To All Budding Crash Investigators...... Explain

Part of the problem strangely is that it isn't a tax, the profits go to the retailer. If it was a tax then the extra income could go towards helping communities or people directly affected by alcohol abuse. Drug deaths in Scotland are at the highest rate ever, so are people turning to smack instead of cheap cider. And it didn't even affect the price of buckfast, that shite should be banned.

 

What I've noticed is a huge increase in white lightning/frosty jacks etc but a small increase on shop own brand sprits making them same price as brand names e.g. Tesco vodka same as Smirnoff. If people have an addiction putting the price up won't stop them, they will either steal or make hooch at home. It has been pointless.

 

The reason for increased drug deaths is not a 'current' problem. This is an aging population of drug users, and not too surprisingly, drug users tend to die younger!!! These aren't 18-25 year olds OD'ing, it's down to 50 year olds just dieing.

I'm not saying it is You can buy JD all the time at £13, but that would be the minimum price (Have seen it).

Minimum pricing was never meant to affect 'normal' drinkers, it just puts a barrier up for those at the lower end of the social scale. They can't ban cheapo super strength lagers and cider's, so this was s way to make it a non-economic option.

Drinking is not the problem in central Scotland, poverty is the problem. All of the manufacturing, coal, industry, etc in and the central belt was wiped out in the eighties helped along by a certain Tory bitch who hammered Scotland and offered no help. They have suffered decades of under investment and virtually no assistance to regenerate. This has led to a social class of people who have never known full time permanent employment. This is the problem, alcoholism is nearly a symptom. Until you solve the problems, you will never be rid of the symptoms of alcoholism and drug use.
This is a major socio-economic problem, not just one of a nation being particularly keen on a drink.
In a recent study 54% of Scots had a drink in the last week, but 58% of English had!!!
Those that do drink, drink to excess because they often have a very shit existence and drink is an escape.

 

It is a minimum price per unit alcohol. A bottle of decent spirits was already higher than this rate. I'm not saying you can walk into any store at any time and buy a 70cl JD for £13, but that is the MINIMUM price. They cheap ass whisky in Aldi is no longer £10, it now £13+, but as JD was already £16, has no effect on it.

 

So how did that car get there?!?

 

You confuse the 'english' with the Westminster government. Don't allow your Tory owned media to control your thoughts. We don't blame England or the English for anything. We point a finger at a London-centric government, not the same thing as a country or a population.

 

From what reports I have seen, house at end of a decent straight just before a bend. Must have been giving it a lot of beans, went straight on, hit a telegraph pole, spun around and end over end before stopping against the house.

If they weren't hammered in the car, they probably would have died !!!!

 

I'll tell you why I'm on a bit of a soapbox about this topic.

My Uncle died a couple of years back. He did not make it to 70 years old.
For as long as I have lived he has had a constant battle with alcoholism. I also have never known him to be in a full time permanent employment.

He did his apprenticeship in the local foundry and was a skilled paternmaker. He made the wooden blanks that you put sand around, before removing them and pouring molten metal into the cavity left. He took the drawings and turned them into 3D shape in wood, a highly skilled manual job.
When heavy industries died in Scotland in the late 70/ early 80s he was made redundant. There was never going to be new foundries opened up and he was on the scrap heap under the age of 30. He then spent 40+ years doing crappy menial jobs and generally being unemployed in a very depressed area of the central belt.
All his social group drunk, why not, there was feck all else to do. No employment and no chance of getting employment. It's an easy downward spiral to fall into. He stayed at home as my grandfather's carer and therefore not able to move for employment. He was a good, honest, decent man. He never had money, but still bought us a good Xmas present.

I don't tell you this for any sympathy, but as an example. There are many more of his generation and my generation caught in the same poverty trap. Even good people get trapped, the same as those that end up homeless.

 

Yep, it seems pretty pointless, but it was a well intentioned move. Supposedly some of the alcoholism and homeless charity believed it would work. We'll need to wait 5 years to see if it's true.
I believe it is intended to have more effect on young drinkers, rather than the hardened alcoholics who will drink meths just to keep the DT's away.

 

Too early to make a judgement. As I said, this will not cure anything, but is an effort to discourage young people from going down that path.

 

And the Scots think the

That sounds awful, a truly skilled person and family man turning to excessive drink because their livelihoods and purpose have been robbed.

On the other hand, we should look at the fact that new methods of manufacturing were developed that created new jobs or freed up opportunities for those doing very dangerous occupations to do something new. I not sure the working conditions of the 70’s and 80’s would pass muster now?

