The Bill resurrected in Dundee!

Too much 'community spirit' and 'national pride' in Scotland for the country to replicate the recent scenes south of the border, of course, but it seems that no one has told the people of Dundee.

Thus when a convoy of Grampian Police minibuses went hurtling through the morning rush hour traffic in Dundee, with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, some seemed to think there was a riot kicking off in the city.

One commuter told the Courier: "I thought the riots had started in Dundee and they were reinforcements for the city — it made me very worried about what I would come home to and I kept listening to the news, but there was nothing about Dundee."

Not quite. It seems that the Grampian officers were providing back-up for hard-pressed forces south of the border. London, to be precise. A week after the riots had fizzled out. A police spokesman said: "While officers were not responding to a local emergency call, they were utilising blue lights while travelling south in order to safely meet a national operational deadline."

Which presumably means they were late for their shift.

However, I was reminded of this last night when an incident occurred in Dundee's Hilltown. This was quite close to the Planet Politics boardroom window, so on hearing a lot of shouting and screaming I opened it to have a wee lookie. The problem seemed to be a group of drunken teenage girls, one of whom seemed to have fallen over and hit her head, but the reason for the subsequent hysterics and tantrums from her pals wasn't entirely clear.

Anyway, I overheard someone calling the police, three of whom duly arrived in a panda car, after a journey of up to half a mile through the one-way system, with 'blues and twos' going and quite possibly running two red traffic lights in the process.

Fair enough - drunken teenage girls require a rapid response and are best left to the professionals - but the funny thing was that the police station is only 100 yards or so from where the incident took place, so even if they'd merely strolled up the road they would have gotten there quicker, never mind showing any sense of urgency!

Of course, there may be good reasons for going by car - to give the drunken teenage girls a free lift home, for example - but surely two of the officers could have gone the quick way while the other drove round the one-way system? And when a substantially bigger kick off occurred a few weeks previously involving a significantly larger group of drunken teenagers, several officers seemed to (literally) hotfoot it from the said police station.

I should add, obviously, that these people do a very difficult job, and it's not one that most of us could even contemplate. But there's nothing like creating a sense of drama!