Don't forget the PCC election!

Just over a week before the scandal of the £75 million police commissioner elections in which a tiny turnout of between 10 and 20% will see unheard-of Tories returned, claiming a mandate to cut and cut everything except their own wages, it is worth considering what the Tories really think about the police.

A week or so ago David sent me an article from the Birmingham Post.  You can read the article in full by clicking this hyperlink, and I recommend you do.  However, the crux of the matter is, the Tories are making West Midlands Police chip in £0.5m towards the cost of policing this year's Tory conference in the city.  To add insult to injury the same funding change means the force owe themselves £249,942 for the pleasure of protecting last year's LibDem conference from cheated voters.  All this of course, at a time when hundreds of  officers in the second city are facing the chop.

The government's ploy of downplaying the PCC elections is a disgrace - and we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting them get away with it.

So buck the trend on Thursday November 15.  Defy the pundits and vote in the PCC election.  Vote Labour.  Vote for Sarah Russell!

Economic Madhouse

Several weeks ago David Fish sent me a pdf about the closure of Advantage West Midlands which, as David rightly says, will have an impact here given we are all less than ten miles from the West Mids.

It has taken me all this time to figure out how to make the pdf available on the blog.  Hopefully I have figured this out.  Click here to check.

In case it doesn't work, I also found this article in the Birmingham Post by Ian Austin, MP for Dudley North and Minister for the West Mids in the last Labour government.  He claims considerable success and I'm sure he is right.  Can we say the same for the East Mids equivalent?  Why not?