The Old Firm, political opportunism, and police agendas

Every so often you read something and think 'I wish I could have written that'. Sometimes it's just a pithy comment, sometimes the way the thing's put together, sometimes the overall tone and content.

I think this pretty much has it all. Well worth reading in full, but a few choice sections must include:

And we read, too, about the pious outrage of assorted local politicians and police chiefs, which, yet again, betrayed a disturbing level of ignorance and stupidity about the nature of drinking in parts of Glasgow and its link to poverty and lack of education.

....

The clear implication by the police is that Old Firm games cause all of this. It's a depressingly simplistic attitude from an outfit whose role is to remain at the end of a very short leash held by our democratically elected institutions.

...

Our political chiefs and assorted executive plods should stop wasting our time and money posturing at their bogus "Old Firm" summit. Instead, they should be holding a poverty summit to look seriously at the issue of deprivation, which in turn leads to alcoholism, drug addiction, violent crime and domestic abuse. This is the apocalypse that stalks the needy in our midst, not Celtic versus Rangers.

I should say for the sake of balance that there's a danger of hyperbole at the end - I'm not sure the centre of Glasgow is really a no-go area for women on Friday nights, for one thing - but I think someone who manages to put both politicians and senior police (who really should know better) so firmly in their place, punctures right-wing myths and middle class snobbery and appears to have some actual alternative suggestions of their own can be forgiven for getting a bit carried away.


In related news, we're reminded again that having elected 'police commissioners' is not necessarily such a great idea. And this the view of someone from a country were they regularly elect dog-catchers, for chrissake, so I doubt it's the mere notion of elected police that's worrying her.


In fact it's interesting to note, in what appears to be a disturbing outbreak of informed comment, that one objection is that the US political system is, you know, different to ours, and you can't just import policies willy-nilly and expect them to be gleaming successes and/or magic bullets. Something all the more concerning given it's not at all clear what, precisely, is the ill elected police commissioners are intended to cure, even if they are just about the only innovation in police policy (other than cuts) the coalition government have come up with to date. Not that a cut, or at least ceasing an activity, is necessarily a bad thing.