Leaders: Policeman’s lot not happy one, but don’t forget the others

THE justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, has called his proposal for restitution orders, where money from criminals will go to police officers who have been assaulted, a “win-win situation”.

It will mean restitution for offenders, and recuperation for victims of crime.

But Mr MacAskill struggled to answer yesterday why the new law sets out exceptional provisions for police officers, and not to others injured in the line of duty while serving the public, some at risk to their own lives.

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Figures show Scottish courts handed out 4,890 convictions for assaults on police officers between 1 January 2010 and 28 February this year. The offence is already punishable by fines or a jail term, as well as a Community Payback Order or a compensation order.

Mr MacAskill wants to add another option, a restitution order, against the culprits. It appears the money could either go to individual officers or, in an alternative that Mr MacAskill appeared to be emphasising yesterday, to charities that help injured officers. The preferred candidates are the Police Benevolent Fund and The Police Treatment Centres charity.

Making criminals pay to help an officer whose job is to protect the public will undoubtedly garner favourable headlines. The Scottish Police Federation said it would be welcomed by all Scotland’s police officers to recognise their “selfless bravery”.

One question that must be asked, however, is whether these new orders could simply add to the burden of fines that must already be collected by the courts, and how much of this money will find its way into the intended hands, and at what cost.

Recent figures also suggest that in a single year in Scotland, staff working for public bodies across the country were subjected to more than 27,000 incidents of violence. Those figures are a broad brush, reported by the public sector union Unison from Freedom of Information requests, but they include over 12,000 violent incidents involving council workers, over 13,000 in the NHS, and 280 convictions under the Emergency Workers (Scotland) Act for attacks on emergency service workers.

Mr MacAskill said yesterday that he would be happy to look at extending restitution orders to cover ambulance staff, firefighters, or nurses. But he insisted, when pressed in a BBC interview, that police officers “face matters that none of the rest of us, in the main, in the course of our duties have to put up with”. Less convincingly, he stressed that there was already a specific offence in Scotland for assaulting a police officer.

Few of us would willingly change places with an officer on the beat, whether facing down drunken street violence or confronting serious criminals. But there’s a case to be made for special provision, too, for assaults on people who are potentially far more vulnerable, from health workers to bus drivers, who don’t have the ability to radio for help or immediate resort to the law.

Forth ferry link faces rough ride to succeed

PLANS are in motion for a commuter ferry link between Burntisland and Granton. Pentland Ferries are in talks with Forth Ports over the proposal, and hope to launch the service by next summer.

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These are exciting ideas, conjuring visions of a rapid water link between Fife and the capital, but there is a note of caution. A similar ferry scheme was launched 20 years ago. On its first day in service, a 250-seat catamaran, the Spirit of Fife, carried 700 people on 15 minute ferry rides, and the future looked rosy. Two years later the venture went under, with lower than expected passenger numbers, and the £500,000 catamaran up for sale.

The venture foundered on troublesome journeys getting to and from the terminals; commuting time gained on the water was lost on the road. The new project seems to replicate the route. Burntisland also has a very good station on the main-line railway, so there are other options for commuters.

Politics and bureaucracy promise rough waters ahead. Five years ago, Stagecoach chief executive Brian Souter trialed a hovercraft between Kirkcaldy and Portobello. Some 32,000 people used the service, but it took Edinburgh City Council two years to reject planning consent for Granton facilities, partly over traffic problems.

Fife Council was enthusiastic, Edinburgh slow to say no. It was also a novelty, so popular that commuters struggled to get a seat because of day trippers. The experiment didn’t last long enough to know its enduring appeal. While we wish this possible endeavour well, there is a lot to do to prove this new venture can overcome the same obstacles.

Moving Titanic tribute for a man wronged

IT would be easy to turn a cynical eye on the wash of centenary events around the sinking of the Titanic, with the “Titanoraks” converging on Belfast or heading off to sea on a recreation cruise with its own series of mishaps. Time, some suggest, to lay a century-old maritime disaster to rest, after one retelling too many.

But in the aftermath of the sinking an incensed public and press were looking to vilify “cowards”, as well as praise heroes. One was the White Star Line owner J Bruce Ismay, who hid from the public eye for thirty years after reports he urged the ship’s captain to speed through the icebergs, then headed first for the lifeboats.

Another – much lower down the chain of command – was the ship’s quartermaster and helmsman that night, Robert Hichens, labelled “the man who sank the Titanic”, and additionally accused of not returning to the scene in the lifeboat he commanded.

He drowned at sea in 1940, a broken alcoholic, and his grave was only recently re-discovered. Whatever his actions before and after the sinking, it was surely a captain and owner’s hubris that bear the blame for the sinking, not the crew. The visit of his great granddaughter Sally Nilsson to his grave, to speak for a man she said died of a broken heart, was a moment of genuine emotion amid the soap opera.