The reasons, as always, are many, but at root Glaswegians have poor health because their identity has been erased.
Harry Burns, who until recently was the country’s chief medical officer, has his own theory. He raised a few eyebrows when he compared Glaswegians to Australia’s aboriginal people. Yet he believes deindustriali[z]ation in a city where tens of thousands once worked in the factories and the shipyards has deeply wounded local pride. As a result, people here have much in common with demorali[z]ed indigenous communities.
“Being a welder in a shipyard was a cold and difficult and dangerous job,” he says. “But it gave you cultural identity in the same way as native peoples in Australia once had a very intense history and tradition.”
Glawegians do not have to be compared to aboriginals in Australia. Glaswegians are the aboriginal people of Scotland. Scots are the indigenous population of Scotland. Indigenous populations can be White; Whites are not always colonists. Nobody in the BBC article seems willing to admit this fact, and actually any claim of equivalency between the two indigenous populations is directly undermined in the article (because it “raised a few eyebrows”).