Letters: The callous stigma that is attached to drug addiction

Dealing with Covid has required hitherto unimaginable political, social and economic steps as well as the most massive research and medical efforts, while Scotland’s drug problem still only attracts fragmentary, piecemeal and wholly inadequate interventions, which are heavily dependent on the third sector.

The answer to this conundrum should shame us all. Drug overdoses are seen as a moral affliction which addicts bring on themselves, while the better-off are protected and insulated from addiction and its consequences.

Covid – at least in theory – threatens us all and does not discriminate. There is no stigma attached to dying from Covid.

Far from being moral leaders, our politicians quietly uphold the callous stigma associated with addiction, shying away from a meaningful scale of action to address the drugs crisis.

Among Scotland’s roughly 60,000 drug addicts, death by overdose threatens far fewer than death from the cumulative impacts on health and safety that addiction brings.

Add to that the effects on the families, loved ones and neighbours of addicts, and you get a volume of casual harm and misery in our midst which future generations will surely regard with Dickensian horror.

Linda Holt, Councillor for East Neuk & Landward, Pittenweem, Anstruther.

‘BIGOTED’ VICTIMS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE

WE were appalled to tune in to the Guilty Feminist podcast last week and hear Mridul Wadhwa, CEO of Edinburgh Rape Crisis, frame some victims of sexual violence as “bigots” and suggesting they would be challenged on prejudices when receiving care from crisis services.

Equally concerning was the suggestion from Wadhwa that victims should “reframe their trauma”, creating an obligation on the part of survivors to act in a specific way.

The bigotry and prejudice to which Wadhwa refers is women requesting female-only support to help them recover from the trauma of rape and sexual assault. This issue has been further complicated by the fact that, according to survivors who attended a meeting with the CEO of Rape Crisis Scotland, males who identify as transwomen “are not only women but female too”.

We agree with the core values of Rape Crisis Scotland that support should be non-judgmental and that support needs to be trauma-informed, ensuring the service user is in control of their journey to recovery.

So we are doubly dismayed to see that Rape Crisis Scotland has chosen to eschew these principles in order to support Wadhwa.

That Rape Crisis Scotland chose to issue a statement condemning women who objected to Wadhwa’s framing rather than engage with the issues demonstrates an increasingly ideological and political bias within the Scottish Government-funded women’s sector that has no place when treating women who bear the brunt of male violence.

We ask Rape Crisis Scotland to engage with women further to reassure them they will not be judged when accessing crisis services and that they will be able to receive female-only services if they feel they require it, no matter where in Scotland they are located.

Elsie Inglis, on behalf of Sole Sisters (@VoteWithOurFeet), Edinburgh.

BEST OF BOTH WORLDS IN SCHOOL ASSESSMENT

I WAS a teacher of mathematics for 36 years and was of that era whereby end-of-year Higher and Standard/Intermediate/National 4/5 exams were the norm.

I must say that, during that time, I felt it was the best way, the “fairest” way, to assess children’s progress. Now, I am not so sure.

With all the fuss surrounding what is the most equitable way forward, might I offer a simple solution that might satisfy both exam-verses-continuous assessment cohorts: a mixture of both?

As an example, let’s take maths, my own subject. Let teachers submit on March 1 a raw percentage mark (easy in maths), based on ongoing assessments from August to February, whether it be a series of “mini assessments” or a December/January Prelim.

Say, for example, wee Johnny is awarded a 72% mark, which is forwarded to the SQA, or whoever is in charge at that time. This is then fed into the system.

From March onwards, schools concentrate on preparing pupils for a single paper exam in the subjects for which they are being presented and in May/June, they sit their external exam as normal, but with only one paper so as not to “over-examine” them. The SQA marks and assigns them an exam percentage, say, in Jonny’s case 64%.

The two are then combined and averaged out at 68% : Johnny’s final score. Based on this amalgam of approaches, he is then awarded an A, B or C, depending on the SQA’s (and the Scottish government’s) cut-off scores for these grades.

Everyone is happy: the exam devotees and the continuous-assessment stalwarts. Simple ? Yes/No?

Tom Strang, Former PT Maths, Barrhead, Glasgow.

