My week in Westminster

Simon Stephenson.

There's an interesting article (*) in today's Telegraph about Bill Gates, in which he gives the opinion that capitalism has worked phenomenally, but also that it has shortfalls which we need to offset. I think the same assessment should be made about democracy, and in particular the process of managerial bureaucracy into which it has developed in many western countries. The problem, though, is that the current political class - those who decide how government is processed - has become dominated by people like Jane Kennedy, who appear to be unable to see other than that the solution to all our problems lies with more managerialism, more bureaucracy.

What we need is for the political class to receive an injection of those who are prepared to accept that managers and bureaucrats have shortfalls which we need to offset - that they are not always the solution, and that they will not always produce more good than harm.

*
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/bill-gates/9041726/Bill-Gates-I-wrote-Steve-Jobs-a-letter-as-he-was-dying.-He-kept-it-by-his-bed.html

UK Cop

The dead hand of party political control is why so many of us are dreading this, plus the inevitable novelty candidate (Jordan). Don't get me wrong, Acpo and the Home Office is hardly optimal but we are heading for an American style policing system in a British context... and it won't work. US policing is a twist on the Napoleonic Code model of Federal versus Local policing with elected prosecutors. Ours is so vastly different. The Tory wonks who thought this up aren't as clever as they think they are. Lastly, what I suspect the public *really* would appreciate is elected *CPS* prosecutors, not cookie-cutter Lefties like Keir Starmer (etc).

Clapham Omibus Rider

"The idea of the Labour Party deciding who it will impose on a grateful Liverpool as a police chief, using its loyal bank of voters, seems very old school"

It's funny how it is always Labour voters who are portrayed as an anonymous, stupid, mass isn't it? What about the blue donkey voting denizens of Surrey?
Labour won't impose any candidate on anybody, the voters decide. As Churchill once said "democracy is the worst of all systems, except for all the others".

John Ware

This is a bad idea and it will attract, inevitably, attention-seekers and those who have failed to make it elsewhere. It will politicize policing without bringing any meaningful improvements to police practice.

Wilhelm 1

'' Another set of wars which no one really has discussed yet.''

You mean like Neathergate ? Don't think we haven't forgotten, Frazer.

Verity

Every time Britain copies the United States, they get it wrong. Couldn't they just study a successful template and copy it with eye-watering precision?

I am a fan of Ann Widdecombe, but she is not a police officer. Only real, senior, officers with a track record of running a tight ship are truly eligible to run for this post. It's not a beauty or a popularity contest. This is a deadly serious job that has to be driven by someone who has done many years on the street and in management.

When I first read that Britain was thinking of elected chiefs, my heart sank, because I knew they would go running giggling down the wrong alley.

The only people eligible for election as chief of police are those who have done years on the beat and years in Central.

This isn't going to work. And the left is going to note the failure and sneer, "Seeeeeeee??? We told you it wouldn't work!"

How could the stupid Brits get it so wrong when there is a perfect, successful template in many huge American cities? It is not a job for politicians! It is a job for seasoned police officers who have come up through the ranks and have astute, practical minds and good organisational abilities.

Dear God! But why am I surprised?

Verity

John Ware - you are talking out your arse. You have never lived in a city that has elected police chiefs.

These men's continued tenure in office depends on them delivering, during their elected term, for the electorate. If they're no good, the electorate relieves them of their office without so much as a "thank you". Voted out. Gone.

I say "men" advisedly. This is a job for men who have been seasoned at the sharp end of police service. Of course, there could always be a Maggie Thatcher of elected police chiefs, but I wouldn't like to count on it.

Verity

Wilhelm ... Neathergate. Yes. The destruction of Britain with a giant daily infusion of imported toxins. But don't mention the war!

Fraser is complicit. Since Neathergate, I haven't read a word he has written.

Verity

Jane Kennedy - "But her focus was on helping the police forces through the government's cuts, working with councils, etc."

"helping"!!!!!!!!!! That magic, manipulative lefty word! A police chief runs the police service, you stupid woman. He has to make decisions o the hoof - not sit in committees "sharing" and working for a consensus. What he (I use the word he advisedly) decides, goes.

