Monday 5th November 2012

At 5.30pm the 4 Candidates attended hustings for the Police & Crime Commissioners job.

A Couple of hundred members of the public, student and academics gathered in the Social Science Department of Nottingham Trent University

Tony Roberts, Conservative candidate  

Paddy Tipping, Labour's  candidate 

and independents:

Dr Raj Chandran, retired GP and Mayor of Gedling

Malcolm Spencer, a former police officer

They each made an opening presentation before they were chanlenged on their policies by the audience.

Personally, I didn't find any of them attractive [hold the front page !!!].

The attached audio gives you an idea of what i mean.  But, as of thursday 15th November, one of them will be in post, replacing the current arrangement of oversight from the Nottinghamshire Police Authority.

The facilitator of the meeting, the political editor of the Nottingham Post, asked the audience for thier opinion on the likely turnout.  A few hands went up over 80% [amazing eh?] Most put their hands up for varios figures between 20 - 40%.  I and many others though somewhere around the 10-15% mark. Some predicting as few as one in ten people in Notts would vote next Thursday. But Mr Tipping said: "There are about 800,000 voters in Notts and if you get 10 per cent that's 80,000 people – that's a bigger mandate than any other politician in Notts."

God god!! as ever ..... that sound like some pretty weak democracy to me.

One of their main jobs will be administer £42m in cuts in the police budget. .... so, there you have it.

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ALAN LODGE 

Photographer - Media: One Eye on the Road. Nottingham.  UK

Email:                 tash@indymedia.org

Web:                   http://digitaljournalist.eu

Member of the National Union of Journalists [NUJ]

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"It is not enough to curse the darkness.

                                   It is also necessary to light a lamp!!"

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