I went
to the local hustings in my constituency on the 28th November and I
thought that, while my concentration holds, I’d write a piece about the event
along with my opinion of some of the issues I had with the organising of the
event.
I will
start off with my main problem with the organisation of the event – the issue of
the completely un-inclusive rules governing the questions.
If you
managed to find the hustings mentioned anywhere (as it wasn’t particularly well
advertised) readers were given an e-mail address to which they could send
questions. This, however, was the most
inclusive part of the event and it goes downhill from here. The questions were collated and chosen using
the following rules (cut and pasted from the e-mail as sent including errors):
We have had a large of number questions sent in which is really encouraging.Some are duplicates or very similar.Some people have sent in multiple questions.What we have decided is as follows:To work on date order.If there are a group of question similar, we will take the first in date order but encourage people with a similar question to come along to be available to put a supplementary point if there is time.Secondly, if someone has submitted a number of questions we will use the first question submitted unless the first question falls into a group, on that case we may go to a later question.Some questions will go on to the reserve list to be asked if there is time.The format allows for equal amounts of time for submitted questions and questions from the floor.I hope all of the above is clear.We ask you to be at the venue by 7:20 and make your selves known to the organisers. If you are unable to attend, your question will NOT be asked in your absence.We are asking the people who questions have been chosen to put them to the panel in person.
Now there’s
no problem with duplicate questions being rooted out or similar themes being
whittled down to a single question but the idea that the ‘fastest to the draw’
getting to be the question asked about a subject seems a little arbitrary to
me. Surely the better way to do things
would be to choose the best question out of however many the organisers got on
the subject. For example, I sent in a
question about the climate crisis which was well-worded but wasn’t as good as
the one that got chosen. Imagine how the
hustings would have suffered if I had beaten the other person to the draw.
The
second problem with the selection criteria was that if a person submitted a
number of questions, only the first would be accepted (unless it happened to be
the same or similar to one already asked) when the organisers would choose the
next question that person submitted until they got one on a subject that wasn’t
already covered. This selection
criterion seems to be a little short-sighted on the part of the organisers
because, although it’s only right and proper that as many people get to ask a
question, it had the effect of leaving some subjects uncovered. For example, it is true that a NHS-related
question was chosen but it concerned the closure of Orsett Hospital whilst I
submitted a question on the more serious issue of whether or not the NHS was on
the table in trade talks with the United States. Now, while events in the world of politics
moved faster on this subject with Jeremy Corbyn holding a press conference
revealing that he had an un-redacted copy of the official government papers of
the six meetings with US representatives which showed that, indeed, the NHS was
on the table in initial trade talks and that some of the plans were in a very
advanced stage of preparation, the question was left unraised at the
hustings. I, in fact, submitted a second
question on the NHS being on the table as soon as I saw the Labour press conference
referencing the document and that wasn’t chosen either.
This
first question only policy also meant that a number of the subjects I and any
other person who submitted multiple questions on were completely ignored and
important issues left unraised. I don’t
care that I didn’t get to have more of my questions chosen, I do care that many
subjects were left uncovered because of the selection criteria.
The
spectre of un-inclusiveness rears its ugly head with the decision by the
organisers that questions would not be asked if the person who submitted the
question wasn’t at the hustings. This is
incredibly excluding for people who are housebound for any number of reasons,
shift workers, parents who can’t get a babysitter or people who aren’t
comfortable going out after dark. It
seems that the organisers either didn’t consider those people and their
circumstances or didn’t consider their questions to be as important as someone
who could attend. Either way it doesn’t
sit well with me or with the idea that people should be encouraged to engage in
the political process. Is it any wonder
that some people don’t bother?
The
final problem with the rules around the questions is that the people who
submitted the questions had to ask them at the hustings. This rule threatened to stop people who were
not confident enough to speak in front of an audience or having a specific
disability that may make communication difficult from having their questions
answered. One question was supposed to
be asked but, for some reason, the organisers were going to allow someone else
to ask it on that person’s behalf which was breaking their own rule, however,
the other person didn’t come forward to ask the question.
It was
the fact that such excluding rules were set in collaboration with someone I
used to be on the Board of Governors of the local adult college with that hurts
the most because, as inclusivity is such a big thing in education, he really
ought to have known better.
The
rules around the asking of the questions this time around were a break from the
conventions set at the last hustings in 2017 when submitted questions were read
out by the moderator which was a much more inclusive way of doing things. Questions were still taken from the audience
but people who submitted questions beforehand didn’t necessarily have to be in
the audience to have their question answered.
You can find the video of the 2017 Thurrock hustings at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZsppLJ2zyI if you don’t believe
me (the vicar of the church where it was being held certainly didn’t).