Austin Barry

Last year’s riots established one unequivocal and alarming fact: that the police have moved from institutional racism to institutional cowardice.

How to address that issue is perhaps more relevant than the appointment of yet another fast-tracked, ambitious, politically astute, Hendon College hand-wringer.

Frothy

'Fraser is complicit. Since Neathergate, I haven't read a word he has written.'

Did you make an exception for this article?

Frank P

Austin Barry

Mind if suggest two minor emendations to your 3.46pm post:

(1) Add 'alleged' prior to 'institutional racism'

(2) Replace 'Hendon' with Bramshill.[The alleged 'institutional racism' of yore was a Scarman construct (I would have said fantasy - but he knew what he was doing). 'Insitutional racism' actually exists now, in a perverse way, in the form of reverse discrimination].

Frank P

Austin Barry (2)

Though Hendon Training School has also been infected with political brainwashing, it is the Bramshill (inter) National College which is the finishing school of political correctness.

Frank P

Austin Barry (3)

When you turn policing into an intellectual concept imbued through Academia you've blown it. Policing is nothing if it not about simply enforcing the law of the land without fear or favour.

Frank P

Austin Barry (4)

It needs men with balls, brawn, the mien of authority and if necessary (it isn't very often if the other three prerequisites obtain) the judicial application of 9 inches of lignum vitae to do that bravely and without political interference.

Frank P

Austin Barry (5)

The principles of Sir Richard Mayne need to be restored, not the installation politically motivated wankers, police manqués and those who failed to get top office by hard work and natural ability.

Frank P

Austin Barry (6)

Of course none of the above is even remotely likely, so rather than the principles of Richard Mayne, the sentiments contained in the unforgettable expostulation of Sir Richard Mottram is inevitable.

Frank P

Fraser Nelson

And the above (very laborious segmented opinion - due to the crap software of this glossy rag) is based on not "My Week in Westminster" but several decades of responsibility for keeping the inhabitants of and visitors to Westminster (not to mention the wider environs of The Smoke) safe and sound. And if some 'elected official' had tried to prevent me or deflect me from enforcing the law as I exercised my lawful authority they would have finished up in the poky.

Austin Barry

Frank P

My apologies, you’re absolutely right, I should’ve prefaced institutional racism with ‘alleged‘ and referred to Bramshill rather than Hendon.

UK Cop

Ladies and Gentlemen: you keep talking about results. The current performance regime for the police is bogus. It is also an orthodoxy that senior ranks are bound too, as much as their political correctness. I urge you to consider the Home Office Counting Rules, the bizarre metric by which a crime is 'cleared up,' Despite Theresa May's assertions to the contrary the police is run on a completely ineffective and misleading performance agenda that has little or no bearing on events on the street. Elected police chiefs will desperately need these statistics to justify their existence and they *will* feed the monster that is HOCR and the 'sanctioned detection' deception that holds back policing.

Verity

Frothy - No. I skimmed down for points (key words) I could address. From experience of having lived in a city with an elected police chief.

Incidentally, when the elected chief is running for re-election, he better have a tough track record in so far as arresting malfeasants and also gathering enough evidence to get them convicted and given custodial sentences. That's what the citizen (or, in Britain's case, citizens plus the flotsam and jetsom of the world that inexplicably has a say in our government) votes for. Criminal-free streets.

Frank P

Verity

(1) Why are you being rude to John Ware, gal? He expressed a two-part opinion, which sadly seems to me to be a shrewd assessment.

Frank P

Verity (2)

If he's the John Ware I know, then he has produced some extremely excellent investigative work in the world of journalism from time to time (one of the few investigative reporters left in the UK) and his interface with the police both here and in the US has been excellent.

Frank P

Verity (3)

You yourself admit that what works in the US (allegedly) won't necessarily jig with our system of central and local government and policing traditions. The small-city parochial level of policing of which you speak is only a minor element of policing in the States, which is overlaid by County, State and multi-faceted Federal levels of law-enforcement. Most of the 'elected' officers are manifestly pliable and under the wing of vested interest, particularly around election time. I can imagine that you get good service in Texas if your cat's up a tree and need a nice payrolman to come wheedle it down and share a cuppa and dispense sympathy or whatever with you after. But try to get him to nick the local businessman who sponsored his election campaign but who also bunged town officials to secure a building contract - and see where you get.

