of Scotland Quality of Life Index. This rates areas on the basis of residents’ health and life expectancy, pay and employment and school performance. The Shetland Islands comes out on top, helped by the highest employment rate in Scotland close to 84 per cent. As for rural deprivation, many residents enjoy high incomes. No less than 93 per cent report themselves to be in good or fairly good health. Life expectancy is above average and the crime rate among the lowest.

And this good life is by no means confined to the Shetlands. Not far behind is Aberdeenshire. And East Renfrewshire, Orkney Islands, Aberdeen City, East Lothian, East Dunbartonshire, Moray, the Borders and Perth and Kinross all feature in the top 10. The best paid people are in East Renfrewshire, where average weekly earnings are £729 per week, followed by Stirling and East Dunbartonshire. Life expectancy is highest in East Dunbartonshire (79.4 years), followed by Perth & Kinross (79.1 years) and East Renfrewshire (78.3 years).

What a welcome antidote this survey is to the wearisome dreary drip of reports of our shortcomings, failures and inadequacies, our poor life choices, our relative and absolute deprivation, our appalling eating and drinking habits and even our daily dance of death with such commonplace killers as tea, coffee and wine: a surfeit of these deemed certain to polish us off one week and a lack of them the next.

We seem a nation seldom out of welfare dispensaries and the doctor’s surgery. Few would dispute that Scotland has many areas and facets in need of improvement. But before we bury ourselves alive in a pit of despair, we should remind ourselves that we also have in our midst some of the best that life can offer.