Keep Scotland different

Quite late this morning I thought that Scotland on Sunday wasn't being published today because the website was still showing last Sunday. Perhaps there was a bit of early Hogmanay bevvying going on, I thought. But no, the paper has come out and I read it during my lunchtime bevvy. There is an excellent article by Gerald Warner on the subject of police recording of DNA:

Nothing could better illustrate this gulf than the announcement that the Scottish Labour Party will make a manifesto commitment at next May's Holyrood elections to change the law so that police can retain the DNA samples of persons who have been involved in investigations but have not been convicted.

But isn't that already the case? I had thought so.

But not here it seems because Justice Minister Cathy Jamieson says that:

...her objective is to bring Scottish DNA law into line with England.

And the usually anti-devolution Warner's response is:

Since when was that the function of a devolved administration?

Mr Warner goes on to say:

South of the Border, the DNA of 3.46 million people is stored in police records, the highest number in the world - more than in Putin's Russia. That is an embryonic police state.

I don't always agree with Mr Warner, but in today's article he gets it entirely correct.