What a waste of public money

wymondham

Just looked at the website, and having seen my 'choices' I think I'm busy that day washing my hair.......

Each one has got 'institution' printed on their forehead....

thescouselander

We got a leaflet through the door today for the Conservative candidate in our area. His number one policy....... to reduce crime. This guy will go far!

Loughton_Monkey

One of our local candidates is someone from UKIP.

I assume if he wins, he will mobilise the whole of the Essex Police Force and invade France, and then Germany, and tear up the Treaty of Rome.

At the very least, he'll refuse to co-operate with Interplod on principle.

michaels

I thought someone I knew was standing but they obviously didn't...however, Viva, one seems to be the former chairman of the Police Authority.

grizzly1911

antrobus wrote: »

- presumably the exisiting police authority already has the necessary "admin support" and so there'll be no change there.

Not ours they are advertising for a specific PA role in the local press. c.£22K. Might be going to, or to replace, someone being redundant possibly. I doubt it though

michaels wrote: »

I thought someone I knew was standing but they obviously didn't...however, Viva, one seems to be the former chairman of the Police Authority.

I saw the blurb on one of the posts, who was actually a top police officer for the region. Took retirement 10 years ago and is standing again. two things erk me 1.) Should it be going to somone from the old world establishment? 2.) He is already picking up a fat pension from the state anyway.

As MacM says I hope the turnout will be low and the post falls away when the lack of support is noted. It is a gravy train role.

Our poll cards hit the recycling as soon as they came through the door.

johnny_storm

I think its important not to vote in this election, to give the clear message that we hold such schemes in contempt.

pqrdef

Is the BNP putting up candidates? I'd have thought this would be right up their street. With a low enough turnout, they could even win.

But the main difference I foresee is that the Commissioner will spend half his time at your regional TV news studios.

The other thing is that policing will increasingly be dominated by manipulating statistics. The guy who's elected won't want to stand for re-election with crime figures having increased. The easy way to avoid that is to put fewer crimes on the books. Discourage reporting of crimes and turn more blind eyes. Things like drugs offences and motoring offences can be slashed by just not looking.

But the Commissioner doesn't actually run the force. If the police don't like him, they've equally got scope to fiddle the books to try to get rid of him.

We'll also have a new arena for the petty in-fighting that infests councils. Man wants to be council leader, doesn't get it, gets Commissioner instead, council leader suddenly gets his expenses investigated. Etc.

prowla

One of our candidates is a lady by the name of "Patience"; that's probably a quality.

Anyway, if I haven't missed it and if I'm not doing something else, then I'll vote for somebody who lives in my town. If there isn't anybody then I'll probably give it a miss.

prowla

I had a look at the candidates from the above link, and there's nobody local on the list, so no representation for me.

We have two independents and a UKIP, so they'd be my options; of them, Patience is the nearest.

kabayiri

johnny_storm wrote: »

I think its important not to vote in this election, to give the clear message that we hold such schemes in contempt.

I understand this sentiment, but I'm torn.

I think we should vote for independents, to demonstrate that we don't want politicians having lapdogs in the police force.