When people look back at policing pre PSoS there is a tendency to miss huge (and enormously relevant) pieces of the jigsaw for comparisons with today
Amongst the biggest is that in the past mistakes were made but never “suffered” the same media scrutiny as today
There wasn’t really a national spotlight on regional police forces / constabularies and precious few had the inclination to paw over the durge of police board papers the way they do now
Police forces were routinely referring internal “failures” to other forces to examine what went wrong and to “learn lessons” this role is now performed by PIRC
People were sent to wrong addresses - people were frustrated when the police didn’t treat their personal complaints seriously and yes - sadly people died
The “four years of controversy” as such are categorised thus as unlike before there is one body to point at and nowhere to hide
But there is another thing people choose to ignore and that is the reality of the financial climate the police (and others) are operating in
Shortly after worlds financial institutions fell off a cliff in 2008 - everyone in scottish public life was exposed to this 
In short this showed the sheer level of cuts facing Scotland and there was controlled panic over how entities were expected to survive the new reality
On run up to 2011 election every major political party (Sorry LibDems) announced manifesto plans for a single Scottish Police Service
I cannot recall any PRACTICAL proposals that would have seen governance delivered in anything other than NDPB
Think back to where local government was in 2011. There was internal strife and Cosla was breaking up. The notion of retaining 50/50 funding was a practical non starter
The risk of local authorities weaponising police funding would have created far more uncertainty for PSoS than the central approach (albeit VAT exemption fell)
Obvious question is could the former forces have survived the cuts? Clearly the politicians thought not and FWIW - I think they called it right
That being said it’s clear there are enormous challenges for the service - policing is now scrutinised far more than in the past and that’s a good thing - it’s also far more politicised and that’s not
There plenty more to be said but that’s enough from me for now
