Have you ever made a wrong choice?
Something you regret doing or maybe something that had longer term implications that if you could go back, you would do differently.
Or have you ever made a mistake in choosing to do something that even at the time you maybe knew you shouldn’t be doing?
Most of us, if we are being honest, would answer yes to at least one of the above.
READ MORE:
Hypocrisy claim over drug taking
But has it defined the rest of your life, left you isolated from your family ruined your health and put you at risk of premature death.
Probably not, but you may know someone who has.
This week I met two mothers and a father who told their story of living with their sons’ and daughters’ drug addiction.
READ MORE:
Mums fighting to save children from drugs
Many comments on the article we published on them were as predictable as they were lazy and ill informed.
I don’t need to repeat them here but it is the well-trodden path of blaming people with addictions as a way of absolving any societal responsibility to help people in need.
I would recommend anyone with those opinions to listen to what Sandra and Karen had to say.
They spoke about their children, now well into adulthood but still their children, nonetheless.
Karen said of her son, Lee: “He made his choice”. From there you could say ‘hell mend him. He made his bed he can lie in it’.
That’s if you can still speak with your head stuck firmly in the sand.
There is one enormous drug problem in this city and across this country. For some reason Scotland has the highest rate of drug deaths in Europe.
Glasgow and the west of Scotland bears the brunt of it, but not exclusively.
The approach, for decades now, to punish, demonise, criminalise and ostracise has obviously not worked. The crisis is growing now, deaths from heroin are going to top 200 in Glasgow and break through 1000 for Scotland.
The other mum at the meeting, Sandra, has been fighting for better services for her daughter Elaine who is in her late thirties.
She is, she said ‘fighting to save her daughter’s life.” How many mothers wouldn’t do the same.
AND then there were two.
Outwardly they couldn’t be more different. Boris Johnson is the colourful, controversial, impossible to ignore, old Etonian who barges his way to the top.
Jeremy Hunt on the other hand is as dull as an out of town shopping centre car park. He is so unremarkable he would probably fail to recognise his own reflection.
Like most of the now gone, middle aged, male, Tory leadership contenders, Mr Hunt goes running. Even then he hits the grey pavements of London in a grey t-shirt and shorts. It’s like urban camouflage.
He is attracting support in Scotland from Conservatives, not because of who he is but because he is not Boris Johnson.
READ MORE:
But there may be some similarities between them.
After Brexit Mr Hunt said that the NHS would be self sufficient in doctors within six years and foreign students would be paying to fund more UK medical students.
He was found by a Westminster committee to be misleading the public over his grossly inflated health spending claims.
He just didn’t put it on the side of a big red bus.
Still the 160,000 members of the Conservative Party will make their choice and the rest of us will have to live with it. That’s democracy apparently.
TOMORROW is the annual Orange Order Boyne parade in Glasgow.
The last year has seen tensions ramped up to almost crisis point after a follower spat on a priest outside his church.
Smaller parades have been re-routed away from the church and protests staged as the situation threatened to boil over this summer. Thankfully the Orange Order and Catholic Church got together and started talking to one another and look to have diffused the situation.
The parade will go ahead after the Orange Order agreed to re-route it so it doesn’t pass St Alphonsus and the Church accepted the Order’s right to hold parades.
READ MORE:
The city’s reputation was in danger of being damaged if there were any flashpoints this year.
There will be thousands of marchers and just as many followers tomorrow.
People do have a right to march, but others have a right to expect peace.
Common sense must prevail as this parade will be under more scrutiny.
It must pass without incident. It’s not too much to ask, is it?
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel