More bobbies on the streets make city safer

WHAT good news it was this week to see that after the deployment of more police officers on Edinburgh's streets, street crime in December fell by almost a third.

It may seem an obvious thing to do. More people – be they locals or tourists – are drinking in the city centre; there are now more clubs and hotels, more city-centre bars (at the expense of the quieter locals, see below right) and relatively fewer taxis to fight over. So street crime increases – what should we do?

The answer must be to deploy more police on the streets where the crime is growing, and yet there are many senior police officers and politicians who have resisted that over the years.

In addition, any talk of recruiting extra bobbies was often mere window-dressing, as other demands on police time from paperwork, form-filling, court appearances, traffic management, parliamentary security and all the rest, would eat into any extra manpower.

Fortunately, sense has prevailed and the evidence of a change in policy shows it has worked.

After a special police blitz in December, 496 offences were recorded in the city centre, compared with an average of 787 for the same month over the past three years.

Earlier in the year, city centre police numbers were increased and have since been credited with cutting crime rates by 15 per cent.

So if the festive policy can double that result after a special crackdown – why not make it a permanent feature all year round?

Couple this with initiatives such as taxi marshals to supervise the taxi ranks and we are beginning to see what can be achieved. But we are not out of the sewer of violent crime yet – there is still more that can be done.

Edinburgh needs to be given greater recognition for all the security work it does as the Capital, through additional financial support, so that dealing with local crime is not sacrificed at the expense of protecting politicians, dignitaries or demonstrators.

We should allow an open market in licensed cabs, so that the demand that clearly exists at weekends is finally met, rather than causing friction and leaving potential victims on the streets.

I'm all for giving cabbies extra privileges about what roads they can use and phasing any changes in over time, but the customer should be king – and how a council committee can pretend to know what is the right number of black cabs is beyond me.

More bobbies and more cabbies on the streets – especially at weekends – will discourage street crime and keep Edinburgh at the top of the league for places to live and raise a family. It's the one thing I might pay extra taxes for!


PM's got nothing to cushion the blow if recession hits

PROSPECTS for Scotland's economy remain volatile after two conflicting business surveys were published this week. The news from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce was that optimism was at its lowest since 2001, while Lloyds TSB said that turnover had increased for the majority of firms.

To consider what they might be saying in six months' time, we should really consider how the world markets are shaping up – for with such an export-led economy, what happens internationally is a huge factor. Sadly, a Merrill Lynch survey, also published this week, found investors expect the first outright global recession since the 1930s. This is backed up by evidence from Japan, now desperately trying to avoid recession as many Japanese withdraw stakes from high-yielding foreign shores.

The Japanese government has promised to intervene but after 15 years of large deficits, it has no room for manoeuvre.

Gordon Brown has put UK plc into the same predicament. When John Major, left, faced an economic reverse in the early 90s, he had government surpluses and low tax rates to fall back on. He could suffer a decline in revenues and even raise taxes if he needed to (he did). Brown has a whopping deficit and taxes have, surely, no room to go higher.

If a real recession comes, our economy is no longer well-equipped to deal with it – and it will have been the responsibility of the Labour politician still hanging around. What are the odds on Cameron winning, anyone?



Save our pubs by cutting beer tax

AS I visited my Mum's in Meadowbank recently I noticed that my late father's local boozer, The Golden Gates, had a "for lease" sign above it. I don't know this once-bustling pub's circumstances but it's not alone in having that rather depressing board erected outside.

When I was a kid and the St Margaret's locomotive depot was still keeping men in jobs (and belching out soot to decorate my Mum's washing) there were not just lot's of grocers, bakers, butchers, drapers, fishmongers and newsagents – there were lots of local pubs too – and few were dens of iniquity! Many provided an active social life for the community, running buses for day-trips, days at the races as well as all the draughts and darts competitions, the football and the gowf! Television at home changed all that until putting TV in pubs gave them some hope; but now the cost of drinking at the local (compared with supermarket booze) and the persecution of smokers (often the majority of pub-goers) has made staying at home far more attractive.

It's easy to point to drink-related violence and crime and call for extra taxes to reduce consumption – but the evidence suggest it's not how much people are drinking, but what they are drinking and how they drink it.

In fact what we need is to cut tax on beer – not raise it. So says the Campaign for Real Ale – and I soberly agree. The volume of beer sold through pubs is at its lowest since the great depression and the total sales of beer in pubs are down 49 per cent from the peak of 1979 with our pubs selling 14 million fewer pints – per day!

By taxing alcoholic drinks relative to their potency rather than across the board we could begin to encourage consumption of lower alcohol drinks, change the abusive minority's drinking habits and save our local pubs in the process.