Brutal cost of living draining family finances after 14 years of Tory rule

dailyrecord.co.uk:

One of the toxic legacies of 14 years of Tory rule is a brutal cost of living crisis draining family finances. Inflation hammered incomes and soaring interest rates forced home-owners to pay more in mortgage costs.Energy bills also sky-rocketed under the Conservatives and other must-pay bills kept going up.Labour won on a promise of lower energy bills, but the cost of heating homes continues to rise.Today we report how experts predict a £47 average increase in energy bills from April, on top of other rises since Keir Starmer became Prime Minister.The national insurance hike for employers, which kicks in this year, is also expected to be passed on to consumers.But the Scottish Government is also culpable for rising costs at a time of hardship.

They scrapped rip-off peak rail fares only to lumber passengers with huge rises by ending the pilot.And the gross under-funding of local government for over a decade will likely result in chunky council tax rises.Both the SNP and Labour are parties of the centre-left who believe in the power of government to intervene on behalf of the public.

But the public is growing impatient with Governments that promise to tackle the cost of living crisis but struggle to deliver.Sir Keir Starmer and John Swinney need to put aside their differences and come up with a workable plan to lower household bills.The cost of living crisis has hit Scots hard and 2025 must be the year to consign it to the dustbin of history. Happy New Year Scotland's drug death crisis has been put firmly on the political agenda by the Daily Record’s Addicted campaign.Without our coverage of this emergency it’s entirely possible the politicians would have gone on ignoring the fact we have the worst drug death record in