The Blackpool Gazette and Blackpool Lead invited the candidates standing for the Blackpool North constituency at next month's general election to a hustings in which they fielded questions from voters.
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.
Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.
In order of appearance on stage:
PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party)
JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party)
GITA GORDON (Independent)
BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats)
TINA ROTHERY (Green Party)
DAN BARKER (Reform UK)
CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.
Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.
In order of appearance on stage:
PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party)
JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party)
GITA GORDON (Independent)
BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats)
TINA ROTHERY (Green Party)
DAN BARKER (Reform UK)
CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])
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NewsTranscript
00:00Well, it's just a bit of a comment and then a question. I found that the, I don't even
00:07know how to describe the word, like some of the comments here about immigration. So, I'm
00:12a foreigner, I come here to this country to do science, to do some good and to do research,
00:19to help people. I pay, I pay my taxes, actually I pay twice, because to enter this country
00:27I need to pay like NHS fees, plus my taxes that I'm discounting from my salary every
00:33month. So, I found a bit, some of the comments a bit, yeah, shocking. So, I just want to
00:39understand from each candidate, what would be like the policy or the ideas to kind of
00:45deal with immigration, to make sure that people that are here for a reason, they have the
00:51right, they are treated fairly.
00:58This is going to sound slightly controversial, but please allow me to finish the sentence.
01:02We should stop the boats. We should absolutely stop them by providing the correct routes
01:08to our country. It's simply reason that we, the simple reason we have this huge backlog
01:13and that it looks so disastrous, is that we stopped all the legal, most of the legal routes
01:18to get here. And then we took part in wars that made people's lives so miserable and
01:23difficult that they had to escape those places to come here. And now we're going to have
01:27a climate crisis where people are experiencing greater floods and greater droughts and that
01:32will impact food production and the ability to live in even other countries. So, in order
01:37to stop the influx of immigration, allow it to happen correctly, so that we end up with
01:44our doctors and our nurses and our care workers and this rich, vibrant society that benefits
01:48all of us.
01:55You can't believe me again, but if your country is at war, how Britain was with Germany, my
02:01parents didn't run off as refugees somewhere. They stayed and fought for the country, as
02:08did my grandparents in World War I.
02:14You think everyone should just die then?
02:17Well, that's what war is about.
02:20Even though the public is not asking that question. And we went to an illegal war in
02:24Iraq.
02:25I'm trying to stay loony about making the point. My parents didn't run off, my grandparents
02:30didn't run off, but it seems that everybody who's got a war or some kind of stress in
02:35their country, oh, we've got to go somewhere else. And they come here and they bring their
02:40problems with us. Now, those people are going to fight for us if we end up in a war.
02:44Supposed to be funny, now it's just a bit of facelessness.
02:52I don't know what your name is who asked the question, but I would just like to apologise
02:57to everybody here.
03:01How can you speak for everybody here?
03:06Can I finish please? Can I finish?
03:08Speak for me.
03:09Politics is about the greater good.
03:11It is.
03:12And all I've heard from most people, not everybody, is a selfishness, a lack of humanity,
03:20a lack of dignity. And at the end of the day, immigration happens for many, many different
03:27reasons. And we have to treat it with dignity and understand it before we make very flip
03:34comments. And I understand that you're the loony party, but as you said, it has to be
03:41said that we're all human beings in this room. And I can't see Christ here, which concerns
03:48me. And I don't want to vote for anybody who cannot see the greater good and what they're
03:54doing. And some people there, I do not see that. Anna McColl, I'm sure you'll vote for
03:59her.
04:00Yeah, well said.
04:04Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to have my 14th great grandchild born. Now that means
04:13that she is likely to be living in 80 plus years from now. But what world would she be
04:21living in? We are destroying the world. We do have people who are economic migrants,
04:28but we're going to get more in the coming years because we are allowing their world
04:35to be destroyed by our greed. We have got to stop the climate change. Their world, their
04:43food is being destroyed, their land is being destroyed, their water is drying up. They're
04:49going to move to where they can see that there is water, food and riches. And that's here.