Local versus national policing

A new Scottish national police board has been created to deal with cross-border crime such as human trafficking, terrorism and fraud, but opposition politicians have criticised the move as "centralising" the country's policing.

Lib Dem justice spokesman Robert Brown stressed the value of local policing to local communities, and said "solutions suitable for Glasgow or Edinburgh may be entirely wide of the mark for Wick or Kelso".

Eh? So how does a force like Tayside Police manage to deal with large urban areas like Dundee on the one hand and small towns and villages like Brechin and Edzell on the other, not to mention huge sparsely populated rural areas. Is Mr Brown saying that police are incapable of appropriately dealing with such disparate areas and populations within their boundaries? Presumably not, thus his point seems little more than the usual meaningless rhetoric and opposition for the sake of it.

The Tory's Bill Aitken does little better, stressing the need for autonomy of local forces with "strong links to local communities". It's not entirely clear what this means either, but where my local police officers and station are ultimately administered from doesn't really seem relevant as long as they do a good job. Perhaps Mr Aitken is referring to the role of local councillors on police boards, but if the former aren't ineffectual enough at the best of times then surely the latter sham of democracy and accountability provides a good rationale for a national police force rather than an argument against?

Caligula's horse in the Augean stables

The election of John Bercow as Speaker of the House of Commons has been greeted with some scepticism by elements of the commentariat, and as a hardened cynic I would have to concur.

In the Times Rachel Sylvester says that while the public want honesty and integrity, the election was characterised by "petty politicking and party power games" - Michael Martin's resignation was supposed to be a "catalyst for change", but what transpired shows how little MPs understand the scale of the problem faced.

The problem, of course, is the catastrophic decline of Parliament's reputation as a result of the expenses scandal, not to mention other public concerns about the institution's lack of effectiveness. But Sylvester is highly sceptical about the response of MPs and amusingly says, in relation to the election of Mr Bercow:

This was the first chance MPs have had since the expenses row to show that they had got the message - but they put their fingers in their ears and sang “la la la”. [...]

From Damian McBride to moats, Corfu to cuts, reshuffles to relaunches, the political class looks woefully detached from the real world. MPs promise to wear hairshirts, then slip into silk pyjamas when they think nobody is looking.

In the Telegraph Simon Heffer takes a more partisan slant, likening the preference for the Tory Bercow by Labour MPs to the Roman emperor Caligula's plan to make his horse consul to show his people what he thought of them - Mr Heffer claims the vote demonstrates Labour's "frivolous" and "infantile" approach, and the party's "utter contempt" for the British people.

In the Herald, meanwhile, Ian Bell describes the election process as a "pantomime", compares the situation to the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean stables - where the residents were particularly adept at creating lots of dung - and underlines the Speaker's limited powers in any case.

Therefore three different slants on the selection of the new Speaker and the likelihood of Mr Bercow implementing effective reform, but in essence the message conveyed is the same - it's business as usual, and MPs simply don't get it.

Of course, Mr Bercow has made the requisite noises - all about "reform, renewal and revitalisation" and reasserting "core values" - and the Speaker is not the only agent of change, but the scepticism of the columnists outlined above is surely merited.

Indeed, as Ian Bell points out, the new Speaker has already had to pay the taxman thousands of pounds regarding a property he had "flipped" to avoid capital gains tax, which hardly inspires confidence. And the Daily Mail's Quentin Letts - Michael Martin's bete noire - has dubbed the new Speaker "Mr Squeaker" and from his comments on the BBC's Holyrood Live this afternoon he clearly views Mr Bercow and the circumstances of his election as an open goal for sketchwriters.

So no change there then.

Tumshie, richt enough!

Funny how whit ye think o' fowk can cheenge ower the heids o' jist ae thing they've done. Tak Stewart Stevenson, transport heid man in oor parliament. Twa or three year ago he kicked up a stink cos the BBC's Trawlerman hid subtitles cos naebody kaint fit they were sayin'. Couldna see fit a' the fuss was aboot misel - I was brocht up speaking a nae bad Doric, but even so hid a joab working oot whit they were sayin'. Havna been able to think aboot him we a straicht face since.

Onywey, accordin' to een o' the Sunday papers een o' Stewarty's pals in the SNP is a' ootomint ower the heids o' the shoaps nae ca'in fit they sell bi fit they're ca'd by us Scots. MSP Bill Wilson wants the shoaps to ca' a turnip a tumshie, and that's just een. Bit I kane wha I think's the tumshie!