Verity

Frank P - Cracking posts!

UK Cop - Thanks.

Frank P

Verity (4)

Jeez, isn't the fact that Paddick is almost a shoo-in in this scam enough to convince you that it's a shocking idea?

Frank P

And that doesn't convince you, then read the last paragraph of 'UK Cop' at 7.07pm; he's spot on the point. He speaks of the 'now'; I'm judging it from a historical pivot.

Frank P

I see today that they have nicked some low ranking cop and some more hacks for taking the bung in the Newscorp hacking scandal.

I wonder what John Yates is discussing with his cohorts and paymasters in Bahrain over the espresso and mints this evening. Perhaps he'll send condolences and a short message "TBFTGOGGI?"

*ttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/03/phone-hacking-john-yates-bahrain_n_1126867.html

Dimoto

It is only a question of time before Prescott, McShane, Charlie Kennedy, Woodward, Ali Campbell etc. etc. sign up.

Just another gravy train.

Isn't the House of Lords the place for knackered/discredited/corrupt/failed politicians ? Why do we need another shelter ?

Ex-politicians should be explicitly excluded !!

Austin Barry

The trouble, and I stand to be corrected by Frank P. on this, is that whereas in the past a policeman had to make a determination on a binary consideration - is this a wrongdoer or not - he now has to factor in ancillary, but no less, unhappily, important considerations, of race. And he’s on a loser. Stop and search any black youth, statistically more likely to be a street criminal, and you’re open to accusations of racism, an accusation more revolting, we’re told, than genocide and paedophilia.

And so, when largely black people riot in London. the police stand back and watch and wonder, “ What should I do? What should I do?”.

And the rest of us watch, despairingly, and think “Best not to object, this is multicultural diversity, and it’s good for the UK, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

No.

daniel maris

Simon Stephenson -

Clearly capitalism has "delivered the goods" up till now, but the interests of capitalists and nations (for which, read "political communities") don't coincide.

It's pretty clear to me that we have reached the limits of the benefits of globalism. Time to retrench.

You are right I think about democracy as currently practised.

The task now is to decomplicate our societies. Here are some ideas:

1. You could cut out quite a few volumes of education legislation by issuing parents with education vouchers and letting them get on with it.

2. Replace welfare with workfare and you solve a lot of bureaucratic problems to do with benefit fraud.

3. Make sure all young people leaving education are guaranteed paid work and you solve a lot of problems.

I'll stop there, otherwise I could go on all night...but if we start with the principle of decomplicating our society we will achieve a lot.

Verity

Frank P 8:31 ... Hugh Paddick ... I can't know everything, you know. OK. You've convinced me.

"Historical pivot". What a serendipitous phrase! Is it original?

Verity

Austin Barry - "And the rest of us watch, despairingly, and think “Best not to object, this is multicultural diversity, and it’s good for the UK, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

No. We don't try to convince ourselves that slipping the lands our ancestors fought for and developed for us, their descendents, out from under us is good for the UK. No one with long, deep roots in Britain thinks this avalanche of undeveloped people is anything but a betrayal of those who died for us.

If several million French or Norwegians, highly-developed and brave people who are part of the woof and weft of our nation's history, had flooded in after WWII, people would have been disturbed.

Flooding the country with primitive people who have invented or developed nothing was an act of deliberate betrayal and we should be clear about this.

Where is the magnificent Boudicca? She should be commenting on these threads. She seems to confine herself to The Telegraph.

Frank P

Austin Barry (11.51pm)

"No", indeed! You are spot on. Which is why we should all say "No!" to this cranky idea.

But will we have any say in the matter? As with mass immigration, secession of powers and sovereignty to Yurrop and the leaching of vast amounts of tax money to African potentates, thinly disguised as 'foreign aid' to the world's starving children, it will all be done in 'our name' without our fucking permission. We should be able to say "No!" to all of it. But with the governments of Tweedle Dum on the one hand and Tweedle Dee on the other, it matters not either what we think or what we say; they will do it anyway, because their political futures are dependent upon them joining the New World Order of their particular choice, depending on their ideology or investments or both, therefore our national interest is irrelevant. Suck it up son, get used to the taste, because there's more to come. If you can think of a way of reversing it, I'm with you with what's left of my energies and fingertips, 'cos I'm buggered if I can.

