Aberdeenshire Council is run by a Conservative & Unionist/Lib Dem coalition. Former Berkshire Constituency agent for the Maidenhead Conservatives, Gillian Owen is the council leader whom was responsible for the education committee letting a school photographer take selective photographs to exclude children with complex needs. See: https://talkingupscotlandtwo.com/2024/03/29/if-it-wasnt-the-aberdeenshire-school-it-was-the-tory-council-that-instructed-or-allowed-the-photographers-to-offer-parents-selective-class-photos/
Today, I see in the Dorset Echo:
A safeguarding evening will be held in a primary school in Weymouth where parents will be informed how to keep children safe from modern dangers. Chickerell Primary Academy will be holding a free discussion evening from 6pm to 7.30pm at Willowbed Hall.
The Escapeline charity, which raises awareness of child exploitation and grooming in the South West, will be attending the workshop helping parents identify the signs to watch out for. There will also be a discussion on ways to safeguard children and work as a community against county lines. County lines is a form of exploitation where criminals befriend children, online of offline to then manipulate them into drug dealing.
Due to the nature of the workshop, the evening is for adults only and no children will be permitted. Tea, coffee and cakes will be available.
After a search, I see no sign of such activity in Aberdeenshire. I suppose County Lines gangs won’t have have made it that far north, will they? Well, they seem to be in Tarves, population 1 000, judging by an STV online report, three days ago.
Is that a freak example that Aberdeenshire Council can be excused for not knowing about?
From their own online briefing to all schools in March 2023:
County Lines’ is a specific type of CCE [Child Criminal Exploitation] prevalent in the North East. https://www.girfec-aberdeenshire.org/child-protection/child-exploitation/child-exploitation-briefing/
Although now widespread in Scotland, these English drug gangs have been long present – more than 5 years – in the North-east of Scotland.
In February 2019, the Sunday Post, covered an earlier Police Scotland warning:
PEOPLE living in rural communities around Scotland are being targeted by ruthless “county lines” gangsters who want to take over their home to sell drugs. The criminals from the north of England use threats and violence to force vulnerable people in countryside towns and villages into helping them sell drugs. While the problem was first identified in Aberdeenshire, it has now spread to Dumfries and Galloway and the far north of Scotland.
So, more than 5 years since police warnings and a year after their own guidance to schools and Aberdeenshire Council are doing nothing to advise parents even as the plague of child-exploitation and drug pushing arrives in the smallest of their towns?
Why might an explicitly Unionist party not want to draw attention to English gangs terrorising Scottish towns? Something to do with Better Together?
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Owen cut all the additional needs provision. An absolute disgrace. Thatcher’s mate. Overcrowded schools because new schools are not being build. Affordable housing being built funded by Scottish Gov.
The MSP, former Tory councillor, family owns half of Deeside. Overcharging for Council contracts. Trying to get planning permission for housing development on family land.
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She just sounds like a very nasty piece of work all round. The English county lines drugs gangs is extremely worrying, are the ‘Scottish’ police doing anything about it? Are the English police bothering to monitor and stop those drugs gangs travelling into Scotland, of course not. You’d think with tech available now etc, they could find these English drugs gangs and especially if people in Scotland are seeing this happen in their locality. It needs to be stopped and the Scottish government should kick up a massive stink about it at Holyrood and if they get the chance, at Westminster.
Drugs is big business, dangerous and nasty as hell, and they get get the heck out of our country!!
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To do what I would like to see happen is first of all, us, Scotland, becoming an Independent nation once again, because it’s only with control of all the powers of Government could this action be possible. In other words, legalise all drugs. Why? Quite simply because you are never going to prevent people from taking, at the moment, illegal substances. What would legalising do? Firstly, it would almost certainly decimate the criminal gangs lucrative trade, by making it possible to go to a “Drug Store” and buy what you need, getting the genuine product, with of course, the appropriate safeguards in place, much the same as alcohol and tobacco. Will it happen? Very much doubt that, at least not for many years, as no politician, or for that matter, any political party, would be willing to grasp that particular nettle, but I believe it’s the only solution. The rest is just whistling in the wind.
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