Ye see, it's teen me twa, three or even fower times as lang to type this in Doric than it wid've teen me ti dae it in English, even though Doric's mi mither tongue. And even if onybidy reading this can work oot whit im saying they'll nae doobt tak langer than if id done mi usual.

And 'am sure I saw Bill on the TV eence upon a time, and he was speakin' a' posh! Hae a lookie at this an a'!

Fit a haver - human richts mi erse!

(It's not unusual for one's perception of a particular individual to be fundamentally and irrevocably coloured by their reaction to one particular thing. Take Stewart Stevenson, the Scottish Government's transport secretary, for example; a few years ago Mr Stevenson created something of a fuss because the BBC's Trawlermen series utilised subtitles to deal with the rather broad Doric dialect spoken by the programme's stars. At that time I wondered what all the fuss was about, since having been brought up in Grassic Gibbon country and capable of a reasonable turn of Doric, even I would have struggled without the subtitles. Nevertheless, this episode has coloured my perception of Mr Stevenson and I haven't been able to think of him with a straight face since (and his subsequent road safety suggestion that car manufacturers should be encouraged to supply fluorescent seatbelts to assist with law enforcement didn't help either!).

Now yesterday's Scotland on Sunday reported that Mr Stevenson's SNP colleague MSP Bill Wilson thinks that supermarkets should eschew the English names of fresh produce for their Scots equivalent - for example 'turnip ' should become 'tumshie'. Neep, anyone?

But what would be the point of that? For example, composing something in Scots or Doric is a lot more difficult than doing it in standard English, and reading it is more difficult as well, for the vast majority of us at least, even if speaking it is probably easier for many than proper English.

Moreover, on the rare occasions I've seen Bill Wilson on television I can't recall him speaking Scots and, indeed, his personal website uses standard English.

Thus Dr Wilson's appeal seems born of nationalist hypocrisy and symbolism, and his human rights argument yet another ludicrous example of political correctness.)

Community policing

The Evening Telegraph in Dundee has been running a series of Tayside Police press releas...er...articles on a "shake-up" of policing in the city, with particular emphasis on the creation of 36 community officers who are dedicated to particular areas and undertake ground-breaking initiatives such as patrolling the streets.

It's always a bit worrying to see the word 'community' attached to anything - it usually seems a way of dressing up an area ridden with crime and conflict - but the feel-good message conveyed by the articles will no doubt provide reassurance to some. On the other hand, a similar spiel accompanied the advent of the 'community safety wardens' a few years ago (I think the term 'safety' was appended some time later - another feel-good word), and the need for the new community police officers possibly now vindicates the then view that the warden concept was little more than a glorified neighbourhood watch scheme.

Anyway, anyone familiar with this territory will be equally well versed with the type of message conveyed in the Tele's articles, and typical of this is the closing paragraph in one piece, quoting one of the community officers:

The message is don't be put off by the 'police don't do anything' type of attitude. I'll certainly be looking for anybody to approach me, no matter how petty they think something is.

However, an interesting letter also appeared in the Tele this week. A couple wrote of witnessing two youths throwing litter to the ground despite being adjacent to a bin:

I have witnessed this before, but this time rather than ignore it I challenged the two boys and asked them to pick up their rubbish and put it in the bin.The torrent of foul language and abuse I received in response was staggering. Thankfully they saw a policeman patrolling and ran off.

I told the policeman about this but his response was one of, “that’s life” and walked off.

So which is the more realistic portrayal of policing in Dundee?

Bumper to bumper

Given the increasing prevalence of tailgating and the rarity of any driver being brought to book for it, it was interesting to read a recent Scotsman report about motorists prosecuted for the practice.

This anti-social and dangerous behaviour is surely one manifestation of the crude official approach to road safety, which encourages drivers to slow down for speed bumps and cameras, but as an unintended corollary promotes open season elsewhere.

Equally crude is the official response. As has surely been demonstrated in recent years in relation to many other areas of human misconduct, a few planned warning signs and a bit of token enforcement are surely better characterised as gesture politics/policing rather than a serious attempt to tackle the problem.

(Published as a letter in today's Scotsman)

Apathy and antipathy

The SNP may have decisively won the European elections in Scotland, but the fact is that with little more than a quarter of the electorate turning out to vote the nationalists were endorsed by only around eight per cent of eligible Scottish voters.

