Minimum unit pricing in Scotland is associated with 13% fall in alcohol deaths Glasgow University study finds but Annie Wells fiddles the sums to try to deceive voters and save her neck in May

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Annie Wells, List Con MSP, for now, campaigning on a platform of drug and alcohol deaths. Today, it was alcohol deaths and the above claim.

You can, with some very simplistic arithmetic, prove the above to be kind of true but to do so you have to:

  1. Not take account of population growth, aging demographics, or external factors like the COVID-19 pandemic, which drove spikes in 2020-2023.
  2. Ignore the telling fact that in the first full year and pre-pandemic, 2019, the level was the lowest since 2013.
  3. Ignore the significant recent post-pandemic fall in 2024, from 1 277 to 1 185, the lowest since 2019, before the pandemic spikes.
  4. Ignore the University of Glasgow, scientifically undertaken research, published in the Lancet in 2023, which found:

The introduction of minimum unit pricing in Scotland is associated with significant reductions in deaths from alcohol consumption, research has found. Over a period of two years and eight months after the policy was rolled out in Scotland a 13% reduction was seen in deaths from alcohol consumption when compared with an estimate of the deaths that would have occurred without the legislation, using data from England. This is equivalent to avoiding 156 deaths a year, found the study by Public Health Scotland and the University of Glasgow, published in the Lancet and reported in the BMJ. The greatest reductions in deaths were seen in people living in the most socioeconomically deprived 40% of Scotland and in men.

https://www.bmj.com/content/380/bmj.p672.full

It’s clear why Wells is making these desperate wee videos. In the most recent poll from Find out Now and the National, the Conservatives are in 6th place on 7% and heading for a near-extinction event. At best, the Tories will get a handful of MSPs and she, in the Glasgow region where Ipsos have them at only 5%, looks like being deselected in favour of the men and or one of the posh ladies.

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3 thoughts on “Minimum unit pricing in Scotland is associated with 13% fall in alcohol deaths Glasgow University study finds but Annie Wells fiddles the sums to try to deceive voters and save her neck in May”

  1. I note that , in your above post, you include a wee list of things to ignore but failed to include the most important thing to ignore…….

    That would be Annie Wells.

    How many deaths were there that resulted from the austerity policy that was implemented by a former Tory-Lib Dem UK government coalition.

    Studies estimated it was 330,000 excess deaths in the UK. 

    Wells is just another Tory branch office member with a selective memory, whose seat at Holyrood in the May elections is , I hope, one that will be (should be) on a shoogly peg.

    A complete waste of space.

    Liz S

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  2. May I also add that she , Ms Wells , who obviously lacks any political savvy, should really be mainly targeting the Tory party’s biggest political threat in May’s elections…….and that would be Reform UK.

    There is a reason why, like Murdo Fraser, she, Wells, does not ever win the constituency seat in any Scottish parliament elections , as it seems that people are not that daft to want either of them to represent them as their constituency MSP……hence why both of them are always the proverbial Bridesmaid and never the Bride.

    Based on your above post it may also now be a case of Wells not even being invited to the wedding.……..Ha Ha………if that is, as you state above, she is “deselected in favour of the men and or one of the posh ladies”….or even , dare I say, is removed for someone who can at least articulate a sentence.

    Liz S

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  3. Talking of Tories I saw this post on ‘X’ as written by Tory client (supposed) Journalist Michael Blackley from the non Scottish Daily Mail aka The anti Scottish…… Daily Mail or rather The Daily Fail.

    “A Tory MP has secured a Ten Minute Rule Bill debate to split up the role of the Lord Advocate following corruption allegations – as a group of businessmen consider legal action to force reform of the post because of conflict of interest concerns”

    So who are these businessmen ?

    The mind boggles but the politics of it all does not boggle one’s mind.

    Who is making these “allegations”…..and why ?

