MY thanks to Nick Dekker (Letters, February 20) for his kind words about my earlier letter anent COP26 policing costs, estimated at £250 million. One cost I failed to mention was also in Tuesday’s Herald: Police Scotland has an annual budget of £1.2 billion. So, policing an 11-day conference in Glasgow is forecast to cost 20 per cent of Police Scotland’s entire budget.
That figure of £250m has been bandied about for a while and senior figures in Police Scotland must know it’s nonsense. So why was it not dismissed earlier on? Why is it not being dismissed now?
I note that Police Scotland is currently in dispute with the Scottish Government about its budget, with Chief Constable Iain Livingstone saying that £200m a year has been cut from core costs. And the Acting Chair of the Scottish Police Authority, David Crichton, was quoted last month as saying: "There is a structural deficit in the policing budget. It's simple arithmetic, it's not complicated mathematics, it's simple arithmetic.”
We citizens pay for our public services and we are entitled to clear, honest accounting. I join with Mr Dekker in asking for a response from Police Scotland outlining how it arrived at its estimated figure. Or are we to be treated like mushrooms yet again, kept in the dark and fed… well, you can finish the saying yourself.
Doug Maughan, Dunblane.
Pothole poser
LAST week a particularly bad crater-like pothole on the A907 in Fife caused massive damage to around 10 cars.
I have occasionally queried in the local and national press why roads throughout the UK seem to suffer far more from potholes, in-filling and short-term patchwork repairs than in other European countries with similar, or worse, heavy traffic and weather/climate conditions.
Regrettably but not surprisingly, and despite my specific requests, not one MP, MSP, MEP, councillor, official or civil engineer has ever deigned to reply.
But recently, I did get a response from a reader (though admitting he was no expert) that in the UK the tarmac is generally laid in successive thin layers, leaving them vulnerable to water ingress freezing and raising the layers above, which then break up; whereas elsewhere in Europe the roads are stripped down to a smooth sub-base, with a single 4-inch/10cm tarmac layer which is then densely compressed.
That accords with my own observations in The Netherlands.
If that is the sole or even a major reason, the question for the afore-mentioned individuals then becomes why on earth the UK road-surfacing industry does not do the same, which is probably cheaper in the long-term, particularly including the inevitable vehicle and bicycle damage, insurance claims, and potential personal injuries (or worse).
So if any of them do respond in your columns I trust they will not just blame those of us who are retired or active bean-counters.
John Birkett, St Andrews.
Ban the bouts
IN these days when, rightly, much is made of the consequences, early and late, of head injuries in sport, I cannot, for the life of me, comprehend the hype and promotion in relation to a "sporting contest" – that of tomorrow's Deontay Wilder vs. Tyson Fury fight – wherein both participants are attempting to inflict just that on their opposite number.
Frankly, and simply, boxing should be banned forever.
James Reavey, Dunblane.
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