Police and Crime Commissioners Results

[Wolfshade]

With a very interested public vote on our hands I imagine this will be a hot topic.

The Electoral Reform Society has branded the government's handling of the elections a "comedy of errors". It has predicted a turnout of 18.5%, which would be below the previous record low in a national poll in peacetime of 23% - in the 1999 European elections.

Reports from Newport that one polling station had zero votes yesterday - ballot box returned empty

Official Results:

Avon & Somerset Sue Mountstevens (Ind) 18.80%
Bedfordshire Olly Martins (Lab) 17.80%
Cambridgeshire Graham Bright (Con) 14.80%
Cheshire John Dwyer (Con) 13.70%
Cleveland Barry Coppinger (Lab) 14.70%
Cumbria Richard Rhodes (Con) 15.60%
Derbyshire Alan Charles (Lab) 14.40%
Devon & Cornwall Tony Hogg (Con) 14.70%
Dorset Martyn Underhill (Ind) 16.30%
Durham Ron Hogg (Lab) 14.40%
Dyfed-Powys Christopher Salmon (Con) 16.40%
Essex Nicholas Alston (Con) 12.80%
Gloucestershire Martin Surl (Ind) 16%
Greater Manchester Tony Lloyd (Lab) 13.60%
Gwent Ian Johnston (Ind) 14%
Hampshire Simon Hayes (Ind) 14.50%
Hertfordshire David Lloyd (Con) 14.10%
Humberside Matthew Grove (Con) 19.20%
Kent Ann Barnes (Ind) 16%
Lancashire Clive Grunshaw (Lab) 15%
Leicestershire Clive Loader (Con) 16%
Lincolnshire Alan Hardwick (Ind) 15.30%
Merseyside Jane Kennedy (Lab) 12.40%
Norfolk Stephen Bett (Ind) 14.50%
North Wales Winston Roddick (Ind) 14.80%
North Yorkshire Julia Mulligan (Con) 13.30%
Northamptonshire Adam Simmonds (Con) 20%
Northumbria Vera Baird (Lab) 16.40%
Nottinghamshire Paddy Tipping (Lab) 16.40%
South Wales Alun Michael (Lab) 14.70%
South Yorkshire Shaun Wright (Lab) 14.50%
Staffordshire Matthew Ellis (Con) 11.60%
Suffolk Tim Passmore (Con) 15.40%
Surrey Kevin Hurley (Zer) 15.40%
Sussex Katy Bourne (Con) 15.30%
Thames Valley Anthony Stansfeld (Con) 13.30%
Warwickshire Ron Ball (Ind) 15.20%
West Mercia Bill Longmore (Ind) 14.50%
West Midlands Bob Jones (Lab) 12%
West Yorkshire Mark Burns-Williamson (Lab) 13.30%
Wiltshire Angus MacPherson (Con) 15.30%


Spoiled figures are either the ones declared or the difference between the ballot papaer count and turnout figure. Turnout figures do not include spoiled papers you see...

Democracy in action....

[Psychosplodge]

I'm ashamed to say this is the first time I've not been arsed to go vote.
Normally if there's no candidate I want I will spoil my paper, but yesterday was the first time apathy overtook me...

If there'd been an independent I'd have backed them, as imo party politics has no place in this. But we only had the main three, UKIP and the English Democrats...

[Wolfshade]

South Yorks? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-19476009

Yeah, I have to say we had the 3 UKIP and 3 independents. I know nothing about any of those candidates, not even a news letter, I know more about what the BNP are doing in my area than these people.

I am not sure that the Police should be politicised like this.

[Psychosplodge]

Yeah, two miles down the road and I'd have been able to support an independent...

I certainly question how independent someone running on a party ticket can possibly be.

[Wolfshade]

£75 million was spent on publicising this.

[Wolfshade]

South Lakeland - 23.4% - could reflect the fact that voters have had leaflets from candidates.

[Psychosplodge]

£75 million was spent on publicising this.

They'd have been better giving me that as an arts grant so I could finish all the armies...

[Wolfshade]

Exactly, and we know that far right/left parties tend to do really quite well out of low turn outs

[Psychosplodge]

It gets them a platform... and look how that turned out in the late 20's...

