With Panto season almost upon us, the nation went to bed last night buzzing with excitement as though it was Christmas Eve, overwhelmed at what we might get the next day. Like little Timmy Cratchet, I'm afraid, we woke up to disappointment.
The election for Police commissioners was the Tory concept touted as slashing the ties between government and the police, offering transparency and independence and a stronger mandate than the unelected police authorities that the PCC replaces. What it delivered was a mandate for corruption with less than 20% of the electorate bothering to vote and all the main parties putting forward candidates.
The result was 15 Tory commissioners, 13 Labour and 11 independents.
The system used in the vote meant that some of the candidates who got most 1st choice votes, still did not win having had to get 50% of the vote to win the 1st round. Amongst those who got more votes in the first round but failed to secure the position was Labour veteran Lord Prescott, losing to his Tory counterpart in Humberside.
The vast majority of people did not vote because they knew nothing about the candidates. With hardly any campaigning to speak of and little coverage in the press, it may as well have been a closed ballot carried out in Westminster.
If David Cameron really wanted a fair and honest partisan free election then he should have ensured a level playing field for the candidates.
I was told by one candidate that his campaign cost around £200 while other splashed tens of thousands on the campaign trail. Some independent candidates were forced to pull out of the race unable to compete with the funding demands. The deposit alone was £500.
Yet again, rather than trying to find the best person for the job, we got the ones who could afford the job.
Only half a dozen of those elected were women.
Are we really to believe that a Tory candidate PCC in a Tory constituency under a Tory lead government, wont be influenced by the party?
The much criticised election could if done differently, have given us leaders for our under fire police officers, answerable to the electorate, responsible for running the force as the public demands. What we are likely to get is Party puppets doing as they are instructed by the party whips.
The one positive to come out of the fiasco is the number of independents who have been successful. They at least one would hope will not be swayed or pressured by political party lines, although one wonders how many have stood to further political ambitions. Presumably however, the independents who have succeeded are already wealthy or influential or well connected enough to not necessarily have the interest of the public at heart.
Of course, i am being cynical, and there will be some successful candidates who have not simply bought the position and who do have honourable intentions.
 While I wish them the very best in the role, history does inevitably tell us that even the well intentioned, principled, moral individuals soon  change their point of view and invariably loose their morals when they achieve the power they craved.
I hope that if Labour succeed at the next general election, they scrap the idea and have a proper fit for purpose way of running our police. A system not run by the village of Westminster, a system run by and answerable to us the tax payer that is about to pay £100,000 per annum to some of those elected in yeststerdays police farce.

In July this year I wrote to Labour MP Denis Macshane, responding to his suggestion that we should have 10% working class MP's. I emailed his constituency office asking how it would work and I sent him a link to this blog.
He ignored both.
Yesterday he resigned from his post as Member of Parliament for Rotherham, after being found to have submitted 19 false invoices, which the enquiry said were intended to deceive.
In total Mr MacShane wrongly claimed £7500, which he has since paid back.
Before becoming an MP, Mr Macshane was a journalist, working for the BBC. He was sacked by the BBC after pretending to be a caller on a radio show he worked on.  He went on to be an activist for the Journalists union.
His career in politics saw him represent Rotherham for almost twenty years during which time he was Labours Europe Minister for three years.
When announcing his resignation yesterday he said he was shocked at the findings of the enquiry and realised his political career was finished.
At a time when the public are crying out for honesty and transparency desperate for integrity, this does nothing to help the party or politics.
Denis Macshane is the not the first MP to have his career finished after submitting fraudulent expenses. In 2009 Jim Devine, Labour MP for Livingstone, was jailed for false accounting after claiming expenses dishonestly. Before being elected to parliament Devine was a full time union official.

In 2010 Labour MP David Chaytor was jailed for false accounting.

In 2011 Elliot Morley was jailed for claiming £30,000 in expenses for a mortgage he had already repaid. He entered politics after being head of special needs at a high school in Hull.

So what it is that makes men who so clearly care about the welfare of their fellow man,  become so morally incontinent when they enter politics and have the opportunity to make a difference. They are so determined to stand up for what they believe in that they dedicate most of their lives to fighting injustice, seeking fairness, often at great personal expense in their private lives in their quest to gain the power needed to make that difference, only to abuse that power once they get it.
Lord Acton said in 1887 that Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. Over a century later this is still true.
At a time when almost every great British institution is in disrepute with the possible exception to the legal system, is it not time that we - the voters, demanded more integrity from our leaders and influencers.
( This point also highlights why it is  so vital that our courts retain their authority, independent of Europe).
Latest figures show that crime is falling in this country, yet middle class indecency appears to be rampant.
The media has never been so under fire, after the appalling revelations about the Murdoch empire and the disgusting wide spread practise of phone hacking. More recently, even the BBC are being accused of been less than honest with the public, following the Savile abuse.
The way the press operates is under investigation by the Leveson enquiry, lead by a bunch of parliamentarians. The bitter fight between the middle class journalists and the middle class political elite has left us, the working class public with absolutely no one to trust.

I wonder if now Mr MacShane may have the time to reply to my email and show us how we can get more people from the moral classes into politics.