Better Life In Fife - Glenrothes - Kirkcaldy - Dunfermline - Leven - Cupar - St Andrews

Law And Order

Nobody can easily ignore widespread publicity about young people carrying knives allegedly for the purposes of self defence. By the same token, reports about teachers being assaulted while performing their duty rank highest in the Fife Region when compared with other regions in Scotland. Fife has an unenviable record of more ASBOs being issued than any other part of Scotland.

Rosyth Wins Carrier Contract

As a nation with a very long maritime tradition and history, our country has always invested in maintenance of a 'Blue Water Navy' capable of tackling 'hot spots' in many parts of the World and in support of overseas political interests.

It's an important role constantly threatened by technological change and many unforseen risk factors.

A discussion with a visitor to these shores was apt to unimpress the local tourist board when she told us about an incident she had seen in Kirkcaldy. She won't be coming back!

Worse still is the advert she will convey to her friends, family and others! In one stroke, the actions of one yob will negate the millions of pounds spent promoting the tourist industry in Scotland; an industry that makes up a massive part of our national employment and income, and an industry already struggling with high costs of visitation and poor exchange rates!

It's clear many people feel a tougher approach is necessary to deal with knife carriers and other anti-social miscreants who fail to meet basic acceptable standards of reasonable behavior. It's not enough to say prisons are overcrowded and community service orders are working while prison cells are occupied by people who failed to pay their TV License! In Britain, we incarcerate more citizens per capita than in Europe. Re-offending rates for ex-prisoners remain high while some believe prison teaches the kind of skills we wish were absent from our society.

It may be a politically incorrect viewpoint to consider how any form of corporal punishment could be a cost effective alternative to prison yet history illustrates that people subjected to the birch rarely offended again. The Isle of Mann government was compelled to abandon birching on account of EC legislation and soon afterwards dealt with their first murder case in 24 years. Birching, like the cane and belt in schools, is seen as barbaric but what about knifes, clubs and guns on our streets?

Military aviation at sea is an important part of these changes and the aircraft carrier represents the ultimate projection of political ability when diplomacy fails.

Consequently, any government decisions about building capital warships takes time to examine future threats to national interests and is a task not undertaken lightly. The shortest war in history lasted thirty-four minutes on account of a powerful warship but it's highly unlikely such circumstance would ever occur again in modern times - unless you had the means, that is, with something akin to an aircraft carrier of considerable power delivery and capability!

In stark contrast with high-level decisions concerning nuclear submarines of the HMS Vanguard class whose missions are purely defensive; aircraft carriers are designed for a more offensive role in the projection of military power upon distant shores. It's a political policy often referred to as 'forward defence' and highly advocated by the United States of America. In light of '911' and other terrorist activity, such ability permits action against perpetrators of such crimes and on their home soil.

The British decision to build two frontline aircraft carriers thus represents a huge investment in terms of political will and taxation. It illustrates the shortcomings of the smaller CVS crusiers, orginally designed as escort carrier cruisers, to meet very different challenges of modern times as was especially evident during the Falkland Crisis of 1982. Lessons have been learned and it has taken decades to reach this decision.

Although considerably smaller than many American carriers at 65,000 tons, the new ships are larger than any carriers commisioned by the Royal Navy thus far and quite a bit bigger than the French Charles De Gualle and on par with the Russian carrier Admiral Kuznetsov. Both projects represent long term build investments with launches projected to be around 2014 and 2016.

Construction of the two vessels will secure employment of up to ten thousand people working in different yards across the United Kingdom with all parts finally assembled at Rosyth. The bow sections of each ship will be entirely constructed at Rosyth and help safeguard sixteen hundred local jobs in Fife.

One tiny criticism, at least from this quarter, concerns the names given to these ships.

'Queen Elizabeth' sounds great for an island hopper cruise ship but hardly apt for a capital warship. 'Prince of Wales' is hardly inspiring either and especially in light of a vessel of the same name sunk by aerial fire a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbour! Given a choice, it might have seemed more relevant if one had been called 'Hortatio Nelson' with the other called 'Winston Churchill' or similar but maybe there are political reasons behind such choices.

New Typhoon Eurofighters Due At Leuchars

At the other end of Fife comes news about significant investment at the RAF Leuchars airbase. This follows a decision made some time ago to phase out the Tornado aircraft in favour of the new Typhoon Eurofighter and safeguarding around 1700 jobs. While such news is welcome, it comes with a downside in that two squadrons are to be merged with 80 people to be redeployed rather than made redundant. The £5bn Eurofighter program will eventually see 144 of these aircraft deployed at Coningsby in Lincolnshire, Leeming in Yorkshire and Leuchars in Fife - bases that form important parts of the UK Quick Reaction Alert and which provides a rapid response to any threats to UK airspace. The first Typhoon Eurofighter went into active service at Coningsby in July 2007.