Edit: Doncaster 15.8% turnout

[Wolfshade]

Depends from what view point, I mean the Germans & Russians did reap huge economic benefits from extremists.

Also, irriating is the term PCC because we now how
PCC - Police and Crime Commissioner
PCC - Press Complaints Commission
PCC - Parochial Church Council
et al.

[Psychosplodge]

Depends from what view point, I mean the Germans & Russians did reap huge economic benefits from extremists.

Also, irriating is the term PCC because we now how
PCC - Police and Crime Commissioner
PCC - Press Complaints Commission
PCC - Parochial Church Council
et al.

Well of course, some did, if you fit nicely in your "place".


TLA are just too popular by government, businesses, and other organisations, that's why there's bound to be overlap...

Edit: Update SY overall turnout 14.92%, some ballet boxes as few as five papers in them.

[Wolfshade]

Sussex saw 15.82% of people vote, while West Yorkshire saw 13.78%.

[Wolfshade]

In Doncaster, the lowest number of votes in a ballot box was five, BBC political reporter James Vincent says.

Seems everyone in Doncaster who can read voted...

[Psychosplodge]

apparently in Barnsley it was as low as 12%.

[Wolfshade]

A couple more turnouts (which include spoiled ballot papers) for you, Northumbria saw 16.8% of people vote, with 13.3% of voters taking part in the Thames Valley area. Lancashire saw 15.5%, 172,710 people voting, with the Leicester and Rutland turnout recorded as 16.36%.

[Psychosplodge]

So very well supported then...

[Wolfshade]

I've updated the first post to make it less hap-hazard

[Psychosplodge]

makes sense... looking impressive so far...

[Wolfshade]

Greater Manchester - 13.5%

Though in their by-election results also show low turns out

[Wolfshade]

Stockton first preference results: Barry Coppinger (Lab) marginally ahead of Ken Lupton. L 8186, C 7807, G 1707, I 3844

[Wolfshade]

Conservative Christopher Salmon is elected on first count in Dyfed-Powys.

[Mr Mystery]

I have no idea who my candidates were, which party the represent, what they were promising, nothing at all.

I didn't even know yesterday was polling day... Whole thing has been an omnishambles. Unnecessary, poorly conceived and judiging by the turnout, utterly unwanted.

Though I do note that suddenly the Alternate Vote is a-ok with the Tories, as long as it's not their safe seat on the line of course. I mean, if that happened, and we moved away from mindless first past the post, they might actually have to get out their and campaign everywhere. Can't have that. Far better the proles just hush and let their betters get on with ruining the country.

[Wolfshade]

Well this is part of the problem, apparently 97 million was spent on it.
The real question is where was the option not to have police commisars
?

[Psychosplodge]

I thought you lived in London? You don't get one, It falls directly to the Home secretary and The Mayor.

I prefer first past the post generally as it's easier to remove a party, though there are certainly issues regarding constituency sizes, boundaries etc. But every system will have issues.

[Wolfshade]

I thought you lived in London? You don't get one, It falls directly to the Home secretary and The Mayor.

I prefer first past the post generally as it's easier to remove a party, though there are certainly issues regarding constituency sizes, boundaries etc. But every system will have issues.

Unless you have one where people don't vote...

[Psychosplodge]

I'm sure there'd be issues with that too...just different ones...

[Mr Mystery]

FPTP just encourages lazy politicians, and lazy parties. They know they can depend on a certain level of support. But with the AV, they can't afford to be so complacent. Every constituency would need to have solid campaigning done.

It might also go some way to snapping the electorate out of their careful engineered apathy, when you realise every vote does indeed count.

I am genuinely incensed that they are willing to apply it to the PCC, but not to Parliament. Just another reason I despise this entirely self serving govenment.

[Psychosplodge]

I think most politicians are self serving not just the government...

They can afford to experiment with it here because they can always scrap the system entirely if they want, If the way of electing the government was changed, they might end up with a situation they can't reverse because the smaller parties could band together to prevent it.

[Wolfshade]

Winston Roddick becomes the first independent to win, with victory in North Wales

[Psychosplodge]

Labour candidate in SY with over 50% first choice votes (74000) - a plank of wood with a red rosette could do that here...
Something like 3-5k spoiled ballets.

