December 2012
As a young boy, I couldn’t wait until I reached the age of 18. It meant I didn’t have to answer to my parents any more. It meant I could drive, vote, drink and smoke. It meant I would no longer be patronised and treated like an imbecile. Of course once I reached the age of 18, none of that really mattered. I’d been driving for a year and established it was considerably less fun than racing karts. I’d been drinking for at least 3 years and established it usually resulted in embarrassment the following morning. I didn’t smoke because it’s a pointless, expensive and unpleasant waste of time. Voting is almost as pointless because I realised it doesn’t matter who I vote for, I’m still going to get screwed, robbed blind, patronised and treated like an imbecile. Voting for local MP’s makes about as much difference to my life as voting for the winner of the X Factor and it seems more and more people are figuring this out because there has apparently been a dramatic drop in the number of voters in recent years.
There was a lot of surprise and shock in the press when it turned out only 15 percent of the country voted in the inaugural police commissioner elections. Why were they so surprised? It was bollocks. If you ask me, the only surprising thing was why anyone was surprised that so few people voted.
If anything, the poor turnout demonstrates that perhaps the general public isn’t completely stupid after all. The first time I was legally old enough to vote in a general election I didn’t. This was because I had no idea how the world worked and had no valid opinions on anything so it would have been a wasted vote. Those who vote just because they can are morons because they are likely to vote for whoever the Daily Mirror tells them to which is probably why we have complete imbeciles running our country all the time. Now of course I’m older, wiser and very opinionated and have experienced first hand the thieving ways of the government so I have a valid reason to want to vote.
However, I have no idea what I’d be voting for in a police commissioner election. I don’t even know any of the people standing for police commissioner. I don’t even know what a police commissioner does. I mean what does a police commissioner do other than turn on a big light to call Batman?
That’s not to say the voting card that came through my door for this stupid police commissioner elections completely went to waste. I did stick it in the fireplace and it helped heat the house for a few seconds. Given the astronomical amount energy companies are charging now, I should be thankful to my local council for that.
Aside from that, it really was the most colossal waste of time and money. What the hell was it even about and why was it deemed necessary to spend £100 million on them? They obviously didn’t spend much of that ridiculous amount on marketing or advertising. In typically incompetent bureaucratic style, most of that money would have been paid to consultants. They probably hired some really expensive consultants who told the government that this would be a really great idea and make it look like we actually live in a democracy. Then they probably hired even more really expensive consultants to work out how to deliver the product and carry out a feasibility study to ascertain what the process of the election should involve. They would also have needed to hire consultants to carry out a study on how the feasibility study should be carried out. They then would have hired some even more expensive consultants to try and find as many people who know nothing about policing - but are probably very political - to then apply for the job. They, in turn, would have spent a small fortune on writing the vaguest policies they could present in the most illiterate way possible. They of course would need their own consultants to establish the best way to do whatever job it is they are supposed to be doing. And obviously they had to budget for the cost of consultants who would inevitably be needed to find out why the elections were such a complete disaster.
I would like to ask one of these consultants whether they even know what the point is in electing someone we don't know to be a police commissioner, who in many cases doesn't actually know anything about policing; someone who won't, as far as I can see, have any powers other than being “the people's voice”, so won't make any difference to government policies on policing. They will just nod sagely at the opinions of people and then either dismiss them entirely or document all the opinions into one large document and lose it. Or hand it over to someone in parliament who will lose it for them.
The Electoral Commission is now apparently investigating the poor turn-out. So what we have now is a commission being commissioned to investigate the police commissioner elections.
If you ask me, there are two main reasons why no one voted. One of the reasons was because no one knew who the hell any of the candidates were. Not only that but ironically the candidates who stood for the position in my area all had mug shots like those seen on Crime Watch. The other obvious reason no one voted was because John Prescott was a candidate and who wants to vote John Prescott for leadership of anything? He wasn’t even voted in as Prime Minister.
The fact is we don’t need a police commissioner. What we need is someone in parliament who actually has some common sense. Someone who understands it’s not a good idea to cut police pensions and dick around with their salary and dishonour legally binding contracts relating to their working conditions. What we need is someone intelligent enough to get rid of those pointless community support officers who dress like police officers but don’t actually have any power whatsoever. We need someone sensible enough to understand that the police are actually quite important so pissing them off probably isn’t the wisest thing to do unless they want the country over-run by anarchists.
So if you want to vote for me to be the next police commissioner, please send your request off to Downing Street where a member of parliament will lose it.
