SCOTS DIE EARLIER - ESPECIALLY IN GLASGOW!

A Scottish mystery of life and death
MONDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2011 18:57

There is something about Scotland that I don't understand. Just the one thing?, I hear you say. But this particular something is different. I suspect that, once you are aware of it, you won't understand it either. No one does.

Here it is in the form of a question. Why do the Scots die younger than most other people in Europe? There are a few plausible theories out there, but, as I intend to show, none of them really adds up to a satisfactory answer. We have an unsolved mystery about our own low life expectancy.

Scotland's wretched health is widely known and analysed, although the full horror of our situation may not be fully appreciated even now. Partly this is because we tend not to express it or think about it in terms of comparison with other countries: ie countries outside the UK.

First, then, a few examples of the national malaise:

Scotland's health is improving more slowly than any other country in Western Europe.
Our record of deaths in infancy and childhood, old age too, is unremarkable. But among adults of working age, the Scottish mortality rate is exceptionally bad compared with our European neighbours.

For cardiovascular diseases and lung cancer, Scotland has the worst death rate in all of Europe. The death rate from lung cancer among Scottish women is the worst in the world.

There is a general trend across the world of increasing cancer survival rates. In Europe, they are particularly good if you live in Finland, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland, particularly bad if you live in Scotland and Poland.

Across all age groups, Scottish men and women have either the worst or second worst one-to-five-year cancer survival rate in Europe.

The overall Scottish improvement in the last decade also obscures a more damaging set of comparisons – international ones – of which we hear rather less.

Had enough? Let's look now at general life expectancy. At first glance, this presents a more encouraging picture. A decade ago, the average Scottish man died at 72.7 years; now he lives to 75.4. For the average Scottish woman, the outlook is even better: there has been an improvement in female life expectancy from 78.2 to 80.1 over the same 10-year period.

These figures do, however, obscure some well-publicised inequalities. How long you live in Scotland depends on where you live. Up here, life itself is a post-code lottery. If you are a man living in Glasgow, for example, the statistical likelihood is that you will die one month after your 71st birthday. A few miles away, in leafy Milngavie, you are likely to survive seven years longer. The Glasgow woman dies at 77; her Milngavie counterpart goes on until she is 83. These gaps between rich and poor, advantaged and disadvantaged, are rated 'substantial' by health experts.

The overall Scottish improvement in the last decade also obscures a more damaging set of comparisons – international ones – of which we hear rather less.

In Western Europe, only Portugal has a lower life expectancy for men. Women in Scotland lead shorter lives than women in any other Western European country.
Across both sexes, we have the lowest life expectancy in Western Europe.
Scotland's nearest neighbours in the league of life expectancy are Costa Rica and Cuba. Both are poorer countries, yet Cuban life expectancy is now better than Scottish.

Why is this? There is no obvious explanation. Do the Scots smoke more, eat more red meat and less fresh fruit, drink more, consume more junk food than the Cubans? Do the Cubans have a different approach to their health? I don't know. Does anyone? But since Cubans are now living slightly longer than the Scots, it could be worth finding out. Let's go to Havana and learn from the Cubans. It isn't a frivolous suggestion.

It seems that the rot set in, from Scotland's point of view, between the early 1950s and the 1970s and our comparative position has gone on declining ever since.

But here's the really interesting bit: the source of the mystery. It was not always like this.

For much of the 20th century, men in Scotland lived as long as other men in Western Europe. In the first half of that century, for both men and women life expectancy in Scotland was actually higher than it was in France, Italy or Spain. Across the continent, we were average.

The comparison between Scotland and Finland, officially the best-educated country in Europe, is particularly striking. In 1910, life expectancy for men in Scotland was 50.1, while for men in Finland it was only 45.4. By 1930, the gap had narrowed: Scots men lived to 56, Finnish men to 52.9. By 1970, the gap between the two countries had almost closed: the average life expectancy for Scots men was 67.3, for Finns, 66.2. And then, at the turn of the century, our Scandinavian neighbours finally overtook us. Finnish men now live seven months longer, Finnish women two years three months longer.