[Wolfshade]

Yes, I remember sheffield being very, erm, red.

[Psychosplodge]

It's funny though because most people are somewhere to the right of pinochet when it comes to what to do with criminals...

[Wolfshade]

Worringly so

[Wolfshade]

In Hampshire there were 5,595 spoilt ballots of 211,886 cast
In West Mercia there have been 4,273 spoiled ballots.
North Yorkshire 6,402 people spoilt their ballot papers, with 3,995 spoiled in South Yorks.

[Psychosplodge]

Worringly so

Direct relation to the watering down of actual "Justice" if people were happy that is was being served they wouldn't be calling for harsher punishments...

Anyway
Scary or funny (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-20358207)

[Wolfshade]

Highlights from Thames Valley ballots:
"A plague on all your houses"
"Young men died in the trenches for this?"

[Psychosplodge]

Where's that sourced from?

[Wolfshade]

Humberside, Labour's John Prescott and Conservative Matthew Grove will contest a second round of voting as candidates failed to get 50% of first preference votes.

[Wolfshade]

Where's that sourced from?

Peter Henley on twitter BBC journo. I am concerned with them releasing that information

[Psychosplodge]

Surely that suggests he's accessing something that should be secured? or is this being relayed by the counters? Which is still questionable in it's appropriateness :eek:

[Wolfshade]

I don't know, one hopes that it is relayed by counters, but even so that is still highly questionable.

[Psychosplodge]

Unethical, thats the word I was looking for before.

[Wildeybeast]

I have no idea who my candidates were, which party the represent, what they were promising, nothing at all.

I didn't even know yesterday was polling day... Whole thing has been an omnishambles. Unnecessary, poorly conceived and judiging by the turnout, utterly unwanted.

Couldn't agree more. Furthermore, with two ex-police officers as parents I am reliably informed that putting a politician who has no experience of policing whatsoever in charge of the day to day running of the police force is a stupid decision. Particularly given that one of the fundamental principles of the police is that they are independent of politics.

[Psychosplodge]

Particularly given that one of the fundamental principles of the police is that they are independent of politics.

This was my main reason for not voting, we had no independents. The last thing you want is the police toeing the party line.

[Wildeybeast]

I didn't vote because I didn't have a single piece of information about any of the candidates in my area. I have a simple policy that if I have to actively search for you on the internet to find out your bloody name, never mind your policies, you are not getting my vote. So none of them did.

[Nabterayl]

With a very interested public vote on our hands I imagine this will be a hot topic.

The Electoral Reform Society has branded the government's handling of the elections a "comedy of errors".
Okay, you all have gotten to quiz us colonials on our politics, now it's my turn.

In America the idea of "the government" "handling" an election doesn't really make sense. I know that in the UK "the government" has a much more specific meaning than in America, but in what sense do they "handle" elections? And in what sense was this last election handled poorly?

[Wildeybeast]

These Police Commissioners are a party political thing - the ruling party wanted them introduced and got their way, so it was their responsibility to chose the timings (our elections are flexible in terms of when we can hold them) and publicise it. They put out very little to no information about what the new role will entail, why they feel it is important or who the candidates are. They held the elections at the wrong time of year (ones in winter have lower turnouts because people are more likely to stay at home in the dark evenings). They also missed the opportunity to hold them alongside established local elections which would have increased turnout. Basically, no one gave a toss about it to start with and they did absolutely nothing to change that situation. Elections are run by the Electoral Commission which is an independent organisation, I don't think the govt. does much beyond choose the timing.

[Nabterayl]

Ah ... so you had a badly publicized election for a badly publicized role at a bad time?

[Wildeybeast]

A neat summary, yes. You could also add an unnecessary role/election to that since we are going to be having one person (who is in most cases affiliated to political party) doing a job which was previously done by a council of people perfectly well in most cases. And that one person is going to be paid a lot more money for doing the job. All of which led to an incredibly bad turnout. Some areas had turnout as low as turnout 10%. There was a polling station near me which only had three people turn up to vote, one of whom was turned away for some reason. There was a polling station in Wales which had precisely no votes cast at it.

