Speaking to my wonderful Post lady who has delivered the voting cards, she quite rightly says who are the candidates, and as I know nothing so why should I bother? A fair point.............. so
candidates in alphabetical order are
Stephen Betts ( existing PCC - Independent) who was accused of fiddling his expenses but found not guilty
Lorne Green ( Conservative) born in Canada
Jackie Howe (Lib Dem) Lives in North Norfolk fighting rightly to promote womens issues FGM Domestic violence etc
David Moreland UKIP
Chris Jones Labour
Martin Schmierer Green
I am afraid I do not know much at all about the above 3 and feel it is wrong to politicise this process , as the Law afterall, is supposed to be independent of political influence when is comes to enforcement ! Cutbacks from Central Govt however are a VERY strong controlling factor in the way we currently Police and that has to be wrong !
However it has happened and as we are being swamped at the moment with the Referendum ( no comment) voting, this is getting sidelined but is happening in 3 weeks !! My personal biased view is that it is refreshing to have a women candidate but I do urge you to try and find out about all the candidates and what they propose to do in this ( 80K+ ) plus job when and if they get elected
To Julian Halls, thank you for providing information on the up and coming police commissioner elections.
To Anonymous, if you think Canadians talk a bit funny then that is your view only. I am glad the salary is mentioned as it is the public who are voting and paying the salary from their taxes - an important point. Julian has not mentioned any crime associated with any individual, only that one of the candidates was accused and not found guilty, there is a big difference here. This was also common knowledge. Anonymous, I think you have declared your political association by the usual 'let's be nasty about Julian Halls because he has a different political viewpoint' posting - it's pathetic. Let him inform us please as nobody else bothers with looking after the local interests.
The last turnout in this area for this election was the worst recorded in the country, along with others at about 10%. This is not good. If anon 1 reads my post it encourages all to look at whichever candidate they which to vote for, hopefully NOT along Political lines , which I also said in my post.
Where someone lives , in my view is important as they should know something about the area they are purporting to represent, but please refer to my first sentence. Mr Green may have exceptional knowledge of Norfolk and as such would be an excellent candidate but that is for you to judge as the reader.
My personal view is that having a woman as a PCC would be refreshing , whatever their colour or Poltical persuasion, because the enforcement of Law is supposed to be non political. It is truly about the individual and what they want to achieve, free of Central party Political influences, usually based in London and as such, as evidenced daily, they are mostly completely out of touch with the real world.
Policing here in Norfolk is what matters , NOT cutbacks which allows criminals to run riot and if it costs me a couple of quid extra a month , so bl**dy what. (edited)
-- Edited by webstation on Sunday 17th of April 2016 04:22:33 PM
personally I accept that 'about 10%' and '14.5%' can be considered the same in this instance
i am interested in why a PCC is even allowed to be associated / fronted by any political party though. Surely this office should be independent, otherwise just get someone from NCC to be the PCC, much better VFM and quicker ROI don't you think?
i am going to vote green because i like the idea electric police cars patrolling the A11 (but only between the 2 junctions near the police station)
There was enquiry last time out. You will note it has had no impact whatsoever and unfortunately spoilt ballot papers just get counted and then binned, although bizarrely pictures of male genitals drawn within the voters tick box( along with other lewd depictions) get counted as a vote for that candidate, which might not have been the voters intention of course!!
Turnout was 23.8% Much better and thank you all who did so
Spoilt ballot papers and rejections out of 154,650 votes cast was 4,283! I think we need to get something done about that as that means nearly 3% wasted their votes. I fully accept it was confusing and very different to normal
I am very pleased that Lorne Green the Conservative Candidate won. He has already scrapped the deputy comminisioner post saving us the tax payer around £75,000 per year. I think your comment on Mr Bett about his expenses is out of order. He was found not guilty.
Just for interest I have been advised that serious enquiries are afoot with our winning PCC, whose selection for the post as the Tory candidate was alleged to be somehow in breach of the rules of the electoral commission. I have no further details
An interesting parrallel here with the serious enquiries the commission are now making into the Election expenses that were incurred by the Tories at the last General election. It will really put the cat in with the pidgeons if several vulnerable MP's elections have to re run.
The only people who SHOULD be scared are those who are commiting electoral fraud and using funds ILLEGALLY ( by overspending and candidate manipulation) to get what they want. The rules are the law , they are not to be conveniently ignored when it does not suit.
Of course politicians can vote to change the Law but they, the rules are there to give us all a level playing field. Do we really want a US system where balatantly unlimited money can corrupt the message and buy votes.
Anon post regarding labour and Lib dem battle buses - crossed in the posts as it were
LET ME BE ABSOLUTELY CLEAR. IF THIS IS TRUE I AM MORE THAN HAPPY THAT THEY BE PROSECUTED AS WELL. 3 WRONGS DO NOT MAKE A RIGHT. THE LAW IS THE LAW.
Can ANON please provide some links to evidence along these lines please because I cannot find any, but I can find plenty of references about 1 Party who will no doubt be using their massive resources to wheel out the cleverest and sharpest lawyers they can to refute this accusation.
No need to respond as I found a reference to this from Guido Fawkes ( obviously not his real name) for the Lib Dems but not Labour incidentally, BUT as said previously , if the Lib dem and Labour have done a similar thing then they need to be prosecuted as well.
I would wholeheartedly support this , no exceptions.
