In Scotland this year, September and October have been great months, with mild dry weather. This has been a blessing to all those on low incomes and/or, hard to heat and badly insulated homes. However, the coming Scottish winter is still capable of inflicting suffering, misery and death on a large slice of our population. The National Records of Scotland's latest figures state that between December 2014 and March 2015, there were 22,011 deaths, up from 18,675 for the same period the previous year, a 15 year high. Apart from the misery and deaths, these figures display, this poverty induced epidemic puts a tremendous strain on the NHS, adding what is a preventable influx of serious conditions. We pay through our taxes for the avoidable poverty and misery, brought about by this failing system of capitalism.
What we should be quite clear about is that it is not the Scottish winter that kills, it is poverty and poor housing, this spike in deaths can be laid squarely at the feet of cold homes. Across the northern hemisphere there are winter climates much more severe than ours here in Scotland, but they don't all have this spike in deaths. Low energy costs, better insulated homes and decent incomes, would see an end to this cull of our poor, elderly and vulnerable people. In a very rich country, in the twenty first century, we are well capable of supplying those remedies. We don't, simply because we live in a system called capitalism, where the “markets”, controlled by the financial Mafia, shape society for profit. Any civilised society would have at its base compassion, and would automatically see to the needs of all our people. When do we make that shift to compassion, and bury the the cancer of profit in some deep pit, ending the winter cull on our most vulnerable and disadvantaged people?
I do not claim to demagogue, but I wonder how many homes could be heated with the budget of the Royal Household. It is possible that His Majesty's visit, very apologetic, the poor who shiver. Hypocrites!
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