Readers' Letters: Right for Chancellor to take action on health and economic harm caused by alcohol

Right for Chancellor to take action on health and economic harm caused by alcoholRight for Chancellor to take action on health and economic harm caused by alcohol
Right for Chancellor to take action on health and economic harm caused by alcohol
The Scottish Whisky Association argued in your pages (Letters 31st October) that “The UK Budget was full of betrayal for Scotland’s whisky industry”. Alcohol policy choices, such as those made by the Chancellor in this week’s Budget to maintain the real terms value of off trade duties, affect many individuals and communities, not just the interests of the companies who are members of the SWA. The alcohol industry has for too long enjoyed real terms duty cuts at the expense of our health and the public purse.

Alcohol harm is growing and is a cost to society and the economy. In 2022, there were 10,048 alcohol-related deaths in the UK, the highest number on record. The World Health Organization has identified alcohol duty, along with other pricing measures such as Minimum Unit Price, as being the most effective ways to reduce alcohol-related harm. Despite this, the spirits industry benefited from successive tax cuts, as spirits duty has been cut in real terms for the almost all of ten years preceding 2023 and duties are now at historical lows.

The SWA argue that that an increase in duties does not lead to an increase in revenue. However, in the case of the 2023 increase, which was also in line with inflation at the time, the figures were skewed by the behaviour of their members in releasing excess product during the months of notice they were given of the pending increase. We hope they do not repeat that prior to this increase which will come into force in February 2025. Scottish Secretary Ian Murray said that “This increase is the right thing to do in these particular circumstances.” We agree. It is only right that the Chancellor takes action on the health and economic harm caused by alcohol, and we that is why welcome the increase in duty announced in her budget.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Dr Peter Rice, SHAAP (Scottish Health Action on Alcohol Problems) Chair

Reckless spending

With taxation in the UK already at a 70 year high, Chancellor Reeves has increased it further. With the national debt over 100 per cent of GDP she has increased that too. Instead of cutting government spending she will recklessly spend more billions which the UK does not have, on projects which are not needed. There are billions to be saved if she were a prudent chancellor, which she is not. A red pen and a ruler could be taken to some or all of the following : HS2 whose cost are already over £100 billion; the net zero project which according to National Grid ESO will cost £3 trillion; supporting foreign wars overseas of which Ukraine has sucked £13bn from the public purse; £7.2bn a year on foreign aid, £4bn on illegal immigrants, and £300bn annually on social security. When you consider in view of all this expenditure that Chancellor Reeves is emphatic that cutting the winter fuel payment for 10 million pensioners was essential to save only £1.4bn you begin to worry about her competence in high office, or her empathy with senior citizens who have worked all their lives and paid the taxes which Reeves is now squandering.

William Loneskie, Lauder, Berwickshire

Tory honesty

The budget has come and gone, pretty much as most expected. Now to the next big political event. I have no more than a passing interest in the UK Tory leadership contest other than as with all parties, I would like an honest, pragmatic, non-dogma-driven person in charge.

However, I was struck by Kemi Badenoch's recent remarks about Scotland. She clearly stated an unassailable fact about something that has grown into a kind of legend in Scotland over the past decade or so of nationalist prominence in our politics - a prominence I must say now happily and rapidly disappearing.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Scotland, she said emphatically, is not the SNP. A spade is a spade after all. That is the kind of leader I appreciate.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Culture of fear

As members of ScotPAG, who are a group of professionals thinking collaboratively about gender issues in healthcare, education, and social work, we take issue with the assertions made by CMO Gregor Smith, regarding staff recruitment in so-called ‘gender clinics’. (Scotsman 29/10/24).

Whilst it may be convenient for Professor Smith to blame public debate as a reason for staff being reluctant to become ‘gender identity clinicians’ the truth is that such a category does not exist. The hastily constructed GI ‘speciality’ differs fundamentally from others in the NHS, in that it has galloped along, with unseemly hubris, fuelled by an unscientific belief that humans can change sex.

