Readers' Letters: Scotland has power to curb drug deaths

Scotland has the worst drug death toll in Europe (Picture: Andy Buchanan/AFP via Getty Images)

Stan Grodynski suggests lack of powers from the UK is to blame for the tragedy that is the toll of drug deaths in Scotland (Letters, 23 August). Each death is disastrous for everyone involved, yet despite having the same powers, if not more, than any other part of the UK, Scotland has the worst drug death toll in Europe. The claim, “We need more powers” is nonsense.

The death count is yet another example of the SNP government taking its eye off the ball. Its performance, as in so many other areas, is disgraceful and a sign of total incompetence. Deprivation is not being addressed by the SNP. If Scotland’s economy had grown as well as that of the rest of the UK, more Scots would have jobs, there would be fewer areas of deprivation and Scotland would have more tax revenue to help those in need. The blame for this over the last 17 years rests solely with the SNP.To use these or any other sad deaths to promote “we need more powers”, does Scotland a disservice.

Brian Barbour, Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland

Vicious circle

During Nicola Sturgeon’s tenure as First Minister, she did little to help the poor. Out of a population of 5.5 million Scots, roughly 3m are dependent on state benefits.

Why is this relevant? Because there’s a direct connection between illiteracy and poverty in Scotland. Statistics show that 26.7 per cent of Scots are illiterate, while 21 per cent live below the breadline.

It’s a vicious circle: if you’re illiterate, how can you apply for jobs? So you remain living in poverty.

A report elsewhere this week stated that Scotland “is still top of Europe’s drug deaths league”.

Poverty, illiteracy, drugs. Scotland is not some third world nation. It behoves all Scots politicians to tackle and resolve these serious issues.

Doug Morrison, Tenterden, Kent

Empty words

After dodging interviews for weeks, Kamala Harris finally had an opportunity to showcase her “new way forward” but all she provided was balloons and fluff. The Democratic Party has tried desperately to give Ms Harris more gravitas than she has but it looks as if Donald Trump will blow her away.

There were no concrete policies, no genuine ways forward and no admissions about the failings of the last four years while she was second-in-command. Even her current “bete-noir”, Gaza, was glossed over.

The SNP, fresh from destroying Scotland's links with Israel, has form on being very antagonistic towards Donald Trump the last time he was President. What will it do if he wins again?

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

Anthem for all

Brian Bannatyne-Scott’s ad hominem attack on me (Letters, 22 August) is misplaced. He blames me for “curmudgeonly anti-Scottish rhetoric" in defence of the UK National Anthem. Sorry? In defending the status of the National Anthem, I am doing precisely that. In fact, I am not really entirely sure what point Mr Ballantyne-Scott is making. He is also happy with its use in a GB context. Bravo. He doesn't seem to get the fact that it is the Scots and Welsh teams which opted out of using the National Anthem. I don't see that as an excuse for attacks on the English rugby team because they continue to use our National Anthem. As I said in my letter, it is “the Anthem for all of us in the UK”. Clearly, he agrees, so where does the invective come from?

Where we differ is that he sees nothing “anti-English about objecting to its adoption by exclusively English teams”. That's fine, because it wasn't adopted by the English team. The Scots team adopted “Flower of Scotland” and deliberately opted out of the National Anthem. Perhaps that makes it clearer for him? Perhaps Gavin Esler's interesting article in The Scotsman of April 12 1999, debating this very issue of anthems, is worth a read? He mentions how The Scots Magazine printed the rousingly patriotic words of “God Save the King” even while Scotland was effectively under Jacobite occupation. He also asked whether Scotland effectively has two national anthems with the advent of “Flower of Scotland” and, like me, managed it without being “anti-Scottish”.

Andrew HN Gray, Edinburgh

Clapping the cap

Treasury officials confirmed that the two-child benefit cap would not be scrapped in the October UK Budget, with borrowing surging to a higher-than-forecast £3.1 billion (your report, 22 August).

