News that
Scotland’s new single police force is dispensing with counter services in some rural
stations has brought mixed reactions from the underworld and service industries
dependent on it, we can randomly recycle for you. In an exclusive
investigation, a number of industry insiders gave us their own perspectives on
the present state of the often misunderstood misdemeanour business and the
crucial role it plays in maintaining large swathes of the wider economy in
everything from burglar alarm and CCTV manufacture and installation to actual crime
detection, social service delivery (in the community, too!) and perfectly avoidable
emergency healthcare provision.
A spokesman
for Police Scotland told our reporter, “Criminality trends have changed in
recent years. Modern technology has opened up a whole new world of offending.”
He went on, “With improved education and hysterical, politically driven media
reporting, we’ve seen a move away from traditional crafts like bank robbery and
car theft to more specialised acts of niche impropriety, such as computer
hacking and designer drug manufacture. Of course, theft is as popular as ever
and with social networking, generalised abuse and bullying are enjoying almost
unlimited possibilities with massive potential for social harm.”
But, he
explained, the closure of redundant counters was an inevitable response to a
changed marketplace. Barely feigning interest, he sighed, “The public are
simply too lazy and generally apathetic to come traipsing down to the station
to speak to us when they can just as easily phone. Such ease of contact was one
of the primary selling points of modern communications technology, after all. Frankly,
we can’t be bothered meeting them either. If it’s Dixon of Dock Green they’re
after, they can forget it."
But this was
not the only bad news for wrong-doing in the North in recent months. Later, a representative
of the Sutherland criminal community gave us his views on the recession in
general and particularly the impact of the closure of Dornoch Sheriff Court and
the transferring of its business fully 10 miles south to Tain. Earlier in the
year, the Scottish Court Service had cited a decline in caseload due to a
downturn in criminality and stressed that, tragically, the economic argument outweighed the undoubted loss of civic amenity
as reasons for this regrettable decision.
Speaking on
the basis of anonymity on a locally stolen smartphone behind a pub in Golspie,
Archie “Fingers” McPhee, 34, told our reporter, “This latest blow is a
reflection of just how far-reaching the impact of George Osborne’s economic
hooliganism has been, like.” While being handcuffed by police officers he
explained that the black market in electrical goods had been particularly hard
hit. “Everybody is so skint that we end up nicking stuff from each other just
to keep our hand in. It simply isn’t cost effective anymore; and it breaches
minimum wage legislation, too. And as most people now have at least three
mobile devices, we’ve already had to drop our prices to get rid of the damned
things.” Summarising his position while struggling with 4 giant policemen, 7
stone, 5 foot 6 inch McPhee shouted, “There is an urgent need for regulation to
stop this pattern of boom and bust, as well as the infrastructure investment
required for our more remote customers.”
While strenuously
denying knowing nothing about anything, he added, “The extra time and expense
of travelling to Tain every Monday means yet more lost productivity in already challenging
times and a market place now dominated by large criminal institutions who are
putting small sole traders like myself out of business." As he was led
away to the police van he remarked, "Petty thieving’s just not the
job it used to be. I’m encouraging my girlfriend’s step kids to take up
identity fraud or perhaps people trafficking.”
And
business hasn’t been looking good for menacing drunks and village psychos
either, with the rising price of zoo-stength cider and mind-warping
hallucinogens being widely blamed for a marked decline in arbitrary violence
and mindless vandalism.
It’s not
all bad news, though, with figures yet to be released expected to show motoring
offence levels holding steady despite a prolonged downturn in drink driving,
which isn’t expected to return to levels seen in its heyday during the boom
decades of late last century.
A police
spokesman told us, “The loss of interest in drunk driving across all age groups
has obviously left a gap in the market, but we’ve found that most of these idiots
are just as dangerous sober. Now that they can no longer afford to sit in the
pub getting stewed all day, they go out behaving like morons on the road
instead, with obvious knock-on benefits for the other emergency services. At
least when they were juiced, they spent less time on the road. A&E
departments have never been busier and today’s miscreants certainly keep us on
our toes. It’s heartening in these austere times to see such tenacity on the
part of the socially retarded community.”
He went on
to say, “We are convinced that crime and general idiocy have a healthy future
here and as the economic downturn persists we expect to see an overall increase
in numbers of desperate unemployed people and, of course, homeless sorts
bugging the hell out of pedestrians and shoppers. Cyber-crime and related
activities now add to the mix and present challenges we never faced before, so
it’s an exciting time for us, too.”
The future
of Dornoch Courthouse itself is as yet unclear. There had been the prospect a buy-out
by the clearly devastated community where as many as two low paid part-time cleaning
jobs were lost in one of the most prosperous areas of the Highlands. One
suggested use for the building was to turn it into a heritage museum
celebrating the history of general maleficence in Sutherland through the ages.
The sheer range of criminality recorded since the Bronze Age demonstrates just
how rich the traditions of crookery, thuggery and general stupidity really are
in the North. This proposal was later rejected on the grounds of it being
completely untenable, with some even suggesting that it would be a profligate
waste of time, energy and public money.
So, nobody
knows what the future holds for the courthouse so many people throughout Sutherland
have such fond memories of. But, of course, no matter what changes the modern
world might throw at us, the Scottish parochial press will still be cutting and
pasting from court records and keeping us up to date with the best misdeeds of
the week, as ever, all introduced with the immortal words, “a Brora man
appeared in court on Monday.”
