Useful results of the Police and Crime Commissioner elections

Despite my well-publicised misgivings about the usefulness of the post, I did cast a vote in last week’s Police and Crime Commissioner elections.

In fact I cast two, the Government having chosen to interpret our decisive rejection of the Alternative Vote in elections for MPs as not applying to any other elections they might dream up.

I imagine that if the nation ever votes in a referendum against our continued membership of the European Union, that result will be similarly construed in a way that means we remain members of the EU after all.

On the other hand, if a “first past the post” contest had been run last week, we would have been deprived of the joy of seeing Humberside reject John Prescott, which many felt was the only thing that prevented the £100m spent on the poll being a total waste of money.

My own voting did not go smoothly. Turning up at the polling station early in the morning, and receiving the undivided attention of the four council staff on duty, I was told that I could not vote as my name did not appear on the electoral register.

Which was odd, as I knew for a fact that I had renewed my registration online back in August. Subsequent telephone conversations with the local council confirmed that this was indeed the case. But, before I had done so, a canvasser employed to chase up registrations had called at our house and demanded that my wife sign a form and hand it back there and then.

Which she declined to do. Partly because she was busy, partly because no one likes being bullied by officialdom on their own doorstep, but mainly because we were going to look at another house to rent in another part of the county the following day, and it surely made sense to know where we were going to be living on the due date in October before adding our names to an electoral roll.

We quickly decided not to move because the estate agent marketing our possible new home had omitted to mention, among its many attractions, that it was located on a busy main road. But that unsigned form duly made its way back to the council some time later, and it may be useful to others to know that “refused to sign as may be moving” apparently trumps having actually registered online in the meantime.

Having sorted that out, I was at least comforted by the warm personal greeting I received from the staff at the polling station in the evening. Almost as though they had not received any other visitors since I left them ten hours earlier.

And, in truth, the turnout showed that there had been few enough. Though my wife had pitched up during the afternoon, accompanied by a baby and a very excited little boy.

“Where are we going, Mummy?” Charlie had asked as he was buttoned into his coat and strapped into the car.

“Voting.”

“Oh great, I love voting!” he announced enthusiastically, which thoroughly puzzled Mrs Hann right up to the moment when she had put her form in the ballot box and announced that it was time to go back home.

Charlie’s face fell and his bottom lip trembled.

“But Mummy, we haven’t even been out on the water,” he complained.

So a three year-old boy learned the important difference between voting and boating, and a 74 year-old with two Jags failed to land a second job to add to his representation of the Labour party in the House of Lords.

Oh, and 41 people around the country gained roles that almost no one particularly wanted them to have, paying up to £100,000 a year, setting the priorities for cutting crime in their areas.

I would have been happy to give my advice to the Chief Constable on this free of charge, but I imagine that nicking the bad people who murder, maim, steal and vandalise would have been deemed overly simplistic.

Northumbria's new Police and Crime Commissioner and scourge of bogus charity bag collectors Vera Baird - sadly not in the uniform for her new job

And I suppose it is good to know that, in Northumbria at least, bogus charity bag collectors are now quaking in their boots.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Obama gets Osama, but the war goes on

How would the global media have coped if Obama had finally caught up with Osama on Friday rather than Sunday?

I reached page 24 of my broadsheet newspaper on Saturday before I found a single mention of anything other than the royal nuptials. That was a story about the need for larger than expected hospital cuts, released by some strange oversight when all eyes were on Westminster Abbey. Even an ardent monarchist like myself could not help wondering whether a sense of proportion was being lost.

For me, the most remarkable thing was not that dress, or the maid of honour’s striking figure, or even the alleged billions who watched the ceremony on TV. It was the hundreds of thousands who turned out in person to snatch a passing glimpse of this piece of history and to roar their approval of those kisses on the palace balcony, even though they could have seen far more in much greater comfort on their sofas at home.

I am glad to live in a country where huge crowds turn out to rejoice in a royal love match. The hatred that motivated the flag-waving crowds celebrating the death of bin Laden in Washington and New York yesterday was entirely understandable, but still demeans those taking part. Just as the footage of Palestinians whooping in the streets at the fall of the Twin Towers provides one of the most revolting memories of 9/11.

