The Fall Out Continues - thread 6

[TheShadowyFeminist]

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I've never seen anyone take personal offence about an attack on Sturgeon. She was found not guilty of breaching the ministerial code. that's just a fact, not a bunfight. And something everyone here seems to want to avoid talking about now, strangely. The number of posts on here retorting to some of the accusations is a drop in the ocean compared to the deluge of daily attacks on Sturgeon. If people can't cope with even that miniscule amount of opposition it's a bit worrying

StarryEyeSurprise can you detail where you got the 20% figures from - all data I've looked at suggests 10% and alcohol related liver disease was falling in the 2-3 years prior to minimum pricing being introduced. Don't get me wrong, any reduction for any reason is something to be celebrated, and I think Scotland's figures were so bad that minimum pricing had to at least be worth a try.

I am not interested in the politics of it but practically has minimum pricing not meant an increase in illegal drug use?
(Or did I imagine this? Quite possible these days.)

In my, tbh, fairly uninformed opinion, minimum alcohol pricing looks like an attempt to be seen to be doing something about a huge problem, without the will to tackle the problem in a meaningful way. Is there any research on the effects of the minimum pricing on consumption?

What's needed is a sustained campaign to change the culture of over consumption of alcohol being acceptable, of getting drunk as a teenage rite of passage, wine o' clock etc.

Also, one of the issues with minimum pricing was the missed opportunity to use the extra £ raised by the price increases to fund support for people with alcohol problems. Instead the extra £ just goes into the supermarkets/pub coffers.

In my, tbh, fairly uninformed opinion, minimum alcohol pricing looks like an attempt to be seen to be doing something about a huge problem, without the will to tackle the problem in a meaningful way.

I suspect that's an embedded feature for SNP/Scotgov generally & not a glitch.

GRA reform is similarly a superficial way to virtue signal 'progressive' credentials while pretending not to notice the glaring problems that their self ID proposals create. Instead, Sturgeon will imply or outright state objections to their 'progressive' proposals are only because those people are 'transphobic'.

The "verdict" on Sturgeon was discussed extensively at the time. One of the two reports said she had misled parliament. The other boiled down to "well, she did say that but I don't see why she would have lied."

In essence, Hamilton broadly believed Sturgeon's version but said it was for parliament to decide if they had been misled but (in essence because he believed her) then he didn't consider it a breach of the code.

I continue to think her conduct over this entire affair is extremely poor and personally I don't believe her. But that is what this boils down to; do you believe she forgot. Given everything else we know, and the people who are involved, I don't believe she did. But that's all it can be because it's pretty hard to prove someone did or didn't recall, and IMO Hamilton was going for closer to a "beyond reasonable doubt" level of evidence whereas the committee seems closer to "balance of probabilities".

The committee report was damning in many ways of the conduct of the scottish government over this whole affair, yet that seems to have been merrily brushed under the carpet too.

Thanks for the link to the Times article @TheShadowyFeminist It is astonishing what a bad memory NS seems to have, for someone who is known as a details person. The lobbyist, in this case, claims in their submission to the lobbying register that they held a face-to-face meeting with her. NS did not record the meeting in her diary and the SNP say it was a five-minute meet and greet with a range of other stakeholders.

Big difference between a 'face-to-face meeting' and a handshake!

Not to mention the £100k donation to the SNP and Yes campaign they made, followed by the go-ahead for a £650 million housing scheme a few months later.

Kudos to the lobbyist at least for trying to follow the code and register their connection. As they clearly know, a cover-up always makes things look even dodgier.

But cover-up / amnesia seems to be completely ingrained in the SNP m.o. Government by gang, Alex Bell called it is the Press & Journal recently. Once you see it, it just keeps repeating.

@mibbelucieachwell

In my, tbh, fairly uninformed opinion, minimum alcohol pricing looks like an attempt to be seen to be doing something about a huge problem, without the will to tackle the problem in a meaningful way. Is there any research on the effects of the minimum pricing on consumption?

What's needed is a sustained campaign to change the culture of over consumption of alcohol being acceptable, of getting drunk as a teenage rite of passage, wine o' clock etc.

