From the Guardian yesterday:

Hundreds of extremely vulnerable children at risk of being recruited by criminal gangs are being thrown out of schools in county lines hotspots. Exclusion is widely regarded by child protection experts as a trigger point for criminal exploitation as pupils removed from classrooms lose the structure of the school day and the oversight of teachers. Some are left unsupervised at home and others are sent to pupil referral units, where gangs often recruit.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/aug/29/hundreds-of-children-thrown-out-of-school-in-english-county-lines-hotspots

There were 578,280 temporary exclusions (suspensions) up from 352,454 the previous year and 6,495 permanent exclusions from Schools in England in 2021/2022:

https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/permanent-and-fixed-period-exclusions-in-england

In Scotland in 2020/2021 (most recent available), there were 8 322 temporary exclusions, down every year for the last six, from 26 844 in 2010, and 1 permanent exclusion, down from 60 in 2010.

https://www.gov.scot/publications/summary-statistics-schools-scotland/pages/8/

Even if we compare the falling Scottish 2021 data with the surging 2022 English data, the rate is more than 7 times higher in England, where, of course, all of the County Lines are based.

Why do these data matter for Scotland?

Why are Scotland’s ‘national’ media not reporting the terror of English county lines gangs in Scotland?

Only the Daily Record, the Courier and the Evening Standard are reporting these dramatic events from yesterday:

Four gang members have been jailed and a missing child rescued after police rumbled a major drugs line from London to Dundee.

Officers from the Met Police launched a probe after concerns were raised for the welfare of the 16-year-old on November 14 last year.

Detectives discovered the youth, from Croydon, had travelled north of the border earlier that month – closely followed by Malik Paul, 26, Michael Nwadire, 28, Dylan Newman, 21, and Ellis Davey, 22.

Operation Orochi was launched with officers racing to Dundee where they began a major joint investigation with Police Scotland’s Serious and Organised Crime Team.https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/missing-boy-found-scots-cuckooed-30349815

BBC Scotland, STV, the Herald and the Scotsman have no coverage. Imagine it was a Scottish gang doing this in England? Do think it Anti-English or maybe damaging for the image of the Union when they can do the King’s new sword instead?

The silence on this is not new.

In 2019, I wrote:

Police Scotland reported the problem as early as January 2019:

The charity Crime-stoppers is today 14th January 2019 launching a campaign to highlight the pain and suffering that criminals from English cities are inflicting on vulnerable people in Scotland’s rural and coastal towns. The campaign aims to raise awareness of County Lines, which is when criminals from major cities such as Liverpool, Manchester, London and Birmingham are expanding their drug networks to other areas, bringing with it serious criminal behaviour such as violence, exploitation and abuse. The term County Lines refers to the use of a single telephone number to order drugs, operated from outside the local area. This is having a massive impact on rural communities and also on vulnerable children and adults who are being recruited in cities such as Manchester and Liverpool.

https://www.scotland.police.uk/whats-happening/news/2019/january/campaign-launched-appeal-for-help-tackling-county-lines-drug-networks

Only the Sunday Post reported this at the time.

So, a Police Scotland announcement and clearly some media aware of it. Why have BBC Scotland not considered it in the public interest when it sounds eminently so? Are they worried it would seem anti-English?

I had thought that only the Police Scotland warnings were being ignored by the Scottish MSM but have since stumbled on two more public reports they must have seen.

In August 2019, again unreported, Youthlink Scotland held a conference aimed at developing: ‘the latest guidance and good practice on how to identify, support, and help young and vulnerable victims of criminal exploitation.’

https://www.youthlinkscotland.org/events/archive/august-2019/county-lines-drug-networks-in-scotland-preventing-and-tackling-the-criminal-exploitation-of-children-and-vulnerable-adults/

On its own, this has all the marks of newsworthiness – young victims, exploitation. Any half-decent investigative journalists would be salivating but BBC Scotland Disclosure don’t like the look of it.

But then, I see a link in the charity announcement which takes me to a Scottish Government investigation from June 2018 (!). It’s hard to understand why this was not headlined. See these extracts from Community Experiences of Serious Organised Crime in Scotland:

• Evidence from drug market research and policing suggests that the most common route for illicit commodities into Scotland is through the open border with England, with major drug supply routes entering the country by road and rail.
• The profitability of the heroin trade has however led to an increase in SOC groups from England penetrating markets in north and rural Scotland. These groups use road, train, and bus routes to create steady supply routes in these areas, effectively ‘bypassing’ the traditional groups in Scotland’s central belt and directly accessing other markets in rural areas. A police officer noted the regularity of the trade, with ‘young people or low-level patsies acting as couriers’.
• ‘There’s an awful lot of folk coming up from [city in north England] and they’ll target a house, they’ll basically just come into the house and, and they’ll take over the house while they’re dealing their drugs and giving that tenant what they need so they can use their house and that… The best explanation that I’ve heard is [in] our area, there’s not a firm, like, family that’s in control of the drugs. So they’re just coming up and taking advantage of that (Police Officer, National Diffuse).’
• They [OCGs in the local area] are linked to a group in the north [of England] … the group have not come up to supplant the indigenous group as there are no turf wars. Rather they co-operate with drug supply, but also collaborate on some other criminal activities… [they] had a guy living in the area. What the group added was increased capacity in terms of supply and sourcing drugs and increased flexibility in terms of moving drugs north (Police Officer, National Diffuse).

Click to access 00536071.pdf

Also, in 2021, we saw:

When I first heard the voices on the short video showing a knife and machete attack on a 16 year-old, I detected an English accent.

Only the Daily Record likewise commented:

The group of youths, who appeared to have English accents, were caught on camera on Argyle Street in the city centre at 8.30pm on Thursday evening.

BBC Scotland has ignored the report. This fits with their agenda to ignore anything that their viewers might think casts the Union in a negative light.

The Glasgow Times even labelled them ‘Glasgow thugs.‘