CYCLICAL NATURE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

FULL marks to Iain Macwhirter for his enlightened opinions in his article, “I’m sorry, but we can’t save the world by going green” (August 11).

In his opening paragraph he wrote, “Dogger Bank [in the middle of the North Sea] used to be a land bridge to Europe before it was flooded by climate change around 6,000 years ago”.

I well remember being taught such facts while at school more than 70 years ago, when the present prophets of doom were not even a twinkle in someone’s eye.

Similarly, the ice ages began more than two billion years ago and lasted until some 11,000 years ago, during which times the Earth’s climate repeatedly changed between very cold periods, during which time glaciers covered large parts of the world, and very warm periods, when they melted, causing sea levels to rise. Sounds familiar?

Even the most passionate supporters of the current “man-made” disaster theories leading to a doomsday scenario would, I suggest, have extreme difficulty in using their guesstimates to explain away how those prehistoric events occurred when homo sapiens didn’t even exist. When referring to global warming, climate change or whatever, the word “cyclical”, as used by informed scientists and meteorologists, springs to mind.

Brian Farish, Edinburgh.

HEAD-SPINNING FOOTBALL TRANSFER FEES

IT has become something of a cliche to complain about the sky-high prices paid to secure the services of certain footballers, but some recent events beggar belief.

Lionel Messi is an outrageously talented footballer and though he will undoubtedly be a huge pull at his new team, Paris St-Germain, he is not as fast as he used to be. Is he worth £1million a week? Just possibly. He will certainly make his team favourites to win the next Champions League.

But Manchester City, another club funded by a petro-carbon empire, has just spent £100m on Jack Grealish, a young player from Aston Villa. He is an exciting talent and will go far.

But £100m for one player? Does anyone else think this is nothing short of obscene?

Football clubs say they have to compete in the open market for the best talent, which I concede is the case, but £100m is a figure that makes the head spin, especially when you think of all the good that could be done in the public realm with an equivalent sum of money.

M. Saunders, Glasgow.

OUR DISTORTED PRIORITIES

PAYMENT of nearly £3,000 per day to a man who supposedly will turn round a failed shipyard, and three per cent for medical, dental and nursing staff? What a set of priorities!

No wonder this country is in a mess.

John NE Rankin, Bridge of Allan.

THE GOOD OLD SCOTTISH BARBECUE

THELMA Edwards’ moving account (letters, August 12) of possibly sitting under her umbrella under the trees reading Ivanhoe in the rain brought to mind words from The Corries, about a Scottish barbecue.

“Now, there’s flies stuck in the butter, the bread has gone brick hard/the kids are fightin’ , and the midges are bitin’, Who forgot the Aeroguard?/There’s cinders in your whisky, and the beer is running out/and what you saw in Mum’s coleslaw, you just don’t think about”.

The chorus is sung to the tune of “Come and join us”, as in, Band of Hope.

David Miller, Milngavie.

‘IGNORANCE OF IRELAND’

PETER A Russell (letters, August 13) may have to revisit his studies of Ireland – if he has, in fact, made any investigations at all.

“The clamour against independence” he refers to is nothing short of complete ignorance of the history of that troubled island.

Hundreds of years of murder, theft and racist oppression, all under British occupation, were eventually almost completely defeated after long struggles and, in the process, a great deal of bloodshed.

The exception was the six counties of the north, led principally by religious extremists loyal to the British crown.

Unfortunately, those same extremists still have influence in our own country, many of whom have been providing a barrier to an independent Scotland.

Kevin Orr, Bishopbriggs.

WHAT ABOUT THE POOR CUSTOMER?

SEVERAL articles have appeared on the topic of home-working, looking at the benefits and choices of employees and employers. Missing from the debate, however, is the experience of consumers.

I have on a number of occasions experienced long delays in accessing a human to speak to, and even when accessing someone have been told they are working from home, or have issues with accessing computer systems – or, as once happened, I was told that the the individual had poor mobile reception and might be cut off.

Employers and staff need to give greater concern for the customer experience and return to office-based or call centre-based working or potentially lose business to organisations that can give a good-quality service.

Bill Eadie, Glasgow.

BIDEN AND AFGHANISTAN

President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan has consequences that were easily foreseeable.

It is to his discredit that he went ahead with it.

T. Lewis, Glasgow.