Cue for outrage from the SNP, whose MPs and MSPs have shown for each of the last 16 years that they have had a Fail pass with honours in maths and economics. The two-child cap prevents parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third child. There were 14.4 million children under the age of 18 in the UK in 2023 and it is estimated by the Department for Works and pensions that 1.6 million children are affected by the cap, so if the cap were taken off it would cost taxpayers another £2.5bn every year, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank.

Why should taxpayers fund those who have children they cannot afford?

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

UK’s bread bin

Labour’s charm offensive died on the day we helped Keir Starmer into government. No more rousing speeches about having Grangemouth up and running within a few months, no more offers of cash to support any of our industries.

Our trade unions and Labour supporters are urging their Scottish members to strike for more pay. The binmen went first and achieved a handsome rise at the cost of other essential services provided by the SNP government, such as the pensioners’ winter heating allowance and the ability to compensate for Labour’s refusal to withdraw the two-child cap.

“Let both parents work”, they say, but a mother, caring for a home and more than two young children, is already in full-time occupation, often doing unpaid nightly overtime as well.

Meanwhile, the Labour-led Stirling Council, with Conservative backing, decided to give permission for a Harness Trotting Race Track, obliterating part of the site of the Battle of Bannockburn.

Destroy iconic historic sites marking Scottish independence and children will forget that Bruce led Scotland to freedom.

It is a site that Scots will gather at when we finally achieve our independence again. We can’t afford to lose it. Schoolchildren are brought to see what remains of the battlefield. Tourists visit it in droves. They don’t want to place a bet on the next race. They can do that in their own countries.

Unless we support the political parties which seek Scottish independence, Scotland will continue as the UK’s bread bin, as is demonstrated by Labour’s first decision about our energy supplies, which was to promise grid improvements and send our electricity South.

Scotland makes it and pays for it and England takes it.

Parents, if you want to leave your children a thriving country to work in, it is time to encourage the parties for independence to stop talking about it and start the separation process.

Elizabeth Scott, Edinburgh

Mismanaged

The SNP’s English auditors report that the party had a surplus of £661,568 in 2023, compared with a deficit of £804,278 in 2022. This seems strange, given the drop in SNP membership and the drying up of donations during 2023. No wonder AMS Accountants, the auditors, refer to “a limitation in scope of our audit work in relation to cash and cheque income for the current and prior year-end”. This resulted from the SNP’s failure to keep “original documentation in respect to some items of cash and cheques received, relating to membership, donations and raffle income” before July last year. The effect of this on opening reserves, they say, is that some of the items referring to income, opening reserves or related balance sheets “may be materially misstated”.

If this is how the SNP conducts its financial affairs, what are we to expect when it loses its substantial Short Money for MPs in 2024?

Jill Stephenson, Edinburgh

Little choice

The treatment of the Scottish Government’s experimental abolition of peak fares on ScotRail by politicians, trade unions, commentators and letter writers in the Scottish media makes me wonder whether any initiative can be given fair consideration. This step, presented as a proposal to help with cost-of-living pressures and to get traffic off the roads, was explicitly linked to an increase in traffic of 10 per cent to limit the cost to the taxpayer. It failed to meet that target and is therefore to be abandoned.

That decision has been condemned by the rail unions, which do not acknowledge that their own industrial action, that has so limited ScotRail’s ability to offer a reliable and full timetable, might have contributed to the outcome. It has been condemned by the media, in some cases as imposition of a “stealth tax”, though if the project had continued at a loss it would, no doubt, have been an example of Government profligacy. It has been condemned by opposition politicians in the conventional kneejerk reaction but without any coherent argument. I despair.

James Scott, Edinburgh

Off peak

So the Transport Minister is reinstating Peak Rail Fares because the discount mainly benefited the middle class. Perhaps she should remember they have other names – workers and taxpayers. Hopefully in 2026 they will be known as non-SNP voters.

Elizabeth Hands, Armadale, West Lothian

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