I have friends who are currently climbing Mount Everest. It sounds like hell on earth. Still, at least I had been consoling myself with the thought that bin Laden and his sidekicks must be enduring similar discomforts in a filthy Stone Age hiding place high in the Hindu Kush. Instead it turns out that he had been living comfortably about 800 yards from the Pakistani equivalent of Sandhurst, and presumably receiving regular deliveries from their version of Ocado (as he would surely have raised an eyebrow or two if he had been regularly pushing a trolley around the local answer to Tesco).

Clearly the solution for William and Catherine, in their quest for privacy, is not a remote cottage on Anglesey but a floodlit palace in the centre of London with soldiers marching up and down outside.

No doubt we will find out in due course what contribution Britain made to this belated triumph against al-Qaeda, whether through the intelligence services of GCHQ or the lessons Northumbria Police were able to provide from the search for Raoul Moat. And perhaps the question may also be asked why our forces are in action in Afghanistan when the chief instigator of the terrorism we are supposedly fighting was holed up a completely different country.

If President Obama had acted 24 hours earlier, he could have claimed the scalp of his public enemy number one on the anniversary of the suicide of Adolf Hitler. But that truly was an ending. The demise of bin Laden is just another act in a saga of death and destruction to which no one can see a conclusion.

We can be sure that cruel retribution will follow, and the victims are unlikely to be well-protected heads of state. It could be me. It could be you. We can do nothing but be vigilant. The traditional way of ending terrorist campaigns, like the IRA’s, is to give in to their major demands. But the Islamist movement, fuelled by perverted religion, has no rational goals that the secular and materialist western world can even begin to comprehend, let alone discuss.

The bottom line is this: love is good, hate is bad. That is why we were right to celebrate on Friday, and the Americans wrong to rejoice on Sunday. Not least because, like the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s marriage, the war with terror has only just begun.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

The mad axeman becomes a reality

In the mid-1980s I lived alone in a totally isolated cottage, a mile up a grass track out on the moors north of Alnwick. Having moved from central London, I felt totally secure there. But people kept calling me brave, and asking what I would do if a mad axeman came to call.

The answer to that is short and almost certainly unprintable, but I never saw it as an issue. Because, as I kept pointing out, there simply weren’t any maniacs lurking in the remoter parts of Northumberland, where potential victims were in such short supply.

I now live in a small hamlet some eight miles from Rothbury. It seems positively metropolitan compared with my previous home, but my wife will not stay there alone overnight because she fears that no one would hear her scream if the local murderer came to call.

My reassuring mantra about there being no lunatics on the loose in Northumberland had little effect, even before there was one. Ironically, I had joked that Raoul Moat would be heading our way when the story of his first attacks broke. I little thought that he would.

Perhaps fortunately, work called us away from the North East just over a week ago, so we watched the unfolding saga on TV with the wonderment we all reserve for totally unexpected events taking place in terribly familiar surroundings. I was glad when it ended, not least for the typically selfish reason that Mrs Hann had decreed that I was not allowed to return home until it did, and I feared for the welfare of my house plants.

I should add that she is not quite as paranoid as I may make her sound. She just knows the sort of luck I usually enjoy.

If I had been home alone, I might have slept a little uneasily, though I doubt whether my terror would have reached the heights of the most uncomfortable night I have spent in Northumberland to date.

It was all the fault of this column. I was single in its early days, and a plaintive appeal on Valentine’s Day provoked a sympathetic response from an attractive young lady who, after a couple of what I suppose we must call “dates”, enticed me back to her remote cottage after a night at the theatre in Newcastle.

She plied me with wine over a late supper, and invited me to stay the night. I foolishly accepted. Only at that point did she mention that she already had a boyfriend, an ex-SAS man who now practised his people skills as a sort of admissions tutor for the nightclubs of the toon. She said he made her feel secure. Which was ironic, because he had precisely the opposite effect on me.

“What are the chances,” I asked, when I had finally recovered the power of speech “Of this boyfriend of yours kicking the door down and finding me here in your bed?”

“Absolutely none at all,” she replied, “You can put your mind at rest on that score. He’s got a key!”

Looking back, I have to say that it was a piece of comic timing to rank alongside the best of Eric Morecambe or Tommy Cooper. But as one whose “fight or flight” reflex is set permanently to “flight”, it kept me wide awake all night listening intently for the sound of his key until I felt confident that I could pass a breathalyser test.

It took me a few days to get over that little adventure, just as the residents of Rothbury will no doubt require time to come back down to peaceful normality. But they will get there in the end, no doubt fortified as I was by the wisdom of experience. Let us hope that the same can be said of our police.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.