It seems that the rot set in, from Scotland's point of view, between the early 1950s and the 1970s and our comparative position has gone on declining ever since. Yet Finland has its own health problems: the Finns are noted for their excessive drinking and depression; Finland's suicide rate is among the highest in the world. Why, then, have the Scots fallen behind a country over which we enjoyed so pronounced an advantage in life expectancy for so long? What are the Finns doing right – or the Scots doing wrong?

If we can't go to Havana, let's go to Helsinki instead.

http://newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/3222-a-scottish-mystery-of-life-and-death.html

I am actually surprised the author is saying there is no explanation, LL.

He hasn't said a single word about the horrific problems caused by drug use in these ghastly housing schemes on the outskirts of the main cities.

When you have young people dying because they have injected themselves with heroin contaminated with anthrax, well, you can expect life expectancy to fall:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8443809.stm

Along people trying to get some illusory escape via drugs in these areas, they also try to blot it all out with alcohol, which then leads to appalling eating habits, not forgetting smoking in all this.

When I lived in Glasgow during the early sixties there did appear to be a lot of deprivation, and a lot of drunks falling about on the streets, mainly due to no hope, or so it seemed to me.

I came from a fairly deprived area myself, but drunks were not a common sight, and families did make some effort to eat sensibly, even if often not enough, and people did have gardens in which to grow vegetables. No such thing in the poorer areas of Glasgow where many large families lived in one room. Enough to drive anyone to drink.

Well, it's kinda hard to grow vegetables when you are cooped up in a tower block, isn't it, and you have NO shops nearby to even buy them from, isn't it?

No cars sitting outside to take them to out-of-town supermarkets, no delivery vans bringing fresh goods to their door.

If they are very, very lucky, there may be a small Asian grocer's shop, its windows barricaded and its staff permanently watching for trouble.

Or maybe a van comes around selling cheap tinned goods and heroin on the side.

There are pockets in these sink estates where life expectancy is only in the 50s, and I don't know why that author makes a mystery of the cause.

I was there when they were building those awful blocks of jerry built flats. Bonny, and all too far from anywhere. People removed from anything like family and friends. Just dumped in fact. Out of sight and out of mind.

I never did understand why they didn't invest the same money in renovating The Tenements. They have now become the glorious buildings they should be, and you can't buy one now for love nor money.

Beautiful, beautilful Rose Pink Stone, and such large flats. I would buy one if I could afford to.

Oh, I can easily explain why the tenements were not renovated, Sabot, but that would involve me going off on another rant about corruption in the Scottish Labour Party.

When the election results came in in May, no-one could believe them at first, that these placemen and women had finally been hoofed out of seats they thought were theirs by right, in the very areas which were most deprived - largely thanks to them.

The comments on that article are interesting, and they are right, there is a definite optimism in Scotland nowadays, so I think personally things will start getting better in these rundown areas, too - but repairing the damage to people and society isn't going to happen overnight.

Kicking out the people responsible for it was a good start, though.

I recently Googled the street in Neasden where I lived as a child. Mid Victorian workers cottages. No bathrooms and an outside lavatory. But we did have a garden.

It is now part of Neasden Village Conservation Area, and the houses are selling for £300,000. I am stunned. They belonged to London Transport in my day, and someone must have made a packet out of what was cheap rented accommodation.

They will have done, Sabot - anyone who had the vision to see that these old properties, once modernized, are a million times better than the concrete monstrosities did.

Meanwhile, they are knocking down the crap they put up 40 years ago, that of it that hasn't fallen down on it's own, after having destroyed entire communities.

I saw The Gorbals being raised to ground. My train from Glasgow to Paisley went right past it. Nothing wrong with the Gorbals that a bit of money wouldn't have solved. So that really upset me. It was like watching The Vanguard being stripped.

Actually, I think it should all still be Rented Accommodation. That's what it was built for. And not everyone can afford to buy a house. And hardly anyone wants to live in a crap tower block where no one cares, or dares to go outside their door.

Shit, this whole thing still upsets me. And to think I saw it happening.