Readers' Letters: Untrustworthy statistics don't help Scotland's 'drugs death capital' reputation

The Scotsman’s revelation that deaths from drug-linked causes in Scotland are being excluded from official statistics will do nothing to dispel the belief that Scotland is the drug death capital of Europe (25 August).

Deaths from drug-linked causes in Scotland are being excluded from official statistics (Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

With England and Wales apparently including such “secondary” deaths in their statistics, one must wonder why Scottish figures do not also include deaths with links to long-term drug abuse. It certainly means that by “hiding” hundreds of inconclusive drug deaths, the Scottish Government can claim to be doing things better and that the secretive nature and the lack of transparency of the Sturgeon era are being continued successfully by the “continuity candidate”!

Bob MacDougall, Kippen, Stirlingshire

… and statistics

Trust in the SNP faltered a long time ago, with Nicola Sturgeon's loss of memory and her government's ability to never have essential paperwork when requested. It should therefore come as no surprise that there is a distinct possibility that this week’s sad drugs death total is not quite what it seems.

The SNP delighted in informing Scots when our Scottish NHS "outperformed" England's when in fact a similar situation of not quite comparing like for like figures was used. It was one of Nicola Sturgeon's favourite put-downs at First Ministers Questions. The Scotsman has found many cases where the cause of death could be reinterpreted to suit keeping the drugs deaths figures lower. These deaths would have been recorded differently in England.

Where does this leave trust in SNP statistics now?

Gerald Edwards, Glasgow

A few points

Various letters yesterday (25 August) raise interesting points. This modern farce of seeking apologies and reparations for alleged sins committed in a nation’s past is laughable. I suggest the plaintiffs ask African chiefs to apologise for their ancestors’ selling their tribespeople to Arab slavers in the first place. Bearing in mind that Scottish regiments fought with great honour, particularly at Quatre Bras, should we now apologise to France for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo?

Moving on, it’s hardly surprising that the SNP is £800,000 down on donations this year; notwithstanding the fall in membership. The “missing” donations of £667,000, supposedly ringfenced, was entrusted to the party and has vanished into a Brigadoon mist. This was perhaps the last straw for SNP members who for the past eight years have seen that an authoritarian left wing government, having sold them the mirage of independence, has achieved next to nothing, other than increase national debt and deficit. And unlike Ireland, Denmark and Norway, so often cited as examples for Scotland to follow, our annual expenditure exceeds income, this year down £2 billion from £23bn last year.Secrecy? Under Nicola Sturgeon secrecy was the order of the day. “No comment.” “I can’t recall.” Any questions she didn’t like, she simply ignored. All part of of an overall tendency of concealment. But now the pigeons, more likely vultures, are coming home to roost.

Doug Morrison, Cranbrook, Kent

Mining conflict

Leah Gunn Barrett blames Margaret Thatcher for Scotland's dire drug death statistics, her closing of heavy industry and the unemployment that followed being responsible (Letters, 23 August). Clearly Ms Barrett subscribes to the biblical opinion that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, because Thatcher's battles with Arthur Scargill and the demise of the coal industry happened a generation ago.

Even at the time, however, I suspect coal miners would have been bitterly offended to be described, as Ms Barrett avers, as filling the void after losing their jobs with alcohol, drugs and violence. Today we brag about our progress to a net zero economy, with getting rid of coal being particularly important. As for other heavy industries, the less said about shipbuilding under our own political control the better.

Hugh Pennington, Aberdeen

Poor state

I am the first to accept that mistakes have been made by Holyrood but has Scotland prospered as part of the UK? Consider the record of successive Conservative and Labour UK governments. Our heavy industries have been obliterated; our oil revenues sold off and the proceeds squandered; our public utilities privatised with enormous profits for shareholders but with soaring costs and a deterioration in services for the long-suffering public. It was Gordon Brown who deregulated the banks, an act of folly that led directly to the financial crash of 2008, and it was the same Gordon Brown who opted for the costly PFI scheme to finance public capital projects and who cavalierly sold off 56 per cent of the UK’s precious gold reserves. And it was a Labour government that took the UK into a costly and illegal war in Iraq.

Since then we have had 13 years of Tory austerity. Years which have witnessed relentless pressure on struggling public services with shocking consequences for those least able to cope. We now have 3 million families having to resort to food banks to get by.

The Trussell Trust calculates that a food parcel is issued every eight seconds in the UK. Shockingly the majority of those having to access food banks are actually in employment. Recently the Buttle UK children’s charity reported that of the 4.2 million children living in poverty, 120,000 children are now considered to be destitute. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation defines destitution as “going without the essentials needed to eat, stay warm and dry, and keep clean”. There are reports from England of children being kept off school because they lack proper clothes to wear.

What a shocking indictment of this incompetent, heartless Tory government. Add in a faltering economy, punitive energy costs, rising mortgage rates, huge overspends of billions on various UK capital projects, record levels of government debt and the incontrovertible damage being caused by Brexit, then are we really Better Together?

Perhaps Union-supporting correspondents might like to shift their critical gaze to Westminster for a change.

Eric Melvin, Edinburgh

Housing doubts

The Scottish Government's latest announcement (your report, 25 August) says up to £960,000 will be provided to deliver affordable housing over the next three years. Perhaps next time they could help us understand how affordable this housing will be, by stating the number of homes that money will actually build?

J Lewis, Edinburgh

Material goods

An excellent suggestion from Malcolm Parkin that we erect a massive dome over the UK to keep out all the nasty greenhouse gases from other countries (Letters, 24 August). Of course, this cannot be plastic since plastic is derived from fossil fuels. However, rubber is a natural and green source which could be used and there is a plentiful supply available from all the dinghies crossing The Channel.

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Student money

Sir Tom Hunter is correct to call for reductions in corporation tax for key growth sectors as they may be our only future industries. Growing up in Aberdeen we had shipbuilding, fishing, textiles, paper making and food processing. All gone. We still have oil but that is under threat from our governing party, the Greens. Take away North Sea revenue and our biggest earner is overseas students. China accounts for 40 per cent so what happens to that if tensions rise between them and Taiwan, with UK travel restrictions?

Lewis Finnie, Edinburgh

Beyond preaching

Steuart Campbell, in his criticism of MSP Kate Forbes’s reported statement that “Behaviour has never changed as a result of being preached at” (Letters, 24 August), seems to confuse moralistic lecturing with true Gospel preaching, which, he rightly says, is what the Christian church should be doing.

Gospel preaching aims at changing behaviour for the better, but not by moralising and telling people to try harder to be better. Rather, it is introducing people to the person and work of Jesus Christ as the one who can deal with the basic human problem, sin, which disrupts our relationship with God, with one another and with the world in which we live. A personal faith in Jesus Christ leads to change in all areas of our lives as he gives us a new heart and the motive power to love God, to love one another and to care responsibly for Creation.

(Rev Dr) Donald MacDonald, Edinburgh

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