With only a week to go the nation waits, fingernails chewed to the quick, sleepless nights, passions raised to fever pitch.
Oh sorry, the new James Bond movie was released last week . . . I’m talking about the first ever elections for a Police and Crime Commissioner.
The PCC is the bright idea of David Cameron. One gets the feeling that he saw a Batman film and thought that Gotham City, aka everywhere else, seemed to work with a police commissioner and so we’d all get one.
Holy cow, Robin!
We have been told that we never knew who were on the old style police authorities that quietly got on with the job of running the police service in conjunction with the Chief Constable, who was responsible for the operational part.
Now you will all know, every man Jack and Jill throughout Northamptonshire will be only a phone call away from the ultimate source of policing in the county.
Want your street cleared of vandals? Want your local mugger locked up and sent to Botany Bay? Want your own personal PCSO stationed on your doorstep? Want that elusive early morning milk snatcher corralled into the local nick?
Have no fear, one phone call and you will be connected with Commissioner . . . . . ?
Bet most of you don’t even know who’s likely to be your local crime Tsar with the ever vigilant eye and a £70k slice of your tax-paying dosh.
If the PM really felt that police authorities were out of touch with the rest of us, then the solution was simply to elect a representative body at the same time as the county council.
On the other hand instead of spending £80 million on an election in Northampton the Home Office could have spent a couple of million producing a leaflet for every home telling us who our Police Authority members were.
The prediction at the moment is that the turnout might reach the dizzy height of 20 per cent. That seems optimistic and begs the question of the legitimacy of any election in which 80 per cent of the electorate don’t participate.
I predict that the 20 per cent who might turn out next week will vote 100 per cent for a party-backed candidate.
When I was a student we were unimpressed by the political wannabe’s standing in the union election, so we wrote in a candidate and M Mouse romped home.
For this Mickey Mouse election can I suggest we add M Mouse once again to the ballot paper.
You know it makes sense.
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