Earlier this week, the Auditor General for Scotland Stephen Boyle wrote powerfully about the continuing gap between ambitious policy announcements and actual delivery on the ground in Scotland. On cue, we learned 24 hours later that the ambitious policy announcement by Nicola Sturgeon to create a new nationally run not-for-profit energy company had been scrapped.

There’s a town in Scotland that most of us prefer to ignore. It’s bigger than Ayr or Inverness and contains nothing but poor people, most of whom don’t have jobs. The adults’ health is terrible: in the last couple of years, nearly one in twenty of them has died. Tens of thousands of children live there too, and every stage of their lives, from conception to adulthood, is damaged as a result.

Eddie Barnes | Twitter Facebook-f Twitter After a week where she has led the news agenda on Scotland’s drugs deaths

Susan Dalgety | @DalgetySusan Facebook-f Twitter There’s not a single politician in Scotland who does not profess to be angry

This video by the charity Change Grow Live gives Carl, a former heroin and crack addict, a chance to tell his own story of recovery. It’s worth watching as Scotland reflects again on the enormous human cost drug addiction.

Ewan Gurr | Twitter Facebook-f Twitter Reflecting Upon Drug Deaths It is that time of year again. Today, the drug

A blue vaccine envelope arrived at our house a few weeks ago for someone who has not lived here for many years. I started to wonder just how efficient the vaccine appointment system is.

Interviewing Sir Michael Marmot for ScotlandCan last week, I was struck by a comment he made about the priorities governments make. Looking back over the last decade, Sir Michael noted that he “almost didn’t care” about growth in the economy. People were getting sicker and health inequalities were widening. If GDP was going up, “so what?”

If you want to study the devastating impact the Covid pandemic has had on society, Sir Michael Marmot suggests we go back to 2017 and a storm in the Caribbean. Hurricane Maria smashed through Puerto Rico in one of the deadliest storms ever to hit the island. The Hurricane thrust the underlying inequalities in Puerto Rican society into sharp relief.

Dr Roddy Neilson | Consultant Haematologist, Forth Valley Royal Hospital Facebook-f Twitter It’s a bit of an understatement to say that the