Does anyone else remember the adverts for Carlesberg lager? I haven’t seen them in a while but they always had a wonderful depiction of an everyday thing with the tagline “If Carlesberg made cars/flats/tvs etc” then the line “Probably the best lager in the world.”

Well I know for sure that Carlesberg is not made in Scotland becuase, if it was, it would be “Definitely the best lager in the world and if you don’t agree, you can go somewhere else!”

We in Scotland hungrily lap up the narratives. Scottish whisky is the best in the world! Scottish seafood is the best in the world! Scottish people are the friendliest in the world! The Scottish legal system is the best in the world!

Well, to paraphrase Ewan McGreggor in Trainspotting, “Scotland’s shite!” (cue the Scot Nats calls for me to leave Scotland).

We seem to have the ability to get really good at lots of things and, to be fair, our whisky is really good, our seafood is really good and Scottish people are really friendly. However, when it comes to systems and institutions, what we are really, really good at is basking in the glories of the past – we may well be the best in the world at that.

We regularly hear that our education system is the best in the world and yet we now know that over the past few decades we have plummeted down the table. We blindly lap up the line about Scottish produce being the best in the world but when you do some travelling, you realise that is simply not true because so many other places over the past 20 or 30 years have made advances whereas we have clung on the the past, purposefully ignoring reality.

I could go on and on with examples but the real point of this article is the Scottish legal system, “The envy of the world”®

“We” are basking in the lie, “we” have this arrogance so “we” don’t ask the questions that need to be asked. Our elected representatives and our unelected leaders all share the same employer as the unelected judges and prosecutors and investigators and even the good, experienced defenders aim to become judges or politicians, again with the same employer.

“We” turn a blind eye to the rules that prevent juries hearing key pieces of evidence and “we” don’t ask why police, when investigating an allegation of criminality, only collect information beneficial to the prosecution and actively choose to ignore evidence beneficial to the defence.

“We” choose not to open the can of worms which is the estimation that between 2% and 10% of convictions are incorrect because “we” don’t think that it will happen to us. It’s time you lost that arrogant stance because it could happen to you or your husband, sister, son or girlfriend.

You do not have to have committed any crime to be found guilty in the Scottish court and that is a very scary position to be in. I know that if Carlesberg did make legal systems, it wouldn’t be anything like this one.

NaN.