Comments on: Rhoda Grant says loss of Chief Constable down to under-funding http://www.maciverblog.co.uk/2015/08/27/police-2/ Public accountability and snippets Sat, 07 Nov 2015 14:53:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3.1 By: Horrigan http://www.maciverblog.co.uk/2015/08/27/police-2/#comment-1452 Tue, 01 Sep 2015 10:09:45 +0000 http://www.maciverblog.co.uk/?p=217#comment-1452 Oh Good.

Now that the Labour Branch in Scotland are claiming support for the police force, we can be sure that they’ll support the call to axe the VAT charges on our emergency services which are only applied to Scottish Emergency Services and to none other within the UK.

Or is it that they are really lacklustre press release producers rather than politicians with the gumption to actually lead action on what they claim to support or believe in…

In this case, there allegiance to their Tory overlords sets out the Labour priorities for all to see. Westminster domination over Scottish interests.

Better Together, for them.

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By: Guga http://www.maciverblog.co.uk/2015/08/27/police-2/#comment-1412 Mon, 31 Aug 2015 05:50:34 +0000 http://www.maciverblog.co.uk/?p=217#comment-1412 I am more than happy to see House go.

Like too many organizations in Scotland, Police Scotland has foreigners appointed to the head positions. Another example of relevance at this point in time is the Edinburgh Festival which, in its 70 years, has never had a Scotsman in charge, only foreigners.

I know that too many of the people in positions of power in Scotland are merely lackeys of the English government, and continue to treat the Scottish people as too wee, too poor and too stupid to run our own affairs.

As to House, this is the man who was ultimately responsible for the recent tragedy of the car crash which took the police three days to check out. I agree that it was not totally his fault, but the fault of the SNP in having useless Justice Ministers and an obsession with centralizing everything. They could well have centralized such things as purchasing, admin and similar for the police, and left the various forces as they were.

This centralization resulted in House bringing in idiotic levels of stop and search. Scotland has had more cases of stop and search than even that bastion of corruption and evil, the English Metropolitan Police. This despite the fact that the population of Scotland is approximately half of the Met. Police area.

Another of House’s poor decisions was to try to have every policeman armed, regardless of what they were doing. If he had known anything about Scotland and Scottish culture, he would have realized that such a move was totally out of place and unnecessary. Like the stop and search he seems to think that the people of Scotland are all a bunch of hardened, murderous thugs.

I appreciate that, nowadays, there are problems with deranged terrorist groups and the odd equally deranged nutters in our society, and that there is a case for police having access to firearms when the (very rare) case arises. However, that could be covered by having lock boxes in police cars for such firearms, which would only be brought out if the need arises.

The SNP do have a major share of the blame in this fiasco as, if they had a decent and intelligent Justice Minister, they could have exercised control over House and his ilk who appear to wish to turn Scotland into a police state.

A related matter is the SNP desire to waste vast amounts of police time and taxpayers money on the air gun situation by demanding that all air guns be registered. This is, supposedly, to ensure that air guns are not a source of crime. A decent and intelligent Justice Minister would have realized that there is plenty of existing legislation to control the use of air guns, without even more unnecessary and unenforceable legislation.

So, Nicola, get a grip. Appoint a competent person to the post of Justice Minister. Appoint Scots to senior positions in government and semi-government (including all taxpayer funded) organizations to replace all the foreigners in these positions, and remember, before you introduce any more daft legislation or make daft policies (such as wishing to have Scotland be a member of NATO (the North American Terrorist Organization), try consulting the people!

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