Of course, it's perhaps symptomatic of the complacency and self-indulgence of the political class that First Minister Alex Salmond hailed the SNP's vote as "historic", finance secretary John Swinney described it as "a huge endorsement" of the Scottish Government, while MSP Roseanna Cunningham called it a "massive vote of confidence". But from the public's perspective perhaps the dominant message from last week's poll is the increasing apathy and, indeed, antipathy towards politicians and their parties.

Thus objectively a real 'victory' would surely be represented by something fundamentally different from this week's results, but from the viewpoint of the party political tribes what really seems to matter are things like seats, power and personal advancement.

Independence, not independents

While the big story of the Euro elections is clearly the rout of Labour, from an anti-politics perspective generally there seems little in the results to suggest a decisive shift against the mainstream parties. Of course, the other big headline grabber is the BNP securing a couple of seats in England, but in terms of votes there’s no indication of fundamental change on 2004, and in this European context UKIP has continued to take significant votes from the more established parties.

On the other hand, the paltry turnout reflects the usual apathy and disillusionment with all things politics, exacerbated by the European factor, but the current expenses debacle hasn’t resulted in a collapse in the number of people turning out to vote, but the proportion is down markedly on last time round.

However, given Labour’s collapse, both the Conservatives at the UK level and the SNP in Scotland must be disappointed that they’ve failed to breach the 30% barrier in terms of total votes, and perhaps this is how disillusionment with the established parties has manifested itself.

Neither have recent events fundamentally benefited the independents, for whom the expenses debacle must have seemed like the perfect storm in terms of an opportunity to make headway at the expense of the household name parties. Umbrella group the Jury Team (JT) secured a consistent but paltry 0.4 to 0.6% throughout the UK, and has been uniformly outpolled by other fringe parties such as the Christian Party, No2EU and the English Democrats. Indeed, in Scotland the JT polled almost 4,000 votes less than traditional independent Duncan Robertson’s 10,189. This must be hugely disappointing for the those attracted to the idea of a grouping of independents, because despite some media coverage and reasonable resources, to be outpolled by the invisible Mr Robertson must be galling, and indeed this pattern seems to have repeated itself to a greater or lesser extent throughout the UK. This perhaps confirms that even with the current state of play in UK politics it takes a high profile figure like Martin Bell or Esther Rantzen or particular local circumstances to open the door for independent candidates, and because the JT was probably unknown to the vast majority of the public the organisation’s rather bizarre name probably did it no good from the ballot paper perspective, while a candidate marked ‘independent’ probably attracted a good few polling booth deciders.

Indeed, there is a recent slight precedent at the Scottish level for the JT’s disastrous result - centre right party Scottish Voice morphed into a quasi-independent group for the 2007 Holyrood elections, but came nowhere.

Thus it looks like the current antipathy with politicians has manifested itself primarily in the collapse of Labour’s vote and a reduced turnout rather than any fundamental move away from the mainstream parties - therefore a shift towards independence (with UKIP in the UK context and the SNP north of the border) rather than independents, but of course this trend predates recent events. On the other hand, the pro-Europe and pro-Union parties still dominate the scenario overall.

However, the bigger picture still is that in the still Labour-dominated Glasgow and the now SNP-dominated Dundee the appalling turnout means that in these cities the ‘winners’ managed to garner the support of only around 7% and 11% of the electorate respectively, but unfortunately little in the way of humility is likely from the SNP is this regard, and clearly the Labour leadership considers disastrous poll results as merely a justification to try to do a better job rather than giving someone else a chance.

A democratic dilemma resolved!

Who to vote for in the Euro elections? I haven't voted in any election many times in the past, and indeed haven't participated in the vote for the European Parliament at all. But while the cynic in me preferred the abstentionist route, my political blogger side compelled something a bit more positive, even if just a spoiled ballot paper.

But that would have been a bit silly? Well, perhaps not - if a significant number of spoilt papers arose then clearly that would send out some kind of message, at least given that usually the low turnouts indicating abstention are effectively just shrugged off by the political class.

None of the mainstream/established parties were particularly appealing. Most of the rest seemed to be in the radical/idealist/extremist category, thus not particularly attractive either, except perhaps as a protest vote.

However, as an independent-minded person there was always the new option of the umbrella group for independent candidates - the Jury Team - and there was also one traditional independent on the ballot paper.