I think there was also an issue that the minimum unit price was specified back in 2012 and hasn't been reviewed since. This will have diluted the effect somewhat. Roughly (based on a general UK wide Tobacco and alcohol RPI), that 50p should be closed to 64p now

Lookchicken not sure it is cause and effect. However targeting alcohol abuse is a distraction from failing to deal with ever increasing levels of death and destitution from drug abuse.

Good that the latter is now becoming the focus. I had thought that there was broad consensus about minimum alcohol pricing now? England is monitoring the impact in Scotland and Wales and may yet follow suit. Notable that Glasgow chose to conspicuously enforce the by-laws on outdoor drinking in all public parks over the weekend. Edinburgh seemingly didn't and had a rammy as a result.

My Glasgwegian DC think it socially unacceptable and a bit unsettling to see people drinking in public outside licensed events because it is so alien to them.

Kudos to the lobbyist at least for trying to follow the code and register their connection.

Remarkable isn't it? The FM being shown up by the lobbyist for following the code. This is where being the most powerful person in Scotland for 7 years gets you - serial selective amnesia & the appearance of impropriety. Again.

lookachicken. That would be interesting to find out.

sui bans on consuming a legal substance outside in public seems like such mixed messaging to me.

statistically. Good point. I wonder what the mechanism for adjusting the pricing is?

For interest, the alcohol related death stats from the NRS

2000= 1,144
2001= 1,228
2002= 1,334
2003= 1,354
2004= 1,331
2005= 1,354
2006= 1,417
2007= 1,282
2008= 1,316
2009= 1,180
2010= 1,183
2011= 1,135
2012= 968
2013= 1,002
2014= 1,036
2015= 1,045
2016= 1,139
2017= 1,120
2018= 1,136
2019 = 1,020

2018 was when minimum alcohol pricing came in. So you could say it helped. Only, similar falls seen in 2007, 2009 and 2012 so I don't think you can really conclude this is due to MUP at this point.

What's the equivalent for drug related deaths?

WOuld it surprise you I was already looking that up @TheShadowyFeminist?

Remarkably similar numbers at the moment, but a very different trajectory

2000= 292
2001= 332
2002= 382
2003= 317
2004= 356
2005= 336
2006= 421
2007= 455
2008= 574
2009= 545
2010= 485
2011= 584
2012= 581
2013= 527
2014= 614
2015= 706
2016= 868
2017= 934
2018= 1,187
2019= 1,264

For interest I also found comparative stats with England/Wales etc
In 2018 (latest data for this)

England - 48 drug related deaths per million
Wales - 66
NI - 58
Scotland - 218. Nearly 4.6 times the rate of England

The Glasgow by-laws have been in place since 1996 and broadly supported. In general they make parks etc much more family friendly and sociable. There are still licensing provisions for events eg Merchant City Festival. There is always a bit of grumbling and usually light touch enforcement. There was some agitation to lift the ban to allow outdoor drinking last Summer when takeaway pints were introduced elsewhere. The focus now seems to be on getting the hospitality sector back to normal in premises rather than acting as expensive Offies.

Not in the least Statistically 😁

That's quite a shocking set of statistics. The numbers have effectively doubled since 2014, and are on par with alcohol related deaths.

It was discussed in a very one-sided way as I recall and the thread swiftly moved on to whatever mud raking could be dredged up that had nothing at all even to do with the inquiries.

personally I don't believe her.
That's your entitlement. As someone pointed out on here on the Salmond trial, what you or I might 'believe' doesn't matter. She was found not to have broken the ministerial code.

The only reason the mistake (a discrepancy of two days) was blown up to the extent it was is that Salmond claimed it proved that the meeting at her house was 'Government' and not 'party' business (and therefore should have been reported to the Permanent Secretary). There was absolutely no reason whatsoever for him to make the deal of it he did, if not for that. However, even if he had proved that it was Government business, she had a valid reason for not reporting the meeting anyway (which Hamilton accepted) in that to do so would have risked prejudicing the investigation. That in itself would have risked a breach. So there was a conflict and she made a choice. So the so called 'lie' didn't even prove what Salmond wanted it to prove anyway.

