Police and Crime Commissioners

Here in the UK we are being asked to vote for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCC) to oversee the police forces.

As far as I can see this is just another figurehead post whereby the appointed person will receive a lot of our money but offer nothing in return. 

One PCC will represent a whole county and therefore has an awful lot of people's views to take into consideration.  These views may well be conflicting with priorities in rural areas being totally different from those in inner city locations.

Furthermore, although the PCCs are elected, if they don't perform we have to wait until the next election for the job in order to try and change them so in reality they are unlikely to truly represent the population of the county and are more likely to follow their own agenda, just as other politicians do.

I say other politicians - aren't they supposed to neutral.  According to the website explaining all of this http://www.choosemypcc.org.uk/about-pccs/ they swear an oath of impartiality and are not supposed to represent any political party.  In Derbyshire we have candidates from the Labour party, Conservative party and UKIP.  This does not sound independent to me, why do they need to mention their politics if it is to have no effect? 

There was to be an Independent but he left the registration process to the last minute and when his payment was delayed in traffic he missed the deadline.  Something tells me he would not be any good for the job with management skills like that!

So far I have not seen any information from the candidates about why we should vote for them, sure it is available on the website but for those who don't have access or don't go looking then they are being asked to vote in an election they know nothing about.  Perhaps I will now be deluged with leaflets, who knows, but the election is approaching in just over two weeks.

We all know however that pre-election manifestos are all about telling the public what they want to hear.  As soon as elected the personal agendas of the PCCs will come in to play and may well reflect their party political views despite their oath of impartiality.  We see this all the time in government and opposition.

So why vote?  I am not sure I will.  Normally I am not part of the apathy section of voters but in this case I am struggling.  I am not prepared to select a candidate based on political alignment and cannot select a candidate given the limited information I have seen so far from them.

I think I will make my stand for the environment and not travel to the polling station (OK, so I would have walked but that is not the point!)

This is yet another instance of the state pretending that the public actually have any say in how things are run and I for one am getting fed up.