Letter: Country needs a thicker blue line

THE Con-Dem government has taken leave of its senses by intending to significantly cut expenditure on policing.

Do they not realise that a much thicker "thin blue line" will be needed to keep the lid on all the social unrest and crime caused by the high unemployment levels which will be a natural consequence of their other policies? This is something that Mrs Thatcher well understood.

Policing costs can be better contained by instructing forces to eschew expensive and prestigious inquiries into historic crimes which all too often result only in the conviction of those, such as Peter Tobin, who are already rightly incarcerated for life.

John Eoin Douglas, Spey Terrace, Edinburgh