With weary disgust another headline drops about the gangland war staining central Scotland.

There was a passing moment, back in the late 1990s, when it seemed Scotland had got on top of organised crime – or at least got on top of organised crime spilling over into the lives of ordinary citizens: collateral damage amid the terror caused by fire-bombings, beatings and shootings.

That hope is long dead – bundled into the boot of a stolen car, taken to the Campsies and dumped in a shallow grave.

For the last 20 years, a rotten pustule has festered in Scotland: the gang war between two rival Scottish crime clans, the Daniel and Lyons families.

Let’s not get into what has caused these two tribes of thugs and psychopaths to turn on each other, it risks glamorising the detestable.

These gangsters already think they’re characters in a McPoundland version of The Sopranos, so let’s not offer kudos by pretending their motives are anything other than the most venal and violent. They’re street scum: drug-dealing hoods.

There’s a long and unedifying branch-line in Scottish publishing which breathlessly paints a gloss of cool on organised crime, recording in meticulous detail what one "big man" thinks of another, how some perceived wrong led to this or that "showdown", or revelling in the absurd monikers these blights on society give each other.

There’s no honour or integrity, no morality or courage. There’s money and violence. That’s it. The only moniker applied should be "animal".

Read more by Neil Mackay

For months now, though, the violence associated with organised crime gangs has been escalating at an alarming rate. A week ago, a 72-year-old woman and a........

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