Of course, there's an inherent paradox between the concept of political independence and any kind of organised group, but the Jury Team aren't so much concerned with substantive policies (apart from the constitutional side) as in not providing a platform for extremists and providing support to those pledging not to attach themselves to any political group.

Indeed, I did consider (for five minutes!) putting my name forward for the Jury Team and in fact (I think!) that since there were only five candidates for the Scottish primaries then as the sixth and final entrant I would have automatically appeared on the ballot paper?

However, good sense dictated otherwise, so by yesterday the remaining dilemma was whether or not to vote for the Jury Team. But the trouble with the concept is that with the list system used for the Euro elections you could in effect be voting for anyone from a Tommy Sheridan to a Nigel Farage, or even a Nick Griffin (although whether the latter would be precluded from standing under the Jury Team's anti-extremist rules isn't clear) and to that extent voting for such an umbrella organisation would represent a shot in the dark or even a negation of democracy.

Indeed, while I didn't look into the policies and profiles of the Scottish Jury Team candidates in any great depth, the tone and content of one of their blogs did put me off a bit - not quite a voter/candidate deal breaker maybe, but perhaps confirming concerns about the random nature of a Jury Team vote.

Anyway, opting for the group was likely to represent little more than a protest vote, as would a cross beside the name of Duncan Roberstson, the only true independent in the poll. Thus did the policy minutiae of the independents really matter, since they were unlikely to be elected - only high profile, Martin Bell-type figures have a chance of making it as independents, surely - and even if they were they would surely achieve little in substantive policy terms.

But perhaps they did have a chance - after all, it's not a first past the post system, and the current climate surely favours independents and the non-mainstream parties. But then again perhaps public discontent would manifest itself in an even lower turnout than the usual Euro election figures rather than in protest voting, so to that extent an independent vote wouldn't achieve much.

Such were the various questions and dilemmas preoccupying me for much of the day (actually, a lot less time than it's taken to type this out!), but in the end the issue was easily resolved - I waited too long, was running short of time, had something more important to do and thus didn't make it to the polling booth.

Thus a democratic dilemma solved, and I'll put it down to a conscientious abstention rather than a convenience one!

Maybe next time.

Principled stand over poppies?

Since the Lib Dems have perhaps not suffered as badly as Labour and the Tories over the expenses fiasco, it's perhaps surprising that one of its councillors in Angus has resigned from the party over the issue, with the weekend story over MSPs claiming for poppy wreaths for Remembrance Sunday generating particular ire from ex-serviceman Peter Nield.

Mr Nield describes the actions of the 15 MSPs as "despicable", is unimpressed by Tavish Scott's failure to sack the four offending Lib Dems and is clearly unplacated by the fact that his former party colleagues have agreed to repay the amounts claimed. The councillor's decision to start afresh as an independent has also been influenced by the more general impact of the Westminster expenses debacle.

Of course, there's clearly some support for the proposition that the MSPs have done nothing wrong regarding the poppy claims, and indeed it's perhaps difficult for those not connected to the Armed Forces to get worked up about the issue.

But if Mr Nield's actions are genuinely motivated by principle then he's to be applauded. But his call on politicians from other parties to follow his stance seems unlikely to elicit much in the way of a positive response.

Politicking, prisoners and privacy

The politicking over the issue of Scotland's open prisons helps obscure question marks over a lack of official candour in relation to absconding inmates. Two years ago a local press campaign to secure details of prisoners on the run from open jails in Tayside met with the slightly ludicrous official response that publishing such information would breach absconders' right to privacy.

Indeed, given criticism of First Minister Alex Salmond's failure to disclose information about the latest absconder while answering questions on the issue in the Scottish Parliament, it's perhaps ironic that SNP MP Stewart Hosie's response to the privacy issue was that "people also have a right to safety and if this is jeopardised then we must weigh up the consequences of having the public being kept in the dark".

Of course, Mr Salmond claims that disclosure of the current information was an "operational matter" for Tayside Police, but since he should have known that the open prisons issues would be raised at First Minister's Questions last week it seems bizarre that no attempt was made to liaise with police to ascertain what could be said about the latest abscondence.

In view of the supposed operational/political distinction it's also ironic that Phil Fairlie of the Prison Officers Association Scotland has been making overtly political statements criticising the opposition parties regarding their conduct in the dispute while at the same time lavishing praise on justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, particularly since Mr Fairlie is a former SNP councillor.

(The first two paragraphs were published as a letter in yesterday's Scotsman)