Lousy Stock, or Dumped on by England?
Overheard a bloke in the pub this evening telling his girl that lower Glasgow life expectancy - 15 years less than the UK average - was traceable from grandparents through parents to children. I don't know whether he was merely quoting this analysis, or actively wanting to promote it, and to my shame I bottled out of asking him, but if it's being used as an explanation of Scottish disadvantage then it's a pernicious interpretation. It means that lower life expectancy is genetic; it's simply part of being Scottish. Scots come from lousy stock, there's nothing they can do about it, and they obviously can't run a country with these short life-spans hanging over them. "Too poor, too wee, too stupid and too short-lived." The study he was referring to seems to be this one . Its key sentence is: Conclusions: Males and females in most of the larger ethnic minority groups in Scotland have longer life expectancies than the majority White Scottish population. Th...