    #ScottishElectionsMay2026

    Also there is this too, via yet another post by Blackley on ‘X’:

    “Kemi Badenoch wants to split up Lord Advocate role because she believe tipping off the First Minister about Peter Murrell case “smacks of corruption”. She says the change must happen at Westminster rather than devolving the power to the SNP Government”

    He missed out the letter ‘S’ when he wrote the word “believe” in his above post , but then accuracy was never the Daily Mail’s strength…..or it could have been that he missed out the letter ‘D’ and the word ‘that’ in that he could have stated she ‘believed that’.

    Pedantic yes but then the low standards of the so called media here in Scotland surely makes them not fit for (any) purpose other than (bad) messengers of all of the UK political parties……….

    (Here is a statement that I read online that is so true “People in power use the media to disseminate information in ways which benefit them, and in return journalists get access to people in power”).

    Also as to a Tory from Tory HQ having the audacity to state something “smacks of corruption” via another political party after the highly questionable, and some would say corrupt practice, that was adopted by Tory HQ during the Pandemic in that who they decided, as a UK government, to award government PPE contracts to .

    Mainly it seems (as in it is now well documented) various companies that were linked to Tory Peers, Tory MP’s and also even Tory politicians themselves, where some of these supposed PPE companies had never made PPE before and also some were newly formed for the sole purpose of making PPE , as in trying to cash in on the Pandemic ……..also well documented was the fact that much of the PPE they made was not fit for purpose…..

    #SmacksOfCorruption

    Indeed it has now been reported that these contracts for PPE “cost taxpayers hundreds of millions, and in some cases, billions of pounds, with numerous contracts and, in some cases, millions, often awarded to new or inexperienced suppliers”.

    So then that comment from Badenoch accusing others of “corruption” is a bit rich surely, especially coming from her as a Tory WM politician

    ( That is rich in more ways than one, as in most lucrative for the “Few” but less beneficial it seemed for the “many” ).

    However what the H has it got to do with Badenoch anyway?

    Of course Badenoch , as a WM politician, will be completely oblivious to the fact that this decision on linking the Lord Advocate to the Cabinet was made initially via WM and by a Labour UK government.

    So then it is already only Westminster that can change that……. that is where the Lord Advocate’s role is entrenched in the Scotland Act 1998, any structural reform to split these roles must be approved by the UK Parliament (Westminster).

    A previous Labour UK government, formalised the Lord Advocate as a dual-role officer: as the principal legal adviser to the Scottish Government and head of the system of criminal prosecution (COPFS). That makes the officeholder both a member of the Scottish Cabinet and independent in prosecution decisions.

    So what point is clueless Badenoch making (that is then repeated by clueless Michael Blackley) when she states and so then he, Blackley, repeats “the change must happen at Westminster rather than devolving the power to the SNP Government”……………as only the UK Parliament (Westminster) has the authority to amend this, as the Scottish Parliament lacks the legal competence to alter these statutory functions.

    You know if only UK party HQ’s understood, were even slightly interested in and so then were actually aware of what has and is happening in Scotland as a nation and also it’s politics , instead of sourcing their (mis)information from dubious and partisan sources (as in their respective branch offices and all of the anti SNP hostile media) then maybe, just maybe, they would not make such a bloody fool of themselves and expose the fact that they know the square root of Jack S*** about the nation of Scotland , as in one that they treat as if it were an English colony that they own !

    Playing politics is the forte and also it seems the chosen method for Tory HQ (actual party) leaders, branch offices of these HQ parties and also their client media……..

    Just think they , as interferers who are always up to mischief, could one day all go away.

    But only if we had Scottish independence and then we, and we alone, could make all of our own decisions and our won appointments of people in positions of power and status………..and then stop all of the pro UK grievance mongers from constantly seeking out a succession of pointless grievances with which to attack both us as a people, those we elect and also attack our country with .

    Vote for Scotland and not for those who oppose both it, as a nation, and also oppose us as a people.

    #WeAreNotSubsidisedByEngland

    Liz S

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