The crime is not that new ways of casting were found and skills of old artisans weren’t needed but that someone didn’t think to re-apply your Uncle’s skills to something the new tech couldn’t do.

it’s nothing to do with nationalism. Being left behind by ‘progress’ has happened everywhere. Absolutely nothing to do with London or any political party. Maybe there was a political party that insisted that our nation should have kept digging for coal and making steel. Given the Chinese/Indians do both so much cheaper we’d be totally buggered now even if we’ stuck with and state funded the old trades.




I think... I’m probably wrong.

 

Sorry to hear that story Mr O, you are right a lot of skilled folk lost their jobs back then but now I see that the SNP want Trident removed from Faslane do they think just four Submarines are going to go off into the sunset, NO the entire facility of service and maintenance will go with them which could also effect Scottish ship building jobs but the SNP don't care about that one.

 

Actually I think you are pretty close to the mark. We all hate change. Capitalism is the best way we have yet come up with to increase general levels of prosperity. It is uneven but beats equal misery for all.

The problem is that economic growth itself promotes change and in industry, just as in nature, a form of natural selection is at work in which extinction is a normal event. New industries supplant the old. The issue is how long the process of renewal takes.....

Metal bashing in the UK had ceased to be profitable given Far East labour costs. You cannot indefinitely subsidise loss making industries by slowly taxing to death the profitable ones to pay for them.

I listened to Alex Salmond in 2014 demanding ‘job creating powers’ from a former Labour Chancellor who could not admit that creating government payroll jobs is easy but requires a productive private tax base to fund them. You can only afford the NHS, welfare, police etc., generated by the private sector which alone injects growth into the economy. I am afraid too much SNP rhetoric and taxation policy has had the opposite of its intended effect and discouraged inward investment to the Central Belt. Their instincts are to reinforce failure rather than incentivise new growth. Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.

Party politics is where people chasing votes meet the people providing them. None of them provide a straight narrative before you even get to the question.......

 

It is painful to witness and I doubt there are many families without casualties from various addictions however occasioned. It afflicts all social classes and income levels.
I would, however, point out my Teuchter Hebridean relatives are no more afflicted than their countrymen in all four Home Nations.

 

I lived in the North East of Aberdeenshire for about 7 yrs ('89 to '96) and where we were there was a real culture of heavy drinking amongst employed and unemployed people.

Going to the pub at about 10pm and leaving at maybe 3am, the Postie would go straight to work, as did the milkman and the taxi driver.

I'm not disagreeing the Mr O's argument that summarises as Westminster let Scotland down, because it did, always has and always will.

But they also additionally let down the coal miners of Yorkshire and Wales etc when the government of the day decimated the coal industry. Buying cheaper coal from Poland and using the Police service to back up their plans, it was disgusting.

And look at the quality of politicians we have now, sparkling aren't they?

 

Yeah, like a dog turn in the frost.

 

I would suggest you are always going to be disappointed if you expect a government of any colour to do something FOR you. They are invariably better at doing things TO you. There are some things a government must do: foreign affairs, judicial system, roads, police, defence. When you get into things governments choose to do it seldom equals what you can get on the open market.

 

For the last 40 years (as can only base on my own personal experience), successive governments have let down most areas of the country other than those in the south of England. Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, North east and North West (Yorkshire get everything they deserve ) all once the great manufacturing powers of the empire have had little support in regeneration following the collapse of heavy industry. Maggie was determined to crush the unions, not at all concerned with manufacturing industry and wanted to turn us into a nation of shopkeepers.

Whilst our European neighbours built on their strengths of manufacturing (the germans), we rolled over and let ours die. How can you hope to have a strong economy when you do make anything to sell, yet want to buy in from these partners in Europe.

I totally dislike Trump, but his idea of making America a manufacturing powerhouse again, is the right way to go and we need to see this ( Just a shame he's a childish, lying, cheating dishonest scumbag). Put money into supporting engineering and manufacturing that we can sell to the rest of the world, rather than spending billions on nuclear weapons, HS2, etc. That way we can balance up our trade deficit and employ people and give them something better to do than drink or take drugs.

This is a party manifesto of mine. Remember vote Orange. The futures bright with...……..

 

How can you hope to have a strong economy when you do make anything to sell, yet want to buy in from these partners in Europe?

.......because economies are just not about ‘making things’. It is a common misapprehension that globalisation makes us all alike. It has actually promoted role specialisation. Much of the Brexit kick back has arisen because multinationals have done just that with sub-assembly, supply and final assembly in different countries. The Germans are now feeling a chill wind for being engineering heavy while their markets contract and they have beggared the Mediterranean eurozone. Our strong service based economy also lacks balance but our banks are in measurably better shape than Europe’s.

The ‘nation of shopkeepers’ slur attributed to Napoleon was about trade and profit not retail! Self evidently EU/UK balance of trade demonstrates our ability to buy.........