As BBC Scotland major on one woman denied a job with Police Scotland, 4 years ago, because she is on anti-depressants for anxiety and depression (yes, really), this is in the Herald today:
Struggling to find scandals across the public services in Scotland, to compare with the real crises across NHS England and the two London and Manchester police forces, Scotland’s media have been scrabbling around to find and to make much of a few individuals who will come forward for the attention they seek. In some cases, there is a whiff of grooming by the opposition politicians.
These are not important cases, in terms of legitimate public interest in wider events and trends that may affect them, but mere titillation of the kind that used to be confined to the tabloids.
Here are some examples of stories that tell us more about Police Scotland than the above:
In 2020, on Reporting Scotland (!):
Meanwhile, the chair of the Independent committee scrutinising the way the police have implemented lockdown has told MSPs it’s given the idea of policing by consent ‘fresh life’ and he praised the police for setting up scrutiny of their actions themselves. He told a virtual meeting of Holyrood’s Policing Sub-Committee it was a healthy sign that the committee had been set up by the national force.
But, then the independent advisory committee chair, John Scott QC tells us:
I’ve been in touch with colleagues in the human rights field in other countries and it appears that Scotland is ahead of the game here in terms of having a human-rights-based scrutiny of these emergency powers. I’ve spoken to colleagues in England and Northern Ireland and now moving further afield as well. So I think it’s an extremely healthy sign that the initiative for this group came from within Police Scotland.
And, on BBC Scotland’s Nine (!) Dr Marsha Scott of Scottish Women’s Aid:
And one of the big things that we found on the helpline was that a really big part of the calls in the initial part of lock-down was just information about, if women decided to leave and could leave, would the police tell them that they had to go back. I mean we heard some stories from England that that might have been the case. And I want to give lots of credit to the Scottish police. That was certainly never the message up here.
And in 2021:
A new verification check for lone police officers in Scotland has been introduced in the wake of the murder of Sarah Everard.
Police Scotland said it wanted to reassure the public after she was abducted and killed by Metropolitan police officer Wayne Couzens.
Couzens, 48, used his warrant card to abduct Ms Everard from a south London street before raping and murdering her.
Members of the public in Scotland can now request a control room check.
Action, doing something but what about in London where these events began? What is the Met doing? Well, nothing yet. From the Times today:
Flashers and perverts remain eligible to join the Metropolitan Police and other forces because of a loophole in vetting.
The anomaly means that Wayne Couzens, the officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard, would probably still have been hired by the Met even if he had been arrested for exposing himself.
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
In the past media watchers used to describe the summer as the ‘silly season’ for newspapers. With it being the holiday period, Parliament in recess, there was little in the way of solid news stories, so the papers headlined things like a cat being rescued from a tree. For a while the ‘silly season’ actually became an overt feature in the media with silly stories being ‘featured’ specifically as ‘silly season fun’.
But, with 24 hour rolling news we moved into a perpetual silly season. To fill time the programmes built up a stable of pundits and wafflers to ‘comment’ on stories in a self proclaimed authoritative way and then these comments became the stories themselves as did the comments on comments, and so on ad nauseam. Actual news became a smaller proportion of the programmes.
Actual news gathering reporters – and there actually were some st one time – became fewer and the punditocracy became the norm. It became showbiz, with performative emotions, preferably anger.
Private Eye invented a reporter Phillipa Space to satirise this and the media began recruiting Phillipas for every ‘news’ programmes and they then became ‘celebrities.
The media have lost any sense of perspective or proportion.
LikeLiked by 4 people
Aye, noted what HMS James Cook were promoting https://archive.ph/HFSkq but then spotted WHEN this happened, June 2019, and thought of ambulance chasing lawyers…
So 4 years on and the prospective candidate working in an entirely different field, what makes the prime story for BBC Scotland’s audience ?
The answer is simple enough, diversion – Ffoukesake then Jack’s ‘flounce’ over civil servants backfired so badly they are simply avoiding the subject like the plague, aside mentioning Jack’s original ‘flounce’ in passing in their ‘what the papers say’ segment (courtesy the National).
Pathetic and really, really obvious…..
LikeLiked by 1 person
As you say – thoughts of ambulance chasing lawyers.
Whilst I can feel sorry for the lady in question, rules are rules and common sense is common sense. Anxiety and depression are not problems to be sniffed at, both are long term problems and neither can be fully controlled by medication.
I say that as the parent of two (now adult) children who have the same problem. Both are in work, but not in full time positions. Both take prescribed medication, which helps but not 100% of the time. Even with said medication they can experience the worst symptoms without warning – the problem doesn’t have a watch or calendar so doesn’t operate to a set schedule. Luckily, they both have understanding employers who make allowances for this.
According to the BBC report, the lady in question obviously knew she had the health problem, but claims that she had been ‘transparent’ with Police Scotland regarding her health issues – yet the job offer made to her predated the medical where the health problem was first revealed, and was conditional upon her passing that medical.
Aside from all that, my issue is that she was applying for a position which essentially involves maintaining public safety. If, as for my children, the medication didn’t do its job and the symptoms could strike at any time, I’d question whether or not she would be capable of keeping the public safe.
LikeLiked by 4 people
It’s not a matter of “the health problem”, it’s a matter of when she knew or could reasonably have known of the rule over medication, something HMS James Cook are at pains to avoid addressing in this article, which her ambulance chasing lawyers are clearly hoping to exploit.
It is nevertheless a complete diversion, she never became a police officer over 4 years ago.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I find it hard to accept that she wouldn’t have known, or at least have suspected, that the rule over medication would have proven to be a stumbling block for her. It’s quite clear that she was aware the job offer was conditional – and the main condition was that she pass a medical. For me, her excuse that she never mentioned it prior to the offer being made – that she thought ‘they’ would have accessed her medical history by then and know about her health problem – simply beggars belief. It’s not the role of recruitment personnel to interpret medical records, that’s the role of a health professional to make a judgement and advise accordingly – which is one of the reasons she had to attend a medical.
But you’re correct, this is little more than a case of rapacious lawyers out to get what they can. I don’t wish her any ill-fortune, but I hope the courts put this claim where it belongs – in the bin.
LikeLiked by 2 people