Is always good news for someone. So far as yesterday's Police and Crime Commissioners are concerned the abysmal turn out was some solace for the Electorate, albeit yet more bad news for our shambolic Government. It is all very fine to advise the public that this that or the other was mentioned in some manifesto , but so too was much else that Government has seemingly reneged on. Quite clearly had there been more thought the dumb idea PCCs might also have been abandoned, for such persons are far less accountable for their actions, than were Police Committee members accountable to their elected fellow Committee members. Being able to chuck the Commissioner out after four years is no consolation. As for Commissioners fixing the Police Budget, heaven help Community Charge Payers. It was surely obvious to any Minister with an ear to the wire that there was no call for Police and Crime Commissioners. In Wiltshire The Conservative Candidate was returned as a Commissioner when only some fifteen per cent of the Electorate voted, let alone voted for him. What ever other reasons there were for such poor attendance at the Voting Stations, the main one was that the Public had no wish to have Commissioners forced upon them. There was a call for change, but no call for the system on offer. One needs to bear in mind that all those who misguidedly turned up at Polling Stations to 'Spoil their paper' are included as having voted.

Surely more than fifteen percent of the Wiltshire Electorate voted Conservative at Wiltshire's first Unitary Authority Election a while back. If so, seemingly even the Wiltshire Conservative Association has no more faith in Police and Crime Commissioners than the rest of us. I think I will squirrel my unopened 'Postal Vote' away sine die, in the hope of then auctioning it for a lot of money, as the ephemera of a failed administration. Really heads need to roll over this debacle. All it needs is to hear that the Prime Minister has absolute faith in his Home Secretary, and she too will be on the next bicycle out.

I know no more of the PC Commissioner Wiltshire elected, than he knows about me, so none of the remarks I make should be taken as any sort of criticism of a man who had to play the game according rules that he didn’t frame.

I very much object that any of the Political Parties had a hand in the promotion of their Party nominee, for that is not the way to have Policing by consent, furthermore it could become the open door to totalitarian Government. If seemingly the Public has lost faith in our whole electoral process, could it be that its majority knows that it has been 'mugged' by small cliques within one minority Political Party or another. We were advised that the old Police Committees composed of persons of whom we knew nothing, were considered unsatisfactory. But those Committees were for a large part composed of Elected County, or in our case Unitary Authority Councillors. If these persons were unsuited to the task they were called upon to do, how may one wonder, was it that they were selected to be County or Unitary Authority , 'Nominees' of mostly the Conservative Party in the first place? Sure as eggs is eggs many County, Unitary Authority, District and Town Councillors, would not have made it to the Council Chamber under their personal auspices, and their advent excluded others whose election might have been a better option.

If we now have elected Police and Crime Commissioners, maybe too all our Magistrates should be elected to the Bench. Too many of them seem to be the protégés or protégées of the perceived status quo. All these Offices of State, be they high or low tend to be distributed to the inoffensive ' Yes man or woman.' Though the Magistracy is less exclusive than it once was, surely such public service should be made more accessible than it currently is. If there is a requirement to advertise for would be Judges, why is there no such requirement for the Magistracy, unless of course there is.

One hears how hard it is to get anyone to do anything now days, but what people really complain of is that they can not find anyone to do things the way that they do them.Even I a man of little involvement have always found others to do things, that maybe I should be doing in their stead. Providing people are given a little encouragement, most are willing to help. Its not everyone who sees him or herself as God's Gift to local involvement. 16.11.12.