NATIONAL POLICE CHIEFS' COUNCIL

The National Police Chiefs' Council is,  as the name implies,  the organisational umbrella for the most senior Police Officers in the United Kingdom.   According to its blurb 'the NPCC  brings UK Police Leaders together to set direction in policing and drive progress for the public'.  That's the theory anyway.

We have long been critical of Police Leadership both north and south of the Border.  Police Scotland is a dog's breakfast and we have no reason whatever to think that the Police south of the Border is in any better shape.  A lot of Chief Constables and other senior ranks have found themselves in legal difficulties in recent years basically through lack of character and terrible failings in leadership. 

In our view,  far too many senior Police officers are being promoted nowadays without having the character required for the job.  There are failings,  terrible failings,  in Police Forces up and down the country virtually every day of the week  and most of those failings are caused  by very inadequate leadership. Sadly,  it is a fact of life that an inadequate and incompetent Police Leader will promote an equally inadequate and incompetent individual over a competent officer so that the vicious cycle of undeserved promotions continues unabated.

We despair with our head in our hands when we see some of the most senior Police officers in the country appear on television and in the Press sporting that ghastly facial stubble that seems to be an almost statutory requirement for senior ranks nowadays. They simply have no concept of just how ridiculous they present when they are seen more as scruffy Social Worker types than senior Police ranks. Perception does matter in the Police to a huge degree.

It doesn't just stop there. Senior Police ranks must nowadays be more steeped in Social Work Speak than policing and they must be politically correct at all costs.  That political correctness has gone mad of late.  Just look at what the National Police Chiefs' Manual says about racial problems in policing the UK when it reads that 'our commitment to racial equality does not mean treating everyone the same or being colour blind'.  

Let's face it, only a shower of clowns could present anything like that to the public for consumption.  And they wonder why  there's always trouble about the shop - and not least that terrible incident at Southampton recently where a young student lost his life?

Best foot forward.  Enter the real world.

THE STURGEONS (1)

A whole lot of stolen goods with a high value amounting to hundreds of thousands of GBP are found by the Police in the house where you live with another.  Many of those goods have been in your house for years and are on open display for all to see on a daily basis.  You even wear some of the jewellery obtained by deceit while preening yourself for the television cameras.

You are arrested by the Police and questioned about those items. You make a 'no comment' reply to all questions the Police put to you despite the civic duty of good citizens everywhere to assist the Police in the investigation of crime.  You offer the Police no explanation whatsoever as to why you are jointly in possession of stolen goods.  And neither do you blame any other person for bringing the stolen items into your home despite having ample opportunity to do do.  You simply clam up like a hardened professional criminal in the style of Al Capone.

If you are,  truly,  innocent with nothing criminally on your conscience, would not the decent and proper thing to do, as a minimum,  be to explain to the Police how that stolen property came to be in your house in the first place and provide a full and detailed account thereof?

And what about a year or two back when you are recorded on video on a number of occasions trying to shut down all dissent over allegations of stolen money and denying that there had been any cooking of the books and that,  financially, things had never been better?  You are in full knowledge of the facts and,  despite that knowledge, you do your usual bullying stuff and get very angry indeed about such allegations and handbagging everyone in sight - and,  knowing your penchant for handbags, was it illicitly acquired by any chance?

You carry on regardless and wilfully disregard the truth and want everyone else to do likewise.  You are pursuing a deliberately false narrative.  You are covering up fraud and embezzlement when any and every honest citizen would report such circumstances to the criminal authorities as a matter of course.

Add together all of the foregoing and it leads to the very clear conclusion that you are well into tarry-fingered territory and that you have a case to answer.  We disagree strongly with any other conclusion however eminent it may be as the evidence is there right before our eyes.

To us,  as lay people, it appears a classic case where guilt or innocence should be determined in a Court of Law according to tried and tested Rules of Evidence.  However, Scotland's Chief Prosecutor,  Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain (who,  incidentally,  you nominated as Lord Advocate),   decides with a flourish of her pen not to prosecute.  That failure to prosecute is,  in our view, by far the worst aspect of the circumstances here and infinitely worse than all of the pilfering involved. 

Welcome to Justice, Scottish Nationalist-Style.  

JENNY GILRUTH MSP

We understand Ms Gilruth now to be Deputy First Minister of Scotland under Dishonest John Swinney.  

We have always found Ms Gilruth to be a particularly disagreeable, aggressive and arrogant individual who doesn't take kindly to being questioned on anything and point-blankly refuses any criticism.  She is brash and brazen and is not the sort to bring consideration and reason into any rational argument.  Her way or the highway.

She is wholly unsuited to being a government minister.  We expect a lot of problems.  

LORD ADVOCATE DOROTHY BAIN (2)

We see that Lord Advocate Dorothy Bain,  Scotland's chief prosecutor,  has intimated her resignation.

No wonder after the ghastly mess she made when she decided to venture into politics in the criminal case of Peter Murrell,  Nicola Sturgeon's man (or ex-man, or whatever).  As if that wasn't bad enough,  the Lord Advocate compounded her stupidity with a complete - and very basic - public misunderstanding of the law.  She lost the confidence of the Judiciary.

Simply,  she was out of her depth.

WESTERN ISLES NOW NATIONALIST-FREE

It has taken many years but, at long last and following the recent Holyrood Election,  we have a Nationalist-Free Western Isles.  Alasdair Allan has bit the dust as Nationalist MSP after 19 depressing years and,  of course,  Angus Brendan had already been shunted as Nationalist MP following the General Election of 2024.

We congratulate local boy,  Donald Mackinnon,  on his being elected Labour MSP.  As long as Donald remembers that politics here is local,  very local,  he'll do fine but he must avoid at all costs the Torcuil way of doing politics which is say nothing,  do nothing and keep whistling in the wind.

CONTENDERS FOR PRIME MINISTER

The story so far.  Angela Rayner,  Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham and Red Ed Miliband all jostling to knife Keir Starmer - and each other - into history.  

Traitors to the last.  Each one worse than the other.  To think that the Labour Party has been reduced to this appalling shower of jokers with not a solitary principle in sight.  Labour is plumbing the depths.  The lesons of appointing Jeremy Corbyn as Leader have been forgotten. 

Should Labour pick any of that lot for Leader (and,  thus,  Prime Minister)  the party will deserve to be out of government for many years to come.

No wonder Reform is on the march.

TORCUIL CRICHTON MP - WHISTLING IN THE WIND (4)

We've just been looking up the lists of (a)  those Labour MPs who want Prime Minister Starmer gone and (b) those who wish him to stay on as Prime Minister.  Our MP,  the lamentable Torcuil,  is not on either list - surprise,  surprise!!!!!

Torcuil,  the man whistling in the wind.  Do we know where he stands on ANYTHING?