Choose Life Choose Leith by Tim Bell sampler

18 choose life choose leith
in the post’ 2 and the crash of 2008. Welsh prophetically brings up both these
factors in the book. Now we have too many unaffordable tenancies in badly
maintained privatised properties. Inequality is firmly built into the socio/
economic structures of a throw- away consumer society. As Welsh has said,
the spurious Thatcher- inspired choices in Renton’s famous rant in the episode
‘Searching for the Inner Man’, and magnified in the film, have turned
out to be even more remote than back in the 1980s. The online world has
fragmented local communities, drawing individuals into a vortex of potentially
addictive remote virtual relationships.
In Scotland the illicit drug scene as a policy area is littered with shortterm
projects which clearly haven’t worked. At the time of writing there are
signs of some welcome policy initiatives emanating from Holyrood, but this
comes with warnings. Just as Leith found in the 1980s, with its Tolerance
Zone for on- street solicitations for sex workers, this can have a honey- pot
effect. A distinctively Scottish law enforcement policy and provision of care
resources – without matching measures elsewhere within the borderless area
of free movement and markets that is the uk – is likely to lead to imbalances
that can work against their best intentions. If these initiatives are not fully
resourced and maintained, and do not enjoy robust political defence and
support, they will join the trail of litter.
Far too much dirty money sloshing around the world, corrupting democracies
and buying up our social and sporting heritage as cash- cows, has its
origins in illicit drugs. Fearful politicians, with their political cycles on such
short wavelengths, have good reason to be fearful. Beneficiaries of the industry
have powerful ways of maintaining the phoney idea that, keeping the
substances illegal, it should be a war zone and principally a matter of law
enforcement. To take it out of daily politics, one suggestion in the uk is to
form a Royal Commission that would research the whole complex area and
recommend a strategy into which policies and provisions could be fitted.
And as an international issue, ideally an overall strategy would be put into
effect beyond these shores.
Nobody sets out to be an addict. It’s easy enough to take the first shot.
If he could bind his eyes in wire
or cleanse his eyes in lime
he’d take back the fated curiosity
of that first time,
ignore the three little words
every lost soul yearns to hear
2 Trainspotting p230