Getting priorities right

Yesterday in Parliament I asked a question of Kenny MacAskill, the Cabinet Secretary for Justice. I was asking about the link between alcohol abuse and knife crime.

You can read the Qs and the As here.

But I found it really sad that as I was asking it, Labour MSPs were shaking their heads, one was sniggering and another heckling. Why? It's a bloody serious issue and both alcohol abuse and knife crime are absolute scourges on the whole of Scotland.

So all I could take from their childish responses was that either they don't care about these problems or that they only care if they, the Labour Party, are getting a few headlines in return. I suspect the latter is more likely. Glasgow Labour MSPs recently organised a knife crimes summit in Glasgow, invited various interested parties along, got loads of publicity for it but ... excluded other political parties.

Why on earth would something as important as knife crime be a party political issue? I would have loved to have heard what people had to say at this summit - yes I did say "heard" because the point of these events should be to listen to the experiences of people who've been affected by knife crime for whatever reason. The point of it should NEVER be to score party political points but when you exclude other political parties and then publicise it as a Labour Party summit, what else is it? Sad, very sad.