Damn, damn, damn! How I would love to boast to you all that with my keen, sophisticated, political savoire faire I voted for Ms. Sue Mounstevens in the recent election for local Police Commissioners. Alas, not only did I fail to vote for her - I failed to vote entirely! I meant to, honestly I did. I was going out that evening and driving right past the polling station so I even made the effort to come right up here to my garrett to check who was who on the list of candidates. I noticed her name and the fact that she was listed as an 'Independent'. Well, of course, in my sublime male chauvinist way I dismissed her because she was a woman and therefore likely to be soppingly wet and useless - I know, I know, mea culpa and all that but I'm telling you the way it was! Anyway, having carefully memorised the name of the Tory candidate - I then drove straight past the polling station and only remembered my, er, 'civic duty' when I drove back again two hours after it had closed! (That's the sort of brilliance which has got me where I am today!)
Imagine my joy-mixed-with-shame when I heard on the news last night that Ms. Mountstevens had won the election and, in effect, fired the Chief Constable! Oh, joy unconfined - not, I hasten to add that I have anything against the Chief Constable, and not that I have any particular views concerning the Somerset & Avon Police Force but one knows, doesn't one?, that all the police forces in Britain are over-staffed, over-budgeted, over-paid and over here! And the biggest, most over-paid and over-cossetted of them all are the mostly useless Chief Constables as exemplified by the crass pronouncements of ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers.
Actually, she did not fire him exactly, instead she asked him to re-apply for his job, at which point he prompty resigned. According to The Mail:
Mrs Mountstevens, a former magistrate and married mother of three children, stood on a platform of cutting anti-social behaviour, burglary and violence. [My emphasis]
She also promised to keep party politics out of policing and act ‘without interference of national politics’.
Lovin' her already!
