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Mike Olley's avatar

If I was being brutally honest I have to say I forgot about him him. 😮 I felt the role of PCC has been a mixed bag for all 3 of them, yet senior police officers are undoubtedly brilliant politicians - arguable the best in contemporary society. The very nature of what they do gives that collective survival instincts a well honed edge.

I recall writing about Jamieson when I attended a Solihull MBC meeting, for the Birmingham Mail - he led the Labour group then and stood head and shoulders above every other Cllr in the chamber - sorry 😔

David P's avatar

Mike,

Curious to see you leap from Bob Jones, WMPCC 11/2012-7/2014, to Simon Foster 5/21 till now. What happened to David Jamieson 8/2014-5/2021? I have watched all of them in public meetings. They all had genuine policies, but each could be distracted by the police's senior officer. Mention anything about traffic management and David Jamieson was attentive.

There were rumours that Bob Jones objected to senior officers all being issued with an Ipad, when they all had a laptop, but he agreed to the purchase.

At one public meeting of the WMPCC advisory board hidden in the agenda was an item to equip officers with pepper spray, replacing the CS (tear gas) spray. It was "passed on the nod" regardless of the escalation involved. The B'ham Mail reporter had not even noticed.

In my opinion all the WMPCC were "played" by the senior police officers, so they will not be missed. Imagery was more important than public accountability.

Richard Woodward's avatar

Oh but to have the means to remove this shambolic administration forthwith. The reality is that we have to suffer another 3 years of this sh1tshow with a moronic out of touch cabinet in charge. One wonders what kind of mess will Reform UK inherit? It is probably going to take 20 years to get this country back into a decent shape let alone to try and turn it around in 5 years with the new kids on the block interspersed with members of the very party that contributed to 14 years of chaos. Whatever you think and however difficult the Tory defections are to take it’s the only chance we have otherwise insurrection followed by civil war will surely arrive on these shores.