Professor John Robertson OBA
Readers will know that the ‘serious’ or ‘elite’ media in Scotland – BBC Scotland, STV, the Herald and the Scotsman – have an aversion to reporting accurately on the plague of County Lines affecting almost every town and village in Scotland and caused by County Lines gangs from, entirely, English cities. The tabloids and some locals are more honest.
Yesterday, the Express in Scotland had the above headline and the comments below on the prosecution of local ‘ringleaders’ of riots which developed in the East Ayrshire former mining village of Auchinleck and which I have already reacted to in:
The Express report contains statements revealing both an awareness of the complexity of the situation, which the elite media reported as some kind of simple, inarticulate ‘anti-police’ riot, and some empathy for the locals which again the ‘elite’ media could not express for where it might go in terms of identifying the English identity of the drug gang.
The express offers these statements which you will not find the like of, ever, in BBC Scotland or STV broadcasts or in the Herald and Scotsman:
But in one case in Scotland, the criminals appear to have bitten off more than they could chew as the locals launched an orgy of violent resistance to force the alleged drug dealers to flee back to the city.
This is not a story of ‘good guys vs bad guys’ – the rioting led to police being bombarded with bricks and rockets, while £200,000 worth of damage was caused to council-owned property. Earlier this week, four people were jailed for their part in the disorder.
But it is – if reports are correct – one of the few known instances where the county lines system that has spread drug-fuelled misery and made millions for organised crime bosses has been taken down by members of the very community they hoped to prey upon.
The story begins in November 2023 in Auchinleck in East Ayrshire, a forming mining village which is home to around 3,600 people. A few months earlier, according to locals, a group of drug dealers from Bradford in West Yorkshire had moved into the area.
But the Bradford gangs also travel north of the Border. In August 2023, two men – Mohammed Miah, 28, and Abdul Khan, 24 – were jailed for more than 11 years in Edinburgh for flooding the Scottish capital with cocaine and heroin. Moira Orr, who leads on homicide and major crime for the Crown Office, said: “This was a coordinated effort to bring significant quantities of illegal and harmful drugs to Scotland through a county lines operation.”
The residents of Auchinleck might reasonably make the same argument, although they chose to take the law into their own hands to deal with the criminals.
The events of Friday, November 24 began with messages posted on Facebook, including one from Jenna Bryce, 31, calling for “as many people as possible” to gather in Lambfair Gardens. Last week, the High Court in Edinburgh heard that she thought it would be a “display of local unity” against the drug dealers.
https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/scottish-news/county-lines-riot-how-scots-35728359
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Some high heid yin in the gang in Bradford didn’t do their homework, or they would have known, non-Affl;eck folk take their lives into their own hands when they go into that village.
As an example of how different they are, a well-known Rangers defender, a big of a hard nut by reputation once told me: “The most-scared I ever was on a football park was when I came out to warm-up before a Testimonial game at Auchinleck and a couple of middle-aged local ladies invited me to: ‘come oan ower here Son and gie’s a feel o’ yer gnadgers’.”
They are cut from a different cloth in that village.
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WELL DONE TO ALL WHO ACTED TO REMOVE THESE MURDERS
WE MUST GET SCOTLAND BACK
NO MORE ALLOWING CROOKS TO RUIN SCOTLAND
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Good grief, the Express 😲 https://archive.ph/UJpZU The Editor, decent journalism, I’m feeling faint….
Even the site got a special mention “Further anecdotal evidence was posted on the Talking Up Scotland website, from somebody who wrote: “I live in Cumnock, next town along, about a mile from Auchinleck. The protests were local communities rallying against drug dealing gangs ‘cuckooing’ in the houses of people in the area. Auchinleck, Cumnock and Catrine I have heard specifically. These gangs are purported to be from the Bradford area.” “
Very well done indeed Ben Borland….
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Woah! I’ll be getting an award fae the locals next.
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As I’ve said before my friend Rachel lived right next door to these scum She had had enough and she told me she got people to force them out with all the violence that entailed There is more to the whole story but this is the jist of it Rachel moved back in with her dad in Kilmarnock which she terms Skankville
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