Not satisfied with 14 vans and a big tent parked on Nicola’s lawn, stealing a ‘his or hers’ leg razor, a wheelbarrow and no doubt his or hers underwear drawers to check for DNA, Police Scotland have invited or had foisted upon them the UK’s ‘FBI’.
The National Crime Agency well get right into whether or not some dosh was vired from one budget head to another in the way that every other organisation has, such as themselves, has felt free to do since time began.
I’m reminded of the time in 2016 when Labour-run Falkirk Council vired £1 145 from a ‘Community Grant’ budget to the local Orange Order to cover the cost of policing their own events:
Police Scotland who got the money, did not investigate.
Yesterday, in the Times, we saw John Boothman and, slipping down from Channel 4 News, Kieran Andrews, splashing about in the mud with, at the end of the piece, their usual pals:
Boothman? You know that name! Here he is:
Most Scots oppose a new justice policy that allows people caught with Class A drugs including cocaine to escape with a police warning instead of prosecution.
A Panelbase poll for The Sunday Times — published before Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Conservatives leader Douglas Ross make a joint visit to a drugs recovery group tomorrow — suggests that the authorities are out of step with voters on a key aspect of Scotland’s growing crisis.
Official figures show cocaine was implicated in one third of Scotland’s soaring drugs deaths in 2020 (in 459 out of 1,339 cases). But Dorothy Bain, the lord advocate, announced in September that police could issue a warning for those possessing it and other Class A drugs.https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scots-oppose-warnings-for-cocaine-3rql59qp2
It’s not clear whether or how Panelbase asked about Cocaine or just Class A drugs.
Boothman’s compromising former role is never mentioned by the Times.
Remember this and him?
John Boothman, Head of News at BBC Scotland in 2014, married to Susan Deacon,of the New Labour elite, and the man who allegedly bullied the daughter of Margo MacDonald:
Facts?
From the Information Services Division (ISD) for drug and alcohol treatment services between July and September 2019:
The Scottish Government set a standard that 90% of people referred for help with their drug or alcohol problem will wait no longer than three weeks for treatment that supports their recovery.
For the 5,335 people seeking drug treatment, 95.0% waited three weeks or less.
Remember this and him?
John Boothman, Head of News at BBC Scotland in 2014, married to Susan Deacon,of the New Labour elite, and the man who allegedly bullied the daughter of Margo MacDonald:
From the Information Services Division (ISD) for drug and alcohol treatment services between July and September 2019:
The Scottish Government set a standard that 90% of people referred for help with their drug or alcohol problem will wait no longer than three weeks for treatment that supports their recovery.
For the 5,335 people seeking drug treatment, 95.0% waited three weeks or less.
Click to access 2019-12-17-DATWT-Summary.pdf
And as for the ‘growing crisis?’ Check your facts!
For the first time in years, the number of drug deaths in Scotland has not climbed. Indeed it has even fallen, if only by 1%.
If this trend is repeated for the next six months, then we are almost certainly witnessing something I reflected on in July 2021.
I agree fully that we should do all we can, now, to reduce drug deaths.
But, this ‘crisis’ may be burning itself out. See these graphs:
In a BBC Scotland report from December 2020:
The National Records of Scotland statistics are six months late after a huge backlog in processing toxicology results and delays due to Covid-19. They show that two-thirds of those who died were aged 35 to 54. The report said the median average age of drug-related deaths had gone up from 28 to 42 over the past two decades. However, there was also an increase in deaths among 15 to 24 year olds – from 64 in 2018 to 76 in 2019.
That the graphs divide the data simply into over 35 and under 34 groups slightly conceals the evidence that Scotland’s exceptionally high drug deaths are due to a wave of death affecting those whose lives were ruined by Tory economic policies from 1979 to 1997 and, crucially, that the wave already shows signs of fading out as the older members, 55-64 disappear from the data:
Even were we to do nothing and I’m by no means suggesting that, the shortened lives inevitable after a life of drug abuse, mean that 35-55 group do not have long even if they avoid overdose and the level of deaths among the currently under 34, not unusual in other countries, will become the norm.
Talking-up Scotland 
Police Scotland , the UK ‘FBI’ , Interpol , Hercule Poirot , Guardians of the Galaxy – surely time to call in Taggart -”There’s been a muuurdur !”
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When Boothman first started his anti-SNP reports at The Times I posted some information on his background and his departure from the BBC. The Tes blocked my on line posting. I was and am a subscriber.
I now notice that some of the stories onto the ongoing police investigation are getting more ludicrous and hysterical. Searches for lady shavers, sim cards and burner phones. All right out of a rejected script for “Line of Duty’. Now we have Britain’s FBI getting involved according to the Times. No on line public comments allowed though. I wonder why?
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And let’s not forget Kieran Andrews who has previous in “dodgy” articles, although you do appear to confuse the “Scottish political editor of The Times” with the equally slippery “Ciaran Jenkins” of C4….. 😉
Note deployment of the “amid” trick of the headline with “…months” BEFORE “the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon’s husband Peter Murrell” doing all the heavy lifting.
Even though HMS James Cook plays similar innuendo games in Glenn Campbell’s piece on the same story, at least the reason is spelled out there as “…understands the national force asked the UK agency to carry out an independent review of its inquiry last year”
Viz, the NCA were asked to peer review their investigation…
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Ooops. I have. Edited
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Am I correct in thinking the Dep Chief Constable used to work for the Met?
Don’t know why, but I have that niggling thought whenever I read about the overkill searches…
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Interesting. Will check.
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Perhaps the instigators (whoever they were?) just took the phrase “they know where the bodies are buried” too literally?
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Every Scot knows Police have always been half up trouser brigade
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And yet the prominent intends at least for me is that that the peer review of the PS investigation is because of interference by the SG, am I right? Is this the next gambit.
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Implication being the Scottish government, with the SNP as the democratically elected party at the helm, is somehow rogue, out of order, and you know what happens to rogue governments, they get booted out in a take over to save the people from the terrible tyranny, and to restore democracy. Far fetched, hopefully, but put nowt past the BritNat state, nothing at all.
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