A thread gathering together core facts about the drug deaths crisis in Scotland. Following Nicola Sturgeon’s admission that she took her “eye off the ball on drug deaths”, just how big a tragedy has the SNP presided over?

#SP21 #Holyrood2021
(1/10)
Fact 1:

Scotland has the more drug deaths per capita than any other European country.
(2/10)
Fact Two:

Benzodiazepines are becoming used as a way for high-risk opioid users to self-medicate or increase the effects of their heroin or methadone addictions.

The situation grows worse.
(3/10)
Fact Three:

Glasgow City is particularly badly hit by drug deaths. And Benzodiazepines are a massive killer compared to other drugs.
(4/10)
Fact Four:

‘Street benzos’ are sold for as little as 50p a pill.

There has been a massive increase in use of non-prescribed benzodiazepines.
(5/10)
Fact Five:

“There is now an ageing population of drug addicts, mainly men, who have been using heroin for decades.”
(6/10)
Fact Six:

This is an urban crisis.

➡️ Dundee City Council drug death rate is an ave of 0.36 per 1,000 of pop over past five years. This is worst in all Scotland

➡️ Glasgow City is second worst at 0.35.
(7/10)
Fact Seven:

Scotland’s drug-related death toll more than 3.5 times the rate for whole UK.

“Scotland’s drug-related death rate as 231 per million people and estimated the rate for the whole of the UK to be 64 drug-related deaths per million.”
(8/10)
Fact Eight:

SNP now themselves freely admit their cuts have hit drug services amid the spiriting deaths crisis in Glasgow.

There have been cumulative cuts of £40m over five years which have “negatively impacted on provision & capacity of essential addiction services.”
(9/10)
Sources:

‘Experts condemn public health emergency as national tragedy & disgrace’
amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/d…

‘Scotland's drug death crisis in six charts’
bbc.co.uk/news/amp/uk-sc…

‘SNP admit cuts have hit drug services amid deaths crisis in Glasgow’
glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/18200346.…
(10/10)
➡️Looking beyond the drug deaths crisis:

My latest article doing a deep dive on worsening individual health outcomes. While the SNP has prioritised flags and constitutional politics, Scotland’s health suffers.
thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics/…

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More from @DeanMThomson

11 Apr
What's all this about Fergus Ewing then?

A sorry story of unaccountability, dodgy deals, and the stench of sleaze amid a breached ministerial code.

Shady backroom deals spilling across Scottish and Westminster governments. And the current official silence is damning.

[1/20] Fergus Ewing & Sanjeev Gupta
➡️Doing Deals

At the heart of all of this are a complex set of financial deals struck between ScotGov, Sanjeev Gupta and Lex Greensill.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers money is now at serious risk due to these deals.
[2/20]
Gupta secured massive state support to buy metal & power plants in ­Lanarkshire & Highlands.

But his firm GFG Alliance is in crisis. This is because his big-money backer Greensil Capital has already collapsed.
[3/20] Gupta & Nicola Sturgeon in 2016
Read 20 tweets
11 Apr
➡️The Incumbency Factor

A thread outlining some of the SNP government’s financial and economic failures.
(1/12)
1️⃣ Remember Fracking?

“Fracking is being banned in Scotland, end of story,”- Nicola Sturgeon

But it later turned out she squandered £175,000 to plead in court that she hadn’t actually banned fracking at all...
(2/12)
2️⃣ That publicly owned energy company...

Four years ago Sturgeon pledged “energy would be bought wholesale or generated here in Scotland...and sold to customers as close to cost price as possible”.

Despite £400,000 spent, no company was ever established
(3/12)
Read 12 tweets
4 Apr
A recent poll has made a big splash about the potential of this #Supermajority. But if we take a moment to just look at the polling trend lines, it's far too early to be making any sort of prognostication about any such thing.

Plus SNP majority? What SNP majority?

[1/11]
➡️Trend line since January 2021 - early April

Even to a layman's eyes, the downward trajectory of SNP support in regional polling is obvious.

If anyone is interested, the trendlines are local regressions (LOESS)
[2/11]
Here the same downward trajectory can also still be seen with SNP constituency polling; albeit their support on the constituency has a higher upper level it's declining from.
[3/11]
Read 11 tweets
2 Apr
A fourth thread in my series calling out #Holyrood2021 election half truths, misleading nonsense & lies.

I'm focusing on a misleading claim by @theSNP about 'ending period poverty' for women. Also questioning just how 'committed' they are to improving the lives of women.
[1/12]
I want to focus specifically on the highlighted claim, where the SNP are claiming credit for 'ending period poverty' for women.

This features as part of a wider claim about 'improving the life chances of women' more generally.
Date of their tweet was April 2nd 2021.
[2/12]
➡️On ending period poverty for women

The heart of this boast by the SNP is the 'Period Products (Free Provision) (Scotland) Bill'; which was unanimously passed into law in November 2020.

Unanimous! Great, so the SNP deserve the credit you might think...but wait...
[3/12]
Read 15 tweets
2 Apr
So, what on earth is going on in Angus?

So far we've seen the SNP being told to repay £20,000 in #Covid19 support grants. Money originally intended to support small businesses, instead used to support nationalist politicking.
[1/6] Image
It's clear that Tim Rideout was teaching SNP supporters ways to 'game' the Covid business support grants.

But not just that, proceeding to also encourage a diversion of funds to his own group.
[2/6] Image
And his facebook boast "I have made over £50k for the indy cause today" stands ingloriously out there for all to see.
[3/6] Image
Read 8 tweets
1 Apr
Interesting in lots of ways.

Most obvious is Alba has further eroded SNP support on the list, but at only 3% unlikely to get anyone elected.

They might take enough support from the SNP to stop them getting list MSPs, while not getting enough switchers to get any Alba elected.
Also: constituency vote indicates that the SNP have not managed to turn the Hamilton Report moment into a strategic reset. Instead this poll, much like the general trend since October last year, suggests a continued slow unravelling of SNP support in the constituency numbers.
Only question is, will SNP support unravel fast enough to have an impact in the election in five weeks time? That I don't know.
Read 4 tweets

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