There are 214 police stations in Scotland. Police Scotland plans to close 29 or 13.5% as their way of operating changes and, mentioned by no one, crime plummets by 50% in the last 16 years of SNP Government.
A typical closure is the above Ryehill in Dundee, where a contact tells us ‘Officers who work from there are never in the office except to eat. No civilian staff worked there to answer the door.’
Our frankly dysfunctional media do not mention the total, the percentage reduction nor the fall in crime.
For details of the latter, see:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Looking at the graphs for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it is notable that reported crime in E&W and in Scotland broadly matched each other until about 2011/12 and both showed quite steep, steady declines. This coincided with the period of the Blair and Brown Governments. However once the Tories (and LibDems, initially) took over, crime in England and Wales rose very sharply and is still on an upward trajectory. But, in Scotland, under SNP governments since 2007, the trend continued steadily downward.
To be fair to the Blair and Brown governments despite some appalling decisions, such as the Iraq war and other wars and continued privatisations, they did invest heavily in social and health policies, including education. These things are to Labour’s credit.
In Scotland, the philosophy of Strathclyde Police’s Violence Reduction Unit we’re expanded nationwide and this led to a markedly different form of policing. In addition, in education, the number of exclusions from schools fell sharply. In England, the academies programme led to the effective privatisation of education and with the ‘league tables’ ethos affecting the funding of schools, academies became much harsher in excluding pupils (mainly black) from schools. The academies had no legal connection with social work departments of councils, whereas in Scotland both education and social work were under council control and worked closely in ensuring that children excluded from school were known and had educational provision made for them. But, in England, pupils excluded from school were largely lost to the education system and became prey for criminal gangs who used them to ferry drugs and to assault and murder people from other gangs. Sadly, as we have seen innocent bystanders were killed in such incidents. Also, the deregulation of the City and the institutional corruption (and racism and misogyny) of the Metropolitan Police led to serious money laundering crime, with vast pickings to be made. Finally, despite a restricted budget, the Scottish Government has kept a greater proportion of young people out of poverty and, since there is a correlation between poverty and crime, this link has been weakened Scotland.
So, there is a plausible explanation for the differences between Scotland and England with regard to crime.
However, since the media paradigm is still Glasgow, no Mean City, the razor gangs, sectarianism, the drugs death capital of the world, etc. the improvements in crime rates are not reported. But, we get a lot of vox pops of victims of crime.
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To be fair to the Blair and Brown governments despite some appalling decisions, such as the Iraq war and other wars and continued privatisations, they did invest heavily in social and health policies, including education. These things are to Labour’s credit.
True
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Yes but did things get better?
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Yes, for a time and for very many people they did. However, within less than two years of taking office Cameron, Clegg and Osborne swept most of them away, with, scandalously, little opposition from Labour.
When in power, Labour never argued to change the Thatcher paradigm. It did not set out the case firmly for a more distributive, compassionate, inclusive society and emphasise it during its years in power when it had a huge majority. Instead Blair, Brown, Blunkett, Straw wrote articles for the Murdoch papers, Mail, Telegraph, Express reassuring the owners that things were not really changing as could be evidenced by the continued privatisations, the ‘light touch’ regulation of the money launderers if the City, and reassuring non doms their wealth would not be taxed.
So, they never explicitly made the case for a more equal society.
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What a dreich looking place, I’ve seen classier public toilets.
Golfnut
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The Police are wasting £Billions in bogus trials and investigations.
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