Alasdair Ferguson
Take me now, officer
I awoke to some disturbing news this morning. BBC Radio Scotland, no less, cut through my sleepy complacency with the news that (and I quote this from the BBC website for accuracy): ‘New plans to introduce mandatory six month jail sentences for carrying knives are being put forward by Scottish Labour’.
Iain Gray, when interviewed, backed up this point, making clear that he thought that the other parties were pretty soft on this whole issue – why, there were people being caught carrying knives just now who weren’t being sent to jail at all. But then Iain was outflanked by the Tories. Six months, they said? Pah, that’s nothing. Should be two years, and make them serve it all – none of that early release nonsense.
The text-supplemented sofa-news of ‘Good Morning Scotland’ was followed by a phone-in show, ‘Morning Extra’, on which the topic of the day was (again I quote from the website):
‘Should you be automatically sent to jail for carrying a knife? Scottish Labour is introducing plans for six-month sentences; the Tories say it should be two years, while the Scottish Government reckons the existing laws are adequate. Some experts believe tough laws aren’t a deterrent and we have to address the underlying culture. Others argue knives are often carried as self-defence. Can there ever be an excuse for carrying a blade?’
I left for work, troubled by what I had heard. I decided to check the source of the story, and looked up Scottish Labour’s website, where I learned that Labour has put forward an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill going through the Scottish Parliament. The amendment will, apparently ‘ensure that anyone found guilty of a carry a knife [sic] would get a mandatory minimum sentence of at least six months but judges could jail knife criminals up to a four year maximum’.
I’m not sure what exactly that means in English but it does seem that Labour is keen to send people caught carrying knives to jail. It also made me glad that Iain Gray has pledged to eradicate illiteracy in Scotland, and it shows where he could usefully start. But I digress. Mr Gray is very clear on this point – ‘Labour today is making it very clear that if you carry a knife you should go to jail’. Without the knife, presumably. And perhaps even more dramatically, ‘the approach that Labour is taking will put knife crime on the same footing as firearms offences’.
The thing is, I am a knife carrier.
I like to go camping in the Highlands. When I go, one of the items on my kit list is always a small penknife. I have carried a knife through the streets, hills and glens of Scotland for decades. I don’t use it that often, but over the years it has opened mussels, acted as a replacement tin opener, corkscrew and bottle opener (there’s always something you forget), punctured cooking sausages, and cut through climbing slings in need of resizing.
I’ve also been doing up a property recently. I’ve been into a DIY superstore, and in full daylight, I’ve bought a plasticised packet of very sharp knives, which I have then carried in public (well, in the back of my car) all the way to the property under renovation. I’ve used them for things like trimming off excess paint, tidying up the edges of wallpaper and cutting the plastic loops off packaging.
For this, it seems, Iain Gray wants to send me to jail for six months – at least – but if we elect the Scottish Tories next year then it looks like I’ll be going down for two years, and no remission.
I am not taking this too personally though, because I reckon that most people in Scotland will, at one time or another, carry a knife. So I’ll be in jail with a fair cross-section of Scottish society, from the great and the good (‘I was planning to gut a salmon’), through the middling mediocrities (‘I was going to cut up the steaks on the barbeque’) to the shell-suited scandal mongers (‘I wanted to teach him a lesson for chatting up my bird’).
Slightly more seriously, a few questions occur:
Why do our politicians feel obliged to come out with such nonsense?
Why is it that once one starts, they all seem to do it?
Why do our media feel obliged to play along with it, instead of pointing out the obvious absurdity?
Do any of the politicians or media people realise that the more such nonsense they come out with, the more they discredit themselves?
Enough for now. See you in Cell Block H.
Alasdair Ferguson is the pseudonym of someone involved with the public sector. If he revealed his own name, it would not be a good career move
Get the
Scottish Review
in your inbox
free of charge
The Library
Recent articles
[click here]
23.04.10
Issue no 241
Less than two weeks before
the election, this is the state
of democracy in Britain
I.
The anti-
democratic BBC
Kenneth Roy
on the feeble justification
given for excluding the
Scottish and Welsh
nationalists
[click here]
II.
A shameless
attack on the free exchange of ideas
Alf Young
on the shocking treatment
of a visitor to Scotland
[click here]
III.
They’re undemocratic. Are they even legal?
Gordon MacGregor
challenges the legal
position of ALEOs
[click here]
Also today:
Bob and Barbara
Old Tory/Old Labour
election diaries
[click here]
for R D Kernohan
[click here]
for Barbara Millar
Tedious and Brief
The election in 100
words a day
[click here]
Next edition: Tuesday
