Last Friday was genuinely jaw-dropping. Naked self-interest and dripping contempt were on full show and nothing short of ritual humiliation was required to put the plebian in his place.

The message was deafeningly loud. Might is right and quite frankly whether you like it or not you’re only still in the game thanks to our benevolence. We have wealth and power beyond your reach. Know your place and be grateful for it. Just because you put your life on the line and are under attack daily – don’t expect us to pay for it. Our priorities are to enrich ourselves and you – quite frankly are an obstacle to that.

But unlike events in the White House a few hours later, the behaviour I’m talking about was not trumpeted (no pun intended) before the world’s media. It was instead sneaked out in a pitiful display of cowardice that really is the cherry on the top of this whole scandalous set of events.

Having presided over a frankly dangerous decline in policing over the past five years in particular – where hundreds of police stations have been closed, where 30,000 people fail to get through to the police each month, where crime is no longer being investigated, where police chiefs no longer know the difference between sex and gender, where applications to join the police are lower than at any point in history – the Chief Constable, the scandalously emasculated Scottish Police Authority, and the Scottish Government AGREED (yes – you read that right – AGREED) that the pay (with pension contributions) of some of the most well-paid public servants in the country should increase by a staggering 20%. Lest........

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