What a waste of public money

vivatifosi

pqrdef wrote: »

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.

That's a worrying thought. Here (Hertfordshire) they aren't standing. The candidates are from Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and UKIP. I don't know about other parts of the country though.

You make an interesting point about in-fighting too.

vivatifosi

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 think the turnout will be so low anyway that it will send the clear message that people don't give a ****.

michaels

Americans elect local officials down to a very low level - mostly what we hear about it is the corruption and the bankruptcies but then those would be the bits that get reported.

I am torn - I feel that often UK politics is too centralised and there is no scope for different regions to reflect their different priorities but then whenever there is an opportunity for local democracy there is very little interest and all that is achieved is an expensive new layer of bureaucracy where self interest and point scoring trumps any attempt to serve the local public.

Apparently the reason there is being a separate, expensive election is some sort of sop to the Lib Dems - perhaps Graham or someone could explain why they wanted it done this way rather than as part of the council elections in May?

Zero_Sum

pqrdef wrote: »

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.

Aren't they close to bankruptcy these days? And with a £5,000 deposit required, I'd doubt there'd have many candidates standing

Zero_Sum

antrobus wrote: »

The elected police commissioner replaces the existing police authority. So;

- the commissioner will perform the same functions as exercised by the authority, which might or might not be useful and worthy of public funding

- the cost of the commissioner's salary might possibly be more than the aggregate cost of paying allowances and expenses to the existing members of the authority. Or it might be less; you'd have to do the math.

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

And on the same basis, will there be Fire Commissioner poll at sometime in the near future

grizzly1911

Will we have 42 of them one for each force?

Why do we still have 42 forces isn't it time we had say 7 - Met, S, Mid,N, Wales, Scotland, NI.?

vivatifosi

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Will we have 42 of them one for each force?

Why do we still have 42 forces isn't it time we had say 7 - Met, S, Mid,N, Wales, Scotland, NI.?

Exactly! I wish I could thank this twice. Scotland AIUI is already going that way. Why set the system we have in stone?

antrobus

pqrdef wrote: »

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.....

Thankfully the BNP isn't in the position to mount much of a campaign for anything at the moment.

Loughton_Monkey

antrobus wrote: »

Thankfully the BNP isn't in the position to mount much of a campaign for anything at the moment.

BNP = British National Plod.

prowla

I think running the police is something far too serious to allow the BNP a part in.

(I've always thought that it would be "interesting to see a couple of them in parliament though, just to shake out some of the cosy complacency of the usual incumbents.)