Why I spoiled my ballot paper

Alun Uncategorized 4 Comments ,

It’s elec­tion day for the Dyfed and Powys Police and Crime Com­mis­sioner elec­tions. I think they mean Police Com­mis­sioner. I don’t think it’s Con­ser­vat­ive Party policy to have more people com­mis­sion­ing crimes too. I think if were to con­jure a scheme to ali­en­ate people from demo­cracy, the Dyfed and Powys Police and Crime Com­mis­sioner elec­tions would be an excel­lent model to follow.

Labour’s can­did­ate is a former agri­cul­ture min­is­ter who was cen­sured for fail­ing to deliver on prom­ises. The Labour gov­ern­ment removed her from office on the eve of the big agri­cul­tural show in Wales because they thought that would be less embar­rass­ing than hav­ing her con­tinue in office.

I can­not vote for the Labour can­did­ate. That leaves, and I’m pedantic enough to list every single party, the Conservatives.

That’s it.

To be fair to the Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate, he does sound sane. He’s in favour of help­ing drug addicts with rehab­il­it­a­tion. I think a Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate who favours things that work over dogma is a good thing and I’d like to sup­port him. And there’s the bonus that you’ll be able to say with con­fid­ence the police really are the para­mil­it­ary wing of the Con­ser­vat­ive Party. And that’s the prob­lem. I have com­plete con­tempt for the elec­tion and it’s the Con­ser­vat­ives who’ve fois­ted it on the coun­try. A vote for the Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate is a vote of approval for the sys­tem and this is abso­lutely the wrong system.

Polit­ical rep­res­ent­a­tion to the police is not the thing I have a prob­lem with. There are issues that are polit­ical with a small p that need rep­res­ent­at­ives. My prob­lem with the elec­tion is that we already have them. We have a local coun­cil, we have a county coun­cil, we have a national assembly and we have the UK Par­lia­ment. There’s plenty that’s wrong with them, but as far as poli­cing goes they have a fant­astic advant­age. They’re plural.

The law should be impar­tial. Politi­cians often are not, and even those who are need to be seen to be impar­tial and it’s dif­fi­cult to do that with a party tag round your neck. How­ever with the lay­ers of gov­ern­ment even if I do think there’s polit­ical bias, I can find a rep­res­ent­at­ive who I can at least talk to. The local Con­ser­vat­ive can­did­ate is clear that he will aim to rep­res­ent all people in the region. Great but why would the Con­ser­vat­ive Party want to bypass the demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted bod­ies like the local coun­cil (no Con­ser­vat­ive major­ity), the county coun­cil (no Con­ser­vat­ive major­ity), the national assembly (no Con­ser­vat­ive major­ity), or the UK par­lia­ment (no Con­ser­vat­ive majority)?

If I can’t vote for either then not-voting makes sense. The prob­lem with not-voting is that it’s indis­tin­guish­able from apathy, which is a sig­nal to all parties that they can do whatever they like. That leaves spoil­ing the bal­lot paper.

Spoil­ing the bal­lot paper is futile in the UK. It makes no dif­fer­ence to the res­ult, but to me at least it’s an action. Police Min­is­ter Damien Green has con­tempt for people who don’t vote http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20257552 and you can see why when so much of the elect­or­ate has con­tempt for him. I can now at least com­plain I have tried to take part in the pro­cess and a lack of choice includ­ing the choice to re-open nom­in­a­tions is exclud­ing me from democracy.

If we were allowed to write in can­did­ates my choice would be Jackie Roberts. I think she has exper­i­ence, know­ledge of the local area and, see­ing as she’s Chief Con­stable of the Dyfed-Powys force, she’d have an office in the heart of the organisation.

The com­fort is that pre­sum­ably Damien Green will be out of his post tomor­row. His sin­cer­ity that Police and Crime Com­mis­sion­ers are a good idea must surely mean his own post of Police Min­is­ter is redundant?

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How much is Stonehenge worth?

Alun Uncategorized No Comments ,

You can now use Eng­lish law to work out what Stone­henge is worth in this blog post from Ulla Rajala. Someone has been fined for des­troy­ing a quarter of one of the Priddy Circles in Somer­set and you can work out from the fine for that what the fine for bull­doz­ing Stone­henge would be — if Eng­lish law were consistent.

The bonus ques­tion What gets the biggest fine, bull­doz­ing a quarter of a pre­his­toric monu­ment or installing uPVC win­dows into a lis­ted farm­house? is easy to answer.

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Priddy Circle ver­dict: how much is a monu­ment worth?
This week brought the sen­ten­cing of the case of the par­tial destruc­tion of one of the Priddy Circles in the Mendips in Somer­set. A retired busi­ness­man who had bought the farm house near the Circles ha…

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Not a good writing day today

Alun Uncategorized No Comments , , ,

Actu­ally an abso­lutely lousy writ­ing day today. I’d writ­ten myself into a dead end. There’s two ways of deal­ing with that.

The clever way would have been so have accep­ted there was a prob­lem that I wasn’t going to fix in a rush and moved on to the next sec­tion. After get­ting that done I could return to the prob­lem point and re-write to get from there to here.

How­ever, I thought the sec­tion I was stuck with might affect how the rest of that chapter works, so I looked for a fix. And looked. And looked. I finally have one, but it’s prob­ably cost me a day’s writing.

I have a party I have to go to tomor­row, so it’s a bit of a stall on the writ­ing at the moment. This is a slight pain as my cal­en­dar tells me it’s just day 2 of #AcWriMo . I would have been nice to get to day 3 before run­ning into a big­ger problem.

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