Scotsman – News in brief – 24 /07/06
Happy 25th Birthday to Caroline MacLeod, New
Zealand, and Happy 60th Birthday to Mairi Wilson in Glasgow!
There are demands for an increase in front-line staff, as it emerged that due to stress, injury or sickness, 350 police
officers in Scotland are on long-term leave. Police chiefs are not happy with the large number of long-term absences in the service – which equates to half of the officers in Northern Constabulary. Most forces define long-term sick leave as 28-days' continuous absence and 2.2 per cent of the national force are on long-term leave - 348 officers- approximately one in 50 officers.
Strathclyde has 178 officers on long-term sick leave, 27 of those due to stress. Lothian and Borders, has 51, with 13 cases directly due to stress. This is a 10 million pound depletion of Lothian and Borders ¢1.1 billion annual budget.
Director of human resources at Lothian and Borders Police, Peter Thickett, said that the service had to do more to improve the way it looked after its staff. "We do have high absence rates. However, we compare reasonably well with other public-sector groups, particularly other emergency services. "We cannot make the demands of the job go away, but we can try to get better at what occupational-health resources are available and how managers can be aware of signs of difficulty at an earlier stage."
The Scottish Police Federation, secretary, Joe Grant, said that increased attacks and a decrease in numbers of officers set apart for responding to incidents was having an effect on the well-being of officers and he called on the Scottish Executive to fund more front-line police. "There are strong links between stress and the level of manpower available, and the amount of work officers are having to do," he said.
A spokeswoman for the Executive said: "The last Her Majesty's Inspector of Constabulary annual report showed that 4.5 per cent of police officers' and 5.2 per cent of support staff's working days were lost due to ill-health - both are improvements on previous years. "However, we agree that more needs to be done to reduce the proportion of working days lost to sickness. We welcome€POS
targets to reduce the proportion of working time lost to sickness."
A freak gust of wind yesterday blew a massive bouncy castle-style artwork 40 feet into the air yesterday, spilling adults and children on to the ground beneath. Two women died and a three-year-old child was seriously injured as the huge structure, with 30 people inside, broke free from its moorings and soared into the air. The accident happened at about 3:30pm at the Riverside Park, Chester-le-Street, close to the Durham County Cricket Club.
The structure, which consists of inflated rooms connected by tunnels, ripped free from securing ropes and tipped vertically into the air. There may have been 30 people in the inflatable at the time of the accident. Durham Police later confirmed that a 68-year-old woman and a 38-year-old woman were killed. One three-year-old girl was reported to be in a serious condition while 12 other adults and children also required to be taken to hospitals. Police said the women who died had been on the inflatable with children and that they were taken to University Hospital in Durham. As police and Health and Safety Executive officers examined the scene last night, a large section of the popular park on the outskirts of Chester-le-Street was cordoned off.
One woman, whose 23-year-old daughter had been enjoying a day at the park with her boyfriend when the incident happened, said her daughter had suffered a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding. "She's in the intensive care unit on a ventilator. It was just a day out enjoying the weather, and it's gone so badly wrong."
Durham Fire Brigade spokesman John Robson said: "There were 400 to 500 papark, and when we first arrived it was chaos. We had to extricate a number of people from the structure. A number of people had fallen on top of each other."
Chief Superintendent of Durham Police, Trevor Watson said police were keeping "an open mind" about the cause of the incident.
A North East Ambulance Service spokesperson said the two women were treated by paramedics on the way to hospital but died. The three-year-old girl received severe crush injuries and was airlifted to Newcastle General Hospital. Others taken to local hospitals were: three boys aged between 8 and 11 years old suffering neck, leg and arm injuries; an 11-year-old girl who was slipping in and out of consciousness and an elderly man and woman who suffered heart attacks. Other casualties had minor injuries and others described as walking wounded, were also taken to hospital.
A German researcher says that OOR WULLIE, Scotland's most famous cartoon character, is slowly ditching his usual patter for something more English. Anne Hoyer of Heidelberg University said that " Over the years the language has become more Anglicised, and so the density of Scots has lessened.
Or Wullie script- writer David Donaldson denies that his hero was losing his distinctive Scottish voice. He said: "I've been trying to get more Scots put in. "Jings, crivvens and help ma Boab will continue to be used for as long as I draw breath. "