There are important questions that voters could put to candidates standing for election. These include:
1: Will they promote the use of restorative justice? This is a group of methods enabling offenders to repair the harm they have done to their victims and to the local community;
2: Will they reduce offending among children and young people, and if so, how?
3: What steps will they take to reduce domestic violence?
M’lord, I think you’ll find that the great majority of voters can NOT get answers to such vital questions;
in fact can not fiond avenues through which such questions can be delivered to the candidate.
(2010 Main Election, the BBC received thousands of serious questions, less 30 words each (mandatory), all but three or four of which wereconsignedto the rubbish-bin
and even when asked publicly “Willthe BBC be forwarding all the un-airedf q
Please allow to me to complete my inadvertently cut-short submission above,
and to offer some further grist to it:
(Will the BBC be forwarding all the unaired questions in this Election)
and/or the unanswered questions
upwards to parliamentary level
or laterally to other democratically public media ?”
there were some sniggers from the 100 or so public-audience standing waiting to go in,
and the BBC career-staff on-screen presenter merely laughed a bit like a ‘cough’, did not answer, and turned away saying “nearly time for us to go into the auditorium – we’ll be picking only three or four of you to voice your question”.
———–
Similarly, after Emmanuel church’s Lent-group task,
of “How Can We Make Our Church More Welcoming ?”
I had submitted
“encourage slow and gentle human movements (exemplary guidance sources available)”
but the presiding vicar had sharply and summarily retorted
“I’ve got to shut you up John” (and went on to the next question)
which had caused me to feel ‘excommunicated’ such that I felt it necessary to say
“then in Christ’s name I must leave you” (and I have not been to that church since);
But I did start going to the central low-anglican church of St Andrews, where I reported this situation to the
Minster vicar and when he asked “what do you want me to do ?”
gave him by brief written request along with one of the exemplary guidebooks, and replied “possibly ask your core-membership to form a small exploration-group to tackle this probably vital Christian matter of “Be ye doers of the Word (not just listeners and talkers thereof)”:
but a few weeks later just before an ordination service one Sunday (after that vicar had been promoted Bishop, incidentally) he came to the very back of the church where I habitually sit with my impaired caree, and nicely returned the book to me saying
(“) the committee looked at this and thought it contained some good things;
but it is not Christian, and therefore we can not support it.
However, we think it should be alright for you to do it elsewhere (”).
————-
The resulting citizenship, human-behavioural, and practical-religious burden upon me would become to return to ‘traipsing the roads’ in search of a British or English or local-Plymouth
‘Holistic Health’ Support Association or Group;
which I (and no doubt many others) have been doing anyway, for decades, without yet finding one, nor one person to form an exploratory-group, or at least give such ‘holistic health building’ a fair go ‘individually’ and then meet again to compare notes,
so I feel not many steps away from finding myself put out into the gutter as a ‘persona non grata’
and immediately at the feet of the Police, of course.
————–
What’s this got to do with Electing a Police Commissioner” ?
Well in addition to the above evidence of a non-democracy and an anti-health-building Establishment,
After I had been harassed by a group of four teenagers in 2004 who lied to the police (whom I had called) who believed them before hearing my account
And I had to complain ostensibly to the Independent Police Complaints Commission,
In the event the IPCC re-directed it to the local police themselves
Who failed to deal justly with it;
and for none of which I have any further recourse
(nor sufficient back-up, personal
energies and wherewithals, anyway)
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[ I feel these issues to be much more serious than being just “a laugh” or “a sick joke”.
so what price “a vote”
for a ‘sham’ new Police Commissioner
in such a ‘sham’ “Election”,
my lord ? ]
If restorative justice is of the type which
induces crime for the police to deal with then
we can surely and only be against it?
The Home office minister,in a recent govt, who
relied excessively on the “management of crime” to the detriment of prevention, is an example of the point.