The SG has consistently ignored warnings of unethical, potentially dangerous treatments, and, in contrast to the Tavistock Clinic, failed to conduct an internal investigation into the practices of its Scottish equivalent, the Sandyford Clinic. This left staff unsure about its clinical governance, especially in light of the Cass Report.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It is our view that rather than blame concerned parents, teachers, social workers, health workers, and members of the public, the CMO should look inwards, towards institutions that are rife with training materials that were written by activists, not expert professionals, and which undermine professional knowledge and ethics, thus creating safeguarding risks.

The result of their proliferation has produced a culture of fear in the NHS, driven by an ideology provided, ironically, by non-clinicians.

Carolyn Brown, Convenor ScotPAG, Kingskettle, Fife

Weather warning

How do you get a year’s worth of rainfall in just 8 hours?

The answer is “Positive feedback”. No, not the kind politicians get when they make a good speech, but the sort you get when you push a microphone too close to a loudspeaker powered by an amplifier and the system howls. The way this kind of electronic feedback is stopped is either by pulling the microphone far enough away from the speaker or by turning off the power. Unfortunately most people in this country are unaware that our weather systems are driven by a similar effect. Because water vapour contributes to atmospheric pressure, and air with a low pressure is able to hold less water vapour/moisture then once rain starts falling in an area of low pressure, the depression deepens bringing in more moisture- laden air which increases the rainfall until there is not enough moisture left and the rain stops.

This is a normal pattern of events. What is not normal and could lead to widespread devastation is the outgassing of methane by permafrost which massively amplifies any effects of global warming by carbon dioxide. It is not a process we can stop by switching off the power as in the electronic case. A particularly sickening form of positive feedback enhancing climate change is the subsidy given to the petroleum industry by our government, so we can all continue living off the fat of the land, paid for by the suffering of others.

Henryk Belda, Edinburgh

Poverty correction

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

John Swinney’s claims he’s taken 100,000 children out of poverty and has been corrected by his civil servants, who say he should have said “kept” 100,000 out of poverty, which is a different thing entirely.

There are actually around 240,000 children still living in poverty in Scotland according to March 2024 statistics. Most of these children come from ethnic families in which many adults are unemployed.

This is not unique to Scotland. There is also high child poverty in England’s Midlands, where, as in Scotland, it is mainly the ethnic communities which are suffering.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

Ethical dilemma

The public debate concerning assisted dying is now at least a decade old. Those against a change in the law seem fixated on two issues. First, that interested parties (in particular close relatives) will be motivated to induce in the dying person the feeling that they are are in some sense no longer wanted. Such a viewpoint surely casts empathy, trust and loyalty in (family) relations in a very poor light. Second, the slippery slope argument. This says little for one’s faith in the democratic process. As Thomas Jefferson put it: ‘‘Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?’’

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

When confronted with any ethical problem, if you think in terms of four over-riding principles: Autonomy (the right of the individual to determine his or her own fate), Beneficence (the obligation to help others achieve their potential), Justice (the fair allocation of resources) and Non-malfeasance (do no harm) then you can handle most ethical problems.

Doug Clark, Currie, Midlothian

Short term memory

The Chancellor Rachael Reeves is very clear about the fourteen years of Tory misrule, but has a very short memory recall of the previous thirteen years when Gordon Brown promised to end the years of boom and bust, and was the architect of the biggest boom and bust in Christendom – 2008. When Labour was ousted in 2010 one wag in the Treasury left a note on the desk, saying “the money has all gone”.

Labour left the country with an annual deficit of £156 billion and borrowing increased from £340bn to £930bn, and it took five years of so called austerity to bring the UK finances into some sort of balance.

The Chancellor has promised many things which will benefit the country and has funded them, but will learn that throwing money at a problem does not necessarily fix it, Tony Blair spent £12bn on an all - singing NHS computer system which was then scrapped.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Some of the biggest problems facing the UK are the low rate of productivity, especially in the public sector and, and how the money can be spent in an economic, efficient and effective manner.

James Macintyre, Linlithgow

Write to The Scotsman

We welcome your thoughts – NO letters submitted elsewhere, please. Write to [email protected] including name, address and phone number – we won't print full details. Keep letters under 300 words, with no attachments, and avoid 'Letters to the Editor/Readers’ Letters' or similar in your subject line – be specific. If referring to an article, include date, page number and heading.

Related topics:

Comments

 0 comments

Want to join the conversation? Please or to comment on this article.