Breaking Bad May 21, 2014 10:38 am*by:*EditorCategory:*Douglas's Blog,*NewsLeave a comment*A+*/*A- Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on emailShare on pinterest_shareMore Sharing Services4 If you are not addicted to this programme you should be – great acting, music, production values etc. Working through it on Lovefilm. Wonderful. Reached series 5 episode 5 the other night. Why am I telling you this? Well it finished just as the late BBC Scottish news started. I don’t often watch this. Supportive as I am of the Beeb, it often has a really parochial feel after the UK news. You go from the ecomomy and the Ukraine to Mrs McGlumpher’s cat up a tree in Maryhill. Yes, there are trees in Maryhill. Get to the point you are correctly thinking. Ok, so Breaking Bad is about drugs,the mob and body counts. That’s the context in which our greatly esteemed Justice Minister popped up on my telly informing us that he’d authorised, I think, 275 permanently armed police on the streets of our largely law abiding little country. I was so stunned I had to rewind live tv to check what I’d heard which was correct.*And his justification,which was disgraceful. ‘Scotland has about a third of the landmass of the Uk, so the number is proportionate’. What has that got to do with it. This is about a dangerous principle, not a geographical calculation. Where is John McEnroe when you need him to scream, ‘You have got to be joking?!’ So, area square miles is the test, Minister? So Caithness and Sutherland*will have 43 bobbies packing heat and Glasgow 3? What an old, smelly, dried up red herring that is. This rant is based on a growing bad feeling which I am developing about policing in Scotland. I know a lot of justice system people share this, but are uncomfortable about speaking out (and that in itself is worrying). *Arrest targets,milking drivers etc is one thing…but guns? I was brought up in the Dixon of Dock Green era of policing where trust and respect was a given. *And despite Hillsborough, Plebgate, *The Met generally and a host of other disgraces, I still hold to the thought that it’s a difficult job and it has in Scotland been generally politics-free. *And despite the day I looked out of a Law School building at Glasgow University,*about 3 years ago and saw, about 70 police and a helicopter trying to evict 3*unwashed students from a semi-derelict building,* this*remains my underlying mindset . That is why I am so shocked. Isn’t one of the strengths of our system that our officers are not strolling about with a blue steel ’45 strapped to their belts? *Doesn’t that dampen lawlessness? Yes, I’m all for arming as and when needed and proportionate, but this is a shocker. Can’t exactly see gangland Scotland giving up on the basis that plod is tooled up, can you? And the very,very worst thing about this? It’s disappearing under the radar screen. I know there’s operations at one end of the spectrum and policy at the other, but surely this should have been the subject of lengthy consultation and debate. This is a quantum*leap. The thin end of a dangerous wedge. A complete*game changer. What are Holyrood playing at?*Is this something else being slipped in under the referendum cloud? And isn’t it about time regardless of whether you are Yes or No, that the central issue of the incompetence of Civic Scotland was examined as critical. Did you vote for guns? No, neither did I. http://www.firmmagazine.com/breaking-bad/
PUD:"Mindy, he's got a gun" MINDY:"It doesn't necessarily mean he is going to....." ___________ PUD:"Quick, Golden Jubilee Hospital, GSW to the head, no internal damage" MINDY: "No Pud...NHS or nothing..." ___________ Closing scene Venom dancing on grave. ,
