I was not allowed to have an opinion on this or say anything that could be considered influential towards any candidate or voting action.
Now the polls are closed however: what a pointless expensive nonsense this whole thing is. I can totally understand people having no interest in the election or casting their vote, but that is dangerous if the few that do bother have an extreme or crazy view. There is a candidate in my area who's main election pledge was to put up a St Georges Cross in every police station. I kid you not. This is scary stuff if that is what the person in charge thinks would solve the problems in policing.
If I had been able to have an opinion to suggest to people before now it would have been this:
-Vote independent. Policing should be entirely impartial from a political perspective.
-Vote for someone previously in the police force. If you don't know how something really works how can you run or fix it? They are also much more likely to know the real deep problems that run through policing that have been imposed by years of government interference which they could have the power to finally solve.
-Vote for anyone against privatisation of the police in any way. You can not make the service cheaper to provide by building profit into it and police need to be answerable to the public, not a shareholder wanting their cut of a traffic fine. G4S turning up to your house while you being burgled anyone?
I'm just hoping people are sensible enough to have thought of these things rather than just voting for whoever it is they usually do in a general election, this should not be about that. In our area there were two independents, which concerns me they'll split the sensible vote and someone else will get it.
Whether you get a good one or not, this whole thing seems stupid to me. Every four years someone else comes in with all their new ideas and changes everything. Change is expensive to implement and disrupts police just trying to get on with it. We waste enough time constantly 'reforming' round in circles as it is, this will just cause more of it.
Will be interesting to see how the results go though, shouldn't take them long to count them up by the sounds of it!