“I didn’t know we had a Police and Crime Commissioner!”
“The home secretary called the system a “failed experiment” – and less than 20% of voters can name their PCC, the Home Office said.”
Above – BBC News 13 Nov 2013
The written statement to Parliament was uncannily short – which was inversely proportional to the number of questions put by MPs following the oral statement by the Minister of State for policing at the Home Office.
I have been blogging so long that my former blog pre-dates PCCs!
Here’s me laughing at the proposals brought in by the then Home Secretary Theresa May in November 2012. Milena Popova lampooned the elections even more resoundingly in her blogpost here.
Above – Let’s go spoil some ballots – Milena Popova – 14 Nov 2012
In Cambridgeshire the county at the time was a safe-as-military-fortresses Tory-voting county (although Team Nigel gave them a shock the following year), the local party selected party grandee and ex-MP for Luton, Sir Graham Bright. He got stung by Brass Eye in the 1990s and had been living I presume a quiet retirement until Cambridgeshire Conservatives persuaded him to stand in the line of fire of Richard Taylor’s citizen journalism as it was known as then.
Above – Candidate Sir Graham Bright gets caught by Richard Taylor’s roving camcorder. 10 November 2012. Watch the video interview here
“Deposit for #pcc elections: £5k. Cost of#pcc elections: £100m. The look in Theresa May’s face re turnout: priceless”
Above – my observation on the PCC elections. 16 Nov 2012
Did Theresa May want you to vote?
Milena Popova explained why she didn’t.
“If Theresa May wanted to you vote, here are a few things she could have done:
- Scheduled the elections to coincide with other, more established elections, e.g. local ones, and not in winter.
- Had information about the elections and the candidates mailed out to you.
- Provided information not just online (excluding 7 million registered voters who do not regularly access the internet), and provided information in accessible formats for the disabled.
- Encouraged independent candidates, rather than shafting them by excluding anyone with any kind of previous conviction, demanding a £5,000 deposit and denying them a free mailshot to voters.
She has done none of these things. Theresa May definitely does not want you to vote.“
Above – Milena Popova 14 Nov 2012
“…none of the candidates filled me with enough confidence to overcome my huge doubts about the principle of having directly elected Police and Crime Commissioners – hence spoiling my ballot paper too. I did not want to legitimise what I felt was a flawed policy.”
Above – turned out I was against the establishment of PCCs too!
It remains to be seen what ministers replace the accountability processes with.
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