I don't think criticisms of the Scottish Government were brushed under the carpet. Nicola Sturgeon has apologised many time for the fact women were let down. The whole point of the (parliamentary) inquiry was to find out what went wrong and why and John Swinney said in parliament the recommendations will be acted on.

As I've said before. I'm surprised people don't feel disgusted and duped by some of Salmond's 'evidence', like the carefully edited whatsapp messages which tried to paint people in a certain light to back up his 'stitch-up' claim. That really seems pretty twisted

@TheShadowyFeminist

Not in the least Statistically 😁

That's quite a shocking set of statistics. The numbers have effectively doubled since 2014, and are on par with alcohol related deaths.

The ages are noticably different too

I can't see the average age on the drug stats, but they do have the quartiles and the median.

Median drug age death - 42
average alcohol age death - 58

(that's 2019)

In 2019 drugs killed 50 people aged 15-24. For alcohol it was 2.
25-24 was 196 vs 30

So they have noticeably different distributions in terms of who they are affecting and how. Drugs are killing more young people, and more quickly (more deaths will be due to overdose rather than gradual damage I'd imagine, whereas alcohol is the opposite). But effectively it gives you a picture that drugs will be resulting in more "life years" being lost for the same number of deaths.

@SempreSuiGeneris

I am surprised that Brexit is so prominent in people's thinking tbh. Even the SNP seem to be saying that full Independence from UK could take the best part of a decade. Given how long Brexit took to sort out that looks like a fair assessment.

Full Independence is, I think (?), the first hurdle to overcome before contemplating Scotland rejoining the EU. Surely a debate for 2031 rather than now?

Why would anyone want to live in an independent Scotland that wasn't part of the EU?

A tiny country on the periphery of Europe with a distaste for human rights and a thinly veiled racist attitude amongst supporters of its principle party for its nearest neighbour. Hardly appealing.

But effectively it gives you a picture that drugs will be resulting in more "life years" being lost for the same number of deaths.

That's sobering. And tragic.

My Glasgwegian DC think it socially unacceptable and a bit unsettling to see people drinking in public outside licensed events because it is so alien to them.

Its just bizarre why this is a problem in Scotland, when its literally normal behaviour causing few problems in other European countries. Impromptu bbq with alcohol in the park - normal surely? Party on the beach with alcohol - also normal. I didn't even realise this was yet another rule in Scotland.

I do feel duped by Salmond. But he is not in power and is very unlikely to ever have power. He is not the one making me pay higher taxes than in England. Or presiding over drugs deaths (actually, really shocking figures) or with responsibility for education.

These are why his dishonesty doesn't matter as much.

fair enough Cismyfatarse you disagree with policies. But a great many posts over about six (I think) reincarnations of this thread made great play of how Salmond had bombshell evidence that proved this that and the other. Turned out it did no such thing, and in fact, 'warped' the words of innocent people who ultimately have no way of answering back. Sad that that was all aided and abetted right here and then conveniently never mentioned again.

The drugs pandemic is a massive tragedy and shame for Scotland. My family live in the rural Borders and every visit there are more stories of local young people who've died directly from drugs and indirectly from drug-related violence. No one is untouched.

When I grew up alcoholism was the disease - but like the stats show, it killed people when they were older. This is hitting the young. I'm not sure it is connected to the alcohol pricing laws. There may be some affect, but it feels cultural and generational. Just the latest incarnation of a national addiction affliction. My own family had generations of alcoholics. Now there's an age divide, the addicts over 50 are alcoholics, those under 50 have drug issues. And they die young. There is little to no help available. I am beyond despair as I watch another young relative of mine destroy themself.

My own view is that one of the main cultural reasons addictions are so bad in Scotland is because of the impact of the Calvinist idea of pre-destination that is sewn into the culture. What it means is that you're either predestined for salvation or damnation and that your external success in life or not is evidence of where you're headed. There is no room to be rehabilitated, it would be pointless, it's who you are. So if you fall into an addiction, it's just evidence that you're no good and it's your own fault. Obviously, religion doesn't hold that much sway these days, but these powerful ideas are still strong in the culture.

When it comes to policy. I think rather than adding more Calvinist sticks, we need more compassion and support. More mental health service and rehab.