[Wolfshade]

£75 million was spent advertising this.

I think in reality most people didn't care who their police commissioner was.

There was a push that it should be apolitical and so the two largest parties feilded a candidate in every area...

The counter to having it when they did was that it was the first free spot, one can also note that the by-elections being held that day while they had low turnouts they were still higher than those who voted.

All the candidate information was available via a website which was independantly run, so there was a single source. Everyone was supposed to get an information pack outlining what the PCC was and their role and how to find out about their local candidates, I know I did.

[Wolfshade]

Well the elections are finished, I've updated the first post.

And the winner.... Apathy
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64227000/gif/_64227025_police_auth624final3.gif

To get some persepective on this:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64208000/gif/_64208286_previous_turnouts_464.gif

So it appears that we are more concerned with getting UKIP into Europe than commissioners.

How the voting broke down:
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64207000/gif/_64207207_new_pccs_464.gif
I think rather interestingly the Lib Dems who didn't stand in every location won 0 seats.
Certainly the very low turn outs helped the independents, but do we know what they are doing and what they are going to be standing for?

Mostly, no. Well we have an idea that the Conservatives and Labour will be mostly towing party lines so that is a tad boring but the indies, or indy commissioners (you need the indiana jones theme tune playing now) who are they and where do they come from:


Martyn Underhill (Dorset) - Former police officer who helped lead investigation into the disappearance of schoolgirl Sarah Payne
Winston Roddick (North Wales) - Barrister and senior legal adviser to National Assembly of Wales
Ian Johnston (Gwent) - 33 years of service in Gwent Police and president of Police Superintendents Association
Ron Ball (Warwickshire) - Aircraft pilot and magistrate
Martin Surl (Gloucestershire) - Former superintendent with Gloucester Police
Bill Longmore (West Mercia) - 30 years in Staffordshire Police before setting up a manufacturing firm
Simon Hayes (Hampshire and Isle of Wight) - Former chairman of Hampshire Police Authority
Ann Barnes (Kent) - Magistrate and chair of the Kent Police Authority
Kevin Hurley (Surrey) - Former Territorial Army and Metropolitan Police officer who served in Iraq in 2003/4, campaigned on Zero Tolerance Policing platform
Sue Mountstevens (Avon and Somerset) - Former magistrate and police authority member
Alan Hardwick (Lincolnshire) - Former TV news presenter
Stephen Bett (Norfolk) - Former police authority member

Most of them have some experiance with law enforcement, which I think is a good thing. But without being resposible to someone else, how do we keep them to account? Certainly they have no part to keep them in line, and they have their position for a long while and probably are not too concerned if they are to be re-elected. Another interesting point will be when government policy and local commisionar clash. What happens if the PM dictates that there will be more bobbies on the beat and there will be extra cash for that but the local PCC decides they have enough people on the beat but need more technology?

"The question of independence from a party should not be confused with true independence of thought" - John Redwood MP

[Psychosplodge]

I think what's interesting is that ours got elected by 7% of those eligible to vote and he considers that "a good mandate" because he got over 50%(barely) that turned out...

[Wolfshade]

It doesn't really matter, he got the most votes. Arguably the people who didn't vote didn't care. With the system used he would still have got the vote.
I would argue that someone who is voted for by people who wanted to vote is more legitamate then those people who are voted in where everyone is forced to vote. If you don't care you should have the right to choose whether or not to vote, the figures show that like the EU elections we don't really care, probably because we do not think that they will have any affect on our day-to-day lives.

[Wildeybeast]

Nonsense. I wanted to vote. I wanted to vote to keep the current system as this is a stupid pointless waste of time and money. I was not given that option, so I didn't bother voting. It's like saying me abstaining in whether I want to have my arms or legs removed implies that I really don't care which is removed rather than indicating that I don't want either of them removed but am not being given the opportunity to express that preference.

[Wolfshade]

You could have always have spoiled your paper...

[Wildeybeast]

I could, but that would have involved the effort of going to the polling station to express my unhappiness in fashion the government doesn't give a toss about when I could stay at home and express my unhappiness in a fashion the government doesn't care about.