Clear Memories

Of course UK Cop and his mates don't like this idea - they're likely to end up back on the streets doing the job they're paid to do - keep the Queens Peace - not sat in the warm thinking of new ways to persecute the law-abiding.

It is, without doubt, time for a major overhaul of the Police Farce. It needs breaking up into effective units. A force to maintain social discipline needs developing with strictly local control and direction, whilst major crime needs to be dealt with on a national scale. Traffic, from parking to speeding, needs hiving off into another division. All to often, traffic officers alienate the generally law-abiding motorist from the Police as a whole. And finally, we need a national force to deal with hate crimes, paying special attention to the followers of Mein Koran, a handbook for racial dis-harmony if ever there was one.

Rightoverleft

As my tiny mind understands it, the purpose of having elected Police Commissioners is to make the police accountable to the public they are supposed to serve and to de-politicise the police. Under no circumstances should politicians of any stripe be allowed anywhere near these positions. Allowing politicians or anybody with political views to run the police and set their priorities will be a disaster.

Frank P

Hugh Paddick? Hah hah hah ha.Nice one!

Actually I think Hugh (is he still extant?) is slightly more butch than Brian - the Paddick I cite - and given Hugh's sense of humour would make a better copper than Brian ever did.:-)
I preferred Polari to the in-yer-face arrogance of today's queers.

That'll give you an indication of what we're up against here now. Hunker down in Mexico, you're safer there than you would be here and there's obviously worse to come. The Ken v Boris battle started here today on TV as each jacked up their Mayoral campaign; a hundred days to go apparently. Grooooooaann! A Spring of wall-to-wall waffle. Abolish the whole white elephant bureacracy and make the two twats and all their hangers-on work for a living, FFS!. The Labour Party invented it to rid their bloodstream of Ken and the Tories maintain it to keep Boris out of theirs. Ridiculous excess.

Verity

Frank P ... I take most of your points!

Verity

Frank P 2 - However ... "The small-city parochial level of policing of which you speak is only a minor element of policing in the States...".

Verity

I lived in a city of 2m. Hardly parochial. In the main, it was safe, partly, I must admit, because citizens could have guns in their homes and use them without fear if an intruder was on their property and now, thanks to George Bush when he was Governor of Texas, people can also get a license to carry concealed.

Verity

All Britain has to do is copy a tried and proven template. Why is that so hard for the British? It works and they want to fix it.

Verity

The "software" would not accept the above four posts as one post. As to The Spectator ... as the Americans say ... "What a way to run a railroad!"

Verity

Right over Left - You are right. No politicians. Only trained and seasoned senior police officers. And then they have to stand against other trained and seasoned officers.

Verity

Right Over Left ... right on! Get the politicias as far away as possible from the police, and that includes the righteous right-wingers who we support in politics. We need men whose career has been dedicated to policing. They must know the mindset of law enforcers, and they must be familiar with the workings of the criminal mind. It's an administrative job, but they must have the background.

Anne Widdecombe is a superb politician and was an exemplary Speaker, but she has no background in apprehending criminals and bringing them to justice. This is a job for experienced police only. There is no way you could transfer the life experience of Frank P, for example, to some politician. Elected chiefs must have had their career in the police.

Downtown

I can't help thinking it is a big mistake to have party political dynamics applied to policing.

Sounds great in theory (more accountable etc), but in practice - like a lot of things - there is the complexity of the real world to consider.

Richard Hibbs

Police Authority areas are too big to be marginals. The same party (or the same coalition) will win again and again and again, depending on which way people in the area tend to vote. SV won't help.

This result is bad for democracy, bad for turnout and bad for the politicisation of the police.

Political parties really shouldn't field candidates - leave the field open to independents, or at least have the decency to run open primaries for candidate selection.

Richard Hibbs
Independent candidate for Police & Crime Commissioner in North Wales
www.regonline.co.uk/e-plan