I understand the top cop was dischuffed that the gay sauna was being "done". Wonder why? And I wonder why he has a news injunction in force about his sexual preferences?
Ahhh 'tis a mystery, lads and ladettes, eh?
What a fellah...
The SNP's cherished "1,000 extra police" pledge would otherwise be broken. Political rivals would seize on the fact. But none of the parties, still unable to do much about Westminster's austerity mania, has come up with workable alternatives. So the country has plenty of coppers, yet they are being forced to cope with ever-diminishing resources. In the circumstances, perhaps Sir Stephen is entitled to some praise.
That's one story. The other comes as a list: stop and search, armed police, saunas, a death in custody, and a Glasgow venue called The Arches. Most don't have a great deal to do - though Sir Stephen might think otherwise - with budgetary pressures. Instead, they touch on slippery notions of ethos, style, sensitivity, arrogance, and sensible practice. They suggest that the great force amalgamation experiment was profoundly misconceived.
Take the saunas and "massage parlours" of Edinburgh. There's history to this. When HIV-Aids hit the capital in the 1980s, it struck with a pitiless ferocity. Suddenly, traditional efforts to suppress the sex industry (and gay culture) seemed even less sane than before. For once, the council acquired common sense. Saunas were licensed in the name of "entertainment" and officialdom looked the other way. If discretion and order were maintained, few questions were asked and a problem was (more or less) managed. Workers were granted a degree of safety.
Tolerance did not long survive the creation of Police Scotland. Its attitude, in Edinburgh eyes, was a Glasgow attitude: zero tolerance. Saunas were raided, licences were suspended, and a philosophy of policing was - so it seemed in the capital - dismissed out of hand. The writ of Strathclyde, biggest of the old forces, was being made to run in places of which Strathclyde coppers knew little. It was the writ, more precisely, of Sir Stephen House.
... Targets in part explained the stop and search fiasco, when it transpired that Police Scotland had a worse addiction to the habit than the Met or even the NYPD, when the force was still stopping children after claiming to have ended the practice, and when it somehow erased the records on which target-driven policing supposedly is based. What became clear from the episode was that Sir Stephen could not see what the fuss was about.
The same would be said about public reactions to armed police turning up at minor altercations in Highland shops. For Police Scotland and its Chief Constable the issue was efficiency. Why have specialist firearms officers "sitting around" when they could be put to other uses? An outraged public had a better understanding of what policing by consent is supposed to mean. The new national force came close to forfeiting the trust on which it depends.
Around Sir Stephen there hangs the air of a man who cannot or will not learn. The facts surrounding the death of Sheku Bayoh in custody in Kircaldy in May are not established. What we know is that Police Scotland (with Crown Office agreement) issued guidelines in March to ensure that henceforth officers need not surrender their notebooks, or agree to formal interviews with the Police Investigations and Review Commissioner, if there is the risk of criminal charges. Why the rule change? With what justification?
Contrary to evolving legend, Police Scotland did not shut down The Arches, Glasgow's most influential arts venue. The force made plenty of complaints about incidents involving drugs and alcohol, however. The city's licensing board obligingly imposed a midnight closing time and robbed the club of viability. Trouble and drugs will now migrate to less visible and less manageable places. But as with Edinburgh's saunas, "a problem" denied tolerance is not, and never can be, a problem solved.
Bottom slapped from a judge:
External Link/Members OnlyGets gay gifts, but ofcourse that doesn't mean he's gay...
"Scotland's police chief has received bizarre gifts including exotic fruits and an ornament from gay officers"
External Link/Members OnlyA list of his offences appeared in Weekly Wanker...
External Link/Members OnlyMore mainstream roundup of his shite attitude to saunas...
External Link/Members OnlyA bit useless at catching sex offenders...
External Link/Members OnlyOr noticing phone calls about people dying
External Link/Members OnlyAs his sexuality is 'secret', the public can vote on what they think it is at gaydar...
External Link/Members Only(vote so far: "very gay")
Or on a larger website with lots of trivia about Syephen, 100% voted him gay, 80% think he does drugs...
External Link/Members Only(the number of people who just think he is a cunt vs not a cunt is not recorded)
Wikipedia says he's married with kids.
I don't give a monkey about his sexuality: it's his business. But his record as a top police officer on a six-figure salary is appalling: and that is everybody's business.
