The only good to have come from Wiltshire having a Police Crime Commissioner was proof The Conservatives used their power to reward their elite bum chums and family with overpaid, high power and often completely unnecessary penpushing jobs….
A Devizes Conservative town councillor once told me if I “get the chance to interview Philip (Wilkinson) you should take it. He is a good man and has huge respect for Mike (Rees) and sympathy that he has had to refinance due to the previous election.”
I never had the chance, neither did I want the chance or chase it up, worrying it wouldn’t end well. I did once chat online with the predecessor candidate, Jonathan Seed, and that was enough talking to selfish entitled Tories for one lifetime.
Seedy revealed, “nobody has wanted to talk about hunting other than trolls online.” This opened a closet of unfortunate skeletons for him, which began with the speculation as a convicted illegal huntsmaster he only wanted the position to encourage police to turn a blind eye to hunting, and ended with the national press unearthing lots of other unpleasant facts about his past, such as his drink driving offences.
The fact that despite the controversy he still won the election was proof at the time that if you put a blue rosette on Satan’s pet pig they’d have won. His post-election disqualification caused the Wiltshire taxpayers four million pounds for a re-election, yet still didn’t upset the blind Tory voters; second time unlucky, his Conservative assessor Phillip Wilkinson won too. This was my reasoning, alongside the cascade of national scandals like Partygate, for not wishing to platform another Conservative. I believe and stand by my thought that it’s justifiable on those terms.
The fact others drew Phillip into question on his thoughts around hunting, and despite not admittedly hunting himself, he supported hunting, attended hunt balls, and set about unfairly lambasting anti-hunt organisations caused not only the brushing under the carpet of allegations police officers were turning a blind eye to hunter’s violent attacks on protesters at the Boxing Day hunt in Lacock, and furthermore, other officers proved to be active members of hunt organisations, but also reasoning for my suspicions he was not the “good man” the councillor suggested he was. Entitled, yes, good, I’m afraid not.
“Philip should have been the candidate last time and wasn’t, it’s a mistake but it can’t be changed. We have to move on and make sure people get a fair choice,” reckoned the Councillor who banned anyone merely uttering the name Mike Rees, the independent candidate for the PCC, on the Facebook group he admins. Though, Mike suffered much further from the propaganda machine, excluding him from volunteering to administer lateral flow Covid tests because it was believed to be political point-scoring, when Mike runs a boxing club to engage youths, a charity for children with cancer, and while Seedy was throwing out campaign leaflets funded by the Conservative Party, Mike was delivering food packages for homeless charity Devizes OpenDoors.
Hum, we do not “have” to move on at all in my opinion. The Councillor might’ve wished to, so these suspicious affairs could be archived into a filing cabinet in a dark backroom, bulging with other inconsistencies and matters of outrageous behaviour from the circus of thieves he backs. Rather we should rather dwell on the notion that it cost us four million quid, only for the end result being not so far from the original outcome, and now it’s to be scrapped anyway. What a terrible misuse of public spending.
An ex-military man, Phillip Wilkinson’s entire aptitude and ethos was unsuitably hostile for a civil role which surely requires creating a bond between police and the public, and initialising trust in the force with the public. His reactionary replies to criticism on his Facebook page led him to lie about other candidates, silence the critics, claim absurd notions as facts, such as the time he stated unemployment was a choice, and at one point he even boasted about shooting people; the latter, while in the official line of duty, still isn’t a good look for the civil service.
His angle on the PCC role was to marginalise us, attack groups he took a personal dislike to, and militarise the force; noted as failures by the communities he was supposed to have served. Mike’s vision for the role was hands-on, telling me, “If you’ve got a demoralised police force, it doesn’t matter what policies and procedures people are coming up with, nothing’s going to work. You’ve got to sort your workforce out first, and get them to follow you, be inspired by you.”
Liberal Democrat candidate Liz Webster said Mike was “going for the wrong job!” And if Phillip’s interpretation of the role matched the job description, it was a political position rather than being active in the police, she was perhaps right. Philip served to be an overpaid government puppet, rock up to formal occasions, state the obvious, ramble on about how something had to be done about an issue, and retired to the kind of salary officers like PC Nicola Crabbe, who disarmed a knife-wielding attacker and dived into the canal to rescue a person in distress, could only imagine. A medal of bravery doesn’t put caviar on the table, Wilko!
Talking many times to Mike, I couldn’t imagine sympathy was what he wanted or needed. In fact he was adamant the PCC role was not needed and their salary could be better spent elsewhere in the force. Something the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has realised, and motioned to scrap the position, freeing up an extra £20m to fund front-line policing. If we had a government which knew the difference between a protester and a terrorist, I might have faith the money would be distributed to the appropriate channels. Finger’s crossed.
But Phillip went bleating to Tory-biased BBC Wiltshire, crying, “It’s going to mean a less effective, less efficient and more politicised police force.” If his paradoxical belief taking away a political role in the police force would somehow politicise it isn’t proof he was clutching at straws, there’s a taste of irony in his consistent splatters about how much he required a higher budget to police Wiltshire, when Rees contradicted this with the notion it’s not about what’s budgeted but how it is spent. And unnecessarily spending a whooping chunk of it for a bloke to wander around the county like royalty, idly vowing to solve this problem or that, surely would have the opposite effect?!
Much ado about nothing. So, cheerio Wilko.
It’s no great revelation that his bygone strategies failed in the past, ergo, held no clout nowadays either. Seeking to punish individual drug dealers, for example, only leaves a gap in their turf another will step into, and isn’t really solving the bigger issue of getting drugs off our streets. We could debate if more radical moves need taking, but he was too stuck in the mud to ever take heed. Wilko was out of touch, whereas officers are on our streets witnessing and dealing with crime, and their opinions should count.
His attacks on youths tarnished them with the same brush, when that simply isn’t true, is counterproductive, and matches the troubles we were victimised for when we were younger. Then, hypocritically, he grabbed a photo opportunity last week at the newly opened Devizes Area Youth Lounge, where he immediately accentuated youth crime, suggesting anti-social behaviour was done only by youths and this would prevent them “hanging around the streets and getting into trouble.” Far from the actual notion the centre was created to give all youths a space to socialise for the sake of their wellbeing and mental health.
With polarised views from people like him at the top of the hierarchy, at a time of financial instability and hyperinflation, conveniently caused by the party he backs, rebellious attitudes and crime will surely only worsen, by people of any age.
Youth programs will attract only those who wish to pursue them, and they tend not to be those troublemakers he cited. You cannot stop them, but you can reduce the peer-pressure and turn their petty crimes away from being a spectator sport, by providing safe spaces for those affected by them. Youths are not only the criminals but more often than not the victims of them too, and that was something sadly overlooked in Wilkinson’s wonky thought process, and the reason I salute the notion to rid ourselves of these unnecessary and pompous roles of Police Crime Commissioners.
Does that make sense to you?! I wish Wilko well, and say cheerio. I’m certain his pension will not see him walking those dangerous streets paved with wayward youths, and he’ll still be able to enjoy luxurious banquets with his fox-hunting chums.
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