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 Europe.
But still the problem persists.
Today we reveal that more than 1500 babies have been born in Scotland already suffering from substance “dependency” in the womb.
This is a tragedy and illustrates exactly why we need a massive increase in support for people addicted to drugs.
Successive first ministers have signalled a desire to fix this problem. So far, they have all failed.
There is no magic wand or silver bullet to simply make the problem go away. It is linked to wider societal problems such as poverty, poor housing and a lack of decent job prospects.
But a good start will be making sure lifesaving drug consumption rooms are established in our cities.
Funding for widely available addiction services must also be a priority.
In 2025 it is vital we finally turn the tide of Scotland’s addiction crisis.