Cost of success

Our success in the Olympics has been built on spending money on it. After we won only one gold medal in the Atlanta Games in 1996 as a result of leaving funding predominantly to the private sector, John Major, the prime minister at the time, decided to pour National Lottery money into elite sport.

So we are now spending £350 million a year at the UK government’s behest, picking winners (and not funding sectors which do not succeed), and leaving Germany, France and Japan far behind.

That’s what some countries like South Korea also do with sectors of their economy, rather than leaving it to the financial markets where there is no more interest in investing in Britain or Scotland than in Argentina or Malaysia, and holding shares for a few weeks is seen as long-term.

Or if that idea is too radical, consider this: when Tony Blair and Gordon Brown put up National Insurance by 1 per cent to increase NHS spending, waiting lists shrank and patients benefitted. Conversely, under this government we are spending a smaller percentage of our national wealth on the NHS than other advanced nations spend on healthcare, and the NHS is crumbling.

When we have increased what we spend on sport, we have more success in sport. Despite this clear evidence, our SNP government refuses to countenance any increase in spending or taxes, unless there is first a crisis. Aided and abetted by Scottish Government cutbacks, these officers who deal with virtually all the calls made by the general public are now nearing an endangered species.

This was confirmed by a Police Federation spokesman when he made known the safe staffing levels for the Lothians and Scottish Borders area as 47 and Edinburgh 38. This is the old Lothian and Borders Police area which once had in excess of 2,500 officers. Yet here we are only 85 officers on a shift at any one time. How have numbers fallen to this unacceptable level?

Scottish Government cutbacks have resulted in officers back-filling civilian posts made redundant as a cost saving and the format of Police Scotland has also put untold numbers of officers in offices measuring performance targets such as stop and search.

Comments made after the publication of these figures by Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone, a former Lothian and Borders officer, are frankly embarrassing in his attempt to justify a 50 per cent reduction in frontline resources.

As for the Scottish Government usual pre-prepared waffle that gets trumpeted out and means absolutely nothing to anyone other than themselves ... in truth both are failing the Scottish public on a daily basis.

Sadly it is only when you require the services of the police that you realise how long and hard it can be to contact them and how response times to your complaint have changed.

Investigating the complaint is another matter all together. Only recently the Chief Constable stated that certain crimes are no longer a priority for the police. It is hardly surprising when you see how few police officers there are out there. How things have changed and not for the better.

ALAN MARKS St Boswells, Scottish Borders