It's evident that the Scottish Labour Party figure is a fantasy.

Following last nights avian themed analysis of the Scottish election campaign on Newsnight which preceded the latest Iain Gray car crash on Newsnicht, I thought it apposite to warn the leader of the Labour party in Holyrood that the vultures have moved from circling overhead and are just about to commence feeding on his gaffe prone legacy.

The last few days have have seen Labour in Scotland become entrenched in trying to clearly explain their earnest endeavour to slow down and hopefully eradicate knife crime. It's a noble aspiration, but one which they appear utterly incapable of either succinctly explaining or delivering. 

'Carry a knife go to jail.' It's no more than a slogan, intended as a hard line approach to warn the predominately young Scots who carry a knife. If you'll excuse the misappropriation of 'The Untouchables' line, 'it brings a cannon to a knife fight.' It suggests a hard man challenge to our young. It's confrontational and there to appeal to the inner Ned.

 Yep good old BBC and their competent captioning...

Little prominence is given in their campaign to the fact that the reason many young people carry a knife is down to that one simple emotion - fear. They are afraid of being attacked. 

Young Scots are statistically our most vulnerable people. Urban teenagers have little in the way of facilities. The youth clubs of generations past are either underfunded, non-existant or staffed by those who somehow managed to scrape through a Disclosure Scotland check intact. Our young people are increasingly faced with monotonous choices, a life at home plugged in online chatting with their pals on the 'safety' of the internet or alternatively heading outdoors to hang out with their pals, usually on street corners, often near well lit off-licenses. Why do they do so in numbers? Safety, quite simply because they are afraid, and there is safety in numbers.

In 2006, David Gillanders a Glasgow based, world class photographer did a series of documentary reportage photographs for Getty Images on the effect of knife violence in some of the poorest parts of Glasgow. It's a harrowing account that encompasses young lives through bragadaccio, barbarism, buckfast and solemnity. 

  (C) David Gillanders.

David's photographs are exceptional they show in close up the effects of knife crime on young people. The young man above, with lacerations to his ear, face and most worryingly his throat, where an attempt was made to decapitate him with a machete, is without doubt hampered for the rest of his life. In a world where everything is taken on face value, would you give him a job? Welcome him into your family? Let him get romantic with your daughter? His life is blighted.

 (C) David Gillanders.

The last time Labour had an anti-knife campaign in 2006, they did it by way of an amnesty, which successfuly took nearly 13,000 knives, machetes, swords, bayonets, flick knives and old ‘cut throat' razors off the streets. When the five week long amnesty ended - half of these were from Strathclyde alone! I think it was a good campaign and one that should be repeated again, as there was reportedly an element of dumping the dull blades and buying new sharp ones online... If you remember the Scottish Parliament also voted to give the Lord Advocate new procedures with which to clamp down on those who persisted in carrying blades which increased penalties and powers of arrest for these offences.

 

Since then Kenny MacAskill has introduced the No knives, Better Lives campaign, which has encouraged the participation and involvement of young people in deciding the campaigns direction. Using mobile phone technology in Inverclyde to beam bluetooth anti-knife messages onto young kids mobile phones when they are near hotspots and locations previously associated with knife crimes, is having a positive effect with a reported 35% drop in knife carrying.

The fact remains that violence is a huge problem in Scotland, and for all of Labour's tough guy posturing about manadatory locking up, but only at the Sherriffs discretion, there's a long way to go!

So in conclusion, it's an ill thought out policy that they seem incapable of explaining. It seems to be solely rooted in playing up to the fears of victims and their families, it's adopting a confrontational approach which has been shown to be bloody useless. It's been graphically and patiently explained by Isabel Fraser on Newsnicht to dullard Richard Baker that his sums of claiming that knife crime costs £500 million, simply don't add up.

Naturally the key root to all this is the access to cheap booze, and we all know where Labour in Scotland, the friend of the supermarket stand on that.

I started this post with a suggestion that Iain Gray and his leaderships propensity for open goal gaffes is being laughed at both North and South of the border. Grass root councillors, MSP's and MP's are now briefing against him. Post May 5th, the opposition front bench will be shuffled one can only hope that Labours next leader in the Scottish Parliament doesn't behave like a monkey in a knife fight...