What idiot wrote this report? It makes no bloody sense at all! I don’t know if I can go on.
Reporting Scotland opened last night with the scary news:
‘With more than 160 organised crime gangs in Scotland, [UK] law enforcement agencies warn the threat is staggering and call for more money to stop the criminals.’
It’s a cracker of a sentence where the two parts mean little together. The first part is about Scotland, yet the second part of the same sentence is based on only loosely connected developments in England. It turns out that the number of gangs in Scotland is falling, that only 160 or maybe 117, out of 4 500 (3.5% or less), are in Scotland, that they are rarely using firearms and that the above agency is a UK agency anxious about ‘staggering’ increases in gang activity in England.
And, late addition:
If you’re still there for the main report, you hear, a bit surprisingly:
‘Police say the number of organised crime groups in Scotland is falling.’
What, really? Why is that not the news then? How much? We never hear.
Then, after a reminder of the Lyons and the Daniel’s car chase case, we’re off into an extended report about the UK National Crime Agency’s estimate that there are 181 000 members of organised crime groups ‘throughout the country.’
Wait, what? How many of them are in the 160 Scottish gangs? How many gangs are there in ‘the country?’ Which country? According to the BBC UK website 2 hours ago (17:00) there are ‘more than 4 500 groups with 37 000 members.’
Right, let’s just ignore the confusion about how many members there are. 4 500 gangs in the UK but only 160 in Scotland – 8% of the population but only 3.5% of the gangs? I blame the SNP!
We don’t hear how many members there are in Scotland but then Reevel Alderson tells us that there are 117 OCGs in Scotland. What eh? It was 160, just a minute ago. What’s an OCG? Didn’t you watch Line of Duty? Organised crime groups! And, ‘Feuds between five of them pose a heightened risk of harm.’ Just 5? Just ‘between them?’ During the car chase film didn’t you say that they posed a risk to the members of the public? Yes, but….
Then, we hear that the NCA needs an extra £2.7 billion to match the criminals. So, are the gangs increasing in England? How much? No mention.
Then we get a lady, in England, telling us that it’s also about paedophilia and fraud before Reevel tells us in the story of a cocaine gang with a massive arsenal smashed by the police. Where? Must be England I suppose. But, but, then we get a senior police guy linking it to an unsubstantiated threat in Scotland.
I’m confused. Reevel’s heid must be bursting. Wasn’t it just one car chase and an assault on one criminal by others using machetes, in Glasgow? There were no civilians hurt. Do we, in ‘this country’ (Scotland) really need millions invested in automatic weapons when there are fewer gangs and they’re just using machetes, on each other?
Reporting Scotland sets a new standard. Like an earlier report on gangs, they just have to try to persuade Scots that things are just as bad here. See:
Talking-up Scotland 
Just trying to make it relevant.
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That BBC farrago is itself almost a criminal act
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Waking up slowly.
Is the BbC Scotland News Mob not one of the Organised Crime Gangs?
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Searching for words here. “Embarrassing”, “Disgraceful”…….. Ah, yes, “Insidious”.
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I’m disappointed for Reevel, one of the “good guys” in this comic opera “news” outlet.
In the last few months Reporting Scotland seems to have decided to downgrade “Scottish” news, politics and the rest, and concentrate on events related to London—so “the news where you are” immediently goes back down to London, and we get a nightly update from David Porter on Treeza/Corbyn and the Brexit debacle, totally ignoring any Scottish politicians and any Scottish dimension.
Its as if we have gone to pre-devolution days when Scotland didn’t count, had no voice and could be ignored by the BBC.
Ah but, they say, we have INVESTED in Scotland (still far less than our per capita share)–a new channel for you lot. A ghetto channel no one watches, full of repeats and programming with no obvious audience linkage—while one demographic might watch one show, they would NOT want to watch the next.
Its a channel designed to fail, then they can say—“Scots don’t want their own programmes, so we will carry on spending their licence fee in England”.
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Reevel looks like a guy who is given lots of management attention. Unsuccessfully, forcefed Unionist thought patterns daily. He’s a good guy trying to survive in a good guy “hostile environment” till it’s pension time.
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John, you remain a fucking idiot when it comes to journalism. No wonder UWS fired you
You misrepresented the story, and the nuance and I laughed my head off at you getting bogged down on how many gangs there are in Scotland. If you’d actually researched this instead of hit up google, you’d know it’s the number of gang members, not gangs that puts Scotland into the picture
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So why didn’t RS tell us how many gang members there are in Scotland.
Are you saying the Scottish gangs are much bigger than the English ones, thus putting Scotland in the picture?
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I heard the Good Morning Scotland piece on this, which was fairly lengthy. Although not stated explicitly, it was easy to infer that this was a UK issue and related mainly to England. The programme was using the recent gang trial at the High Court and the judge’s somewhat melodramatic statement about ‘turning Glasgow into a war zone’ to link it to Scotland.. Although I do not wish to minimise the role played by the NationalCrime Agency, this seemed very much a claim for support for more funding, such as we get from the armed forces, NHS workers etc. It used ‘big numbers’ but with no contextual data.
There was a long interview with a former Metropolitan Police Officer who had served with this unit for many years and he was clearly supporting his former colleagues. However, he did make a very significant statement which has not appeared in online reports nor was it pursued by the interviewer. He said that virtually all organised crime was related to drugs and what was needed was for drugs to be decriminalised, and for drugs suppliers to be forced to become legal entities.I have heard this on a number of occasions over the past 20 years from a number of serving police officers. He very clearly laid the blame for a failure to change the law at the feet of ‘right wing politicians’ and ‘much of the media’.
I recall about 25 years ago, the Parents Association at a school where I worked organised a presentation by the community police about issues which face adolescents and drugs was one of these. The meeting was well attended with over 100 parents and senior pupils in attendance. In the course of the discussion the police raised the issue of decriminalisation of drugs. The audience handled this pretty maturely. There was no hysterical shouting and threatening ‘to go to the papers’. There were many strongly opposed, but the debate was orderly, calm and informed. Probably, the audience was split 50/50.
What it illustrated was that the public can handle such issues and can see the nuances as opposed to the dichotomy that the media always place on things.
As for the judge’s comment – the events between the two gangs were appalling, but no-one from the general public was affected. About 18 months ago, we had a gang murder in our district. While people were annoyed that it had happened, no-one felt themselves to be at risk. Most of the people in these crime groups and, particularly, the people at the top, do not want injuries to the public because, inevitably it will lead to a very strong police reaction. Many of them want to be seen as ‘businessmen’ and to lead ‘respectable’ lives.I am not so naive as to think there are no protection rackets and threats, but very little of organised crime impinges directly on the public. Of course, the massive tax evasion involved does affect us all, but i suspect that it is not as great as the euphemistic ‘perfectly legal’ tax avoidance practised by the Financial sector. The performance of the Serious Fraud Agency is dire compared to, say, the US Federal agencies.
Let’s beef up the financial crime services and start investigating the big banks and other financial institutions, who are harbouring criminald hiding in plain sight.
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So very well said, it’s the crooks in politics and banking the SCA should be targeting.
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