‘Pale, male, stale’ North Yorkshire County Council must end this gender imbalance – Yorkshire Post Letters

NORTH Yorkshire’s Police and Crime Panel will meet next week and it is inevitable that the comments made by crime commissioner Philip Allott in relation to the murder of Sarah Everard will dominate the meeting.

Why Sarah Everard crime panel must meet in public – The Yorkshire Post says

Mr Allott’s comments clearly indicate an assumption that “women”, are somehow partly to blame when horrifically subjected to abduction, rape and murder. His comments were both repugnant and disturbing.

However, when it comes to women and misogyny, it would be only too easy to single out Philip Allott as the only offender in North Yorkshire when it comes to outdated sexist attitudes towards women.

The chairman of the panel, Councillor Carl Les, is also leader of North Yorkshire County Council where the overwhelming majority of councillors fit the definition of ‘male, stale and grey’.

As a council, it is must be one of the most unrepresentative local authorities in the country and Coun Les has appointed an executive which now only has one female member.

So as Philip Allott rightly faces scrutiny, is Coun Carl Les still the best person to hold Phillip Allott to account?

From: Ron Savege, Crab Lane, Harrogate.

LIKE an academic chasing funding, they are all jumping on the bandwagon. The Bishop of Ripon, the latest co-chairman of the Conservative Party, and even the Prime Minister. I am sure there are others. The cause here appears to be the removal of our crime commissioner.

The political process in a democracy being what it is, Philip Allott was recently one of four candidates volunteering for this position. Such was the strength of his case that he polled over 73,000 votes, the next closest polled nearly 41,000. He was by far the best candidate, clearly he got my vote.

Do I want to revert to the second best? Do I think that our chief constable, our police and our taxpayers should have to work with the second best?

Unfortunately Philip Allott seems, on the face of it, to have stuck his foot in his mouth. In essence it seems to me that what he was pointing out is that there are bad eggs in every basket, even the police. I urge those for whom violence against women and girls is personally very important to stick with Philip. I believe that he is an unusually strong humanitarian and focussed on this issue.

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