I had thought long and hard about voting in the Police
Commissioner elections on Thursday. Like most people, it seems, I knew very
little about the elections. I’d seen nothing about them and hadn’t a clue who
was standing in them. The night before, I searched on-line and found a little
tiny weeny bit about the two candidates standing in my region.
Their manifestos
claimed aims of reducing crime (I wish someone had thought of that one years
ago) and making better uses of budgets – like cutting 3 Bobbies on the Beat and
sticking a Commissioner in in their place. I think the website had mixed up their
manifestos with some that some Year 7 students had knocked up in a Society
lesson.
I
recognised the two names and so decided to sleep on it as to whom I would vote
for and find a little bit more out the next day.
It came
to me in the middle of the night that I had possibly spoken twice to the bloke’s
brother* many years before and he had been quite nice, so that was positive.
Then someone reminded me the next morning about the other candidate – “She’s
the one who wouldn’t eat burgers…” and so my mind was made up for me.
I did
vote and at 9.20 a.m. was only the second person in.
I decided to ask around and see what other people thought of
the elections. “Nah – not heard anything about them,” seemed a common theme. Two people had spoiled their papers in protest (until I told them in my
capacity of a former Poll Clerk, there was no point in doing this: their
spoiled papers would not be counted as anything, and therefore their protest
was a pointless exercise).
My
favourite comment regarding the elections was from the woman who wished she had
stood herself. “I’ve got quite a big family and I used to work in Jewsons, so I
reckon I’d have won,” she said, miffed that she’d missed an opportunity of
raking in £100K a year. And after seeing the majority of the winning candidate,
I think she could have been right…
*I’ve since found out that he doesn’t have any brothers, so
it must have been someone else’s brother.
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