The
kick off was due at 7:30pm and, because the advertorial mentioned that they
were expecting a lot of people to attend, I thought I’d get there early. Refreshments were due to be offered at 7pm so
I got to the church at around 6:30pm to grab a good seat and one for my
ex-wife.
I had a
brief exchange with my former colleague from the adult college before grabbing
my seat and then I asked the vicar about whether there was going to be a
section of the evening in which Jackie Doyle-Price, the Conservative candidate defending
her seat, would be able to be held to account for her past record as Thurrock’s
Member of Parliament for the last nine years.
He told me there wouldn’t be to which I said that that was hardly
fair. He tried to argue that John Kent,
the Labour candidate, had a past record as the former leader of the local
council to which I argued that, although it was still politics, it was local
politics and didn’t have the same weight of responsibility as being an MP does
or the same sphere of influence. I got a
little heated but still well under control when I tried to discuss the
exclusive nature of the question rules and he said that he disagreed with my
recollection at which point he made a veiled threat to call the police to kick
me out if I caused a scene. I had no
intention of causing a scene and told him so but for a man of God (and, I
suppose, a committed Christian but you never can tell) he was extremely rude
and judgemental, jumping to incorrect assumptions because of a heated discussion.
While I
was waiting for the start of the hustings, I noticed someone I thought I
recognised but couldn’t place at the time.
It wasn’t until sometime during the interrogation of the candidates that
I realised it was Peter Perrin.
It was
such a shame to see Perrin, a thorn in the side of the local council and
regular contributor to local news website Your
Thurrock, at the hustings dressed like a pimp with his red and white shoes
(which I suppose are de rigueur for a man who makes Methuselah look like a
spring chicken) and doubly heart-breaking that his friend from Your Thurrock, Michael Casey, wasn’t
there for him to make eyes at in that special way that he does much like a
little puppy’s look at its master. I’ve
never been able to shake the feeling that there’s something a bit odd with
their friendship, not the difference in ages but the almost constant appearances
of the duo together and the fact that Casey bends over backwards to protect
Perrin from any kind of criticism (something that Casey never did for me when I
was a contributor to his site and I was always being attacked much more
viciously than Perrin ever has been).
The
hustings kicked off at 7:30pm or thereabouts with opening statements from the
candidates. I was surprised to see five
candidates as I was only expecting four at the most but Thurrock’s cup
overflowed with candidates from the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats,
The Green Party and an independent. I
only knew about the independent candidate earlier in the day when I got his
campaign leaflet through my letterbox so he must have been a late addition to
the roster.
My
heart bled for the Green Party candidate, Ben Harvey, when he didn’t receive
any applause and the Lib Dem and independent candidates didn’t fare any better. I
can’t for the life of me remember the latter two candidates’ names
because, although I knew the Lib Dems would probably put a candidate up, he
seemed to be a late addition too and I wasn’t paying much attention to the
names being given.
Labour’s
John Kent and Conservative Jackie Doyle-Price both received some applause but
the whole response from the much smaller audience than they were expecting (and
much smaller than 2017’s audience) was rather lacklustre to be quite honest.
The
first question was on the climate crisis and it was quite refreshing to hear a
level of consensus from the candidates about how important an issue it was and
the urgent need for action. I could
actually believe that most of the candidates did mean what they were saying but
it was Jackie Doyle-Price whose words rang hollow because, as she was an MP for
the last nine years, I know her voting record on a lot of subjects and her
record on the environment is appalling.
She’s voted 16 times against measures to prevent climate change, voted twice
for selling England’s state owned forests and voted 4 times against financial
incentives for low carbon emission electricity generation methods (statistics
from TheyWorkForYou.com). However, I’m
sure she’d be an asset to the Green agenda with the amount of manure she was
spreading.
My
concentration started to slip so I can only really remember details of my own
question, Jackie Doyle-Price’s response to a question about Orsett Hospital and
a question about how disabled people are treated by the benefits system so I
apologise but them’s the breaks.
My
question was “Mental health services in Thurrock and the rest of the country
are still underfunded despite constant assurances that mental health would be
given parity with physical health. What
are you planning to do to improve the situation in Thurrock particularly?” to
which I added the caveat that when giving their answer each candidate should
give any relevant job titles or experience in mental health they may have (or
had in the past).
It was
nice to hear that the candidates all thought that mental health was an
important issue although, as they all seemed to say that about everything, it
was less convincing than their response to the climate crisis question. Most of the candidates were quite up front
with their lack of knowledge or prior experience in mental health matters and
the independent candidate scored a few points with me when he said that he’d be
willing to engage with experts to get the knowledge, something I wouldn’t have
expected a novice politician to say so he seemed a bit more savvy than his
faltering delivery indicated. Again,
however, Jackie Doyle-Price was caught in a blatant lie, although to give her
credit, she did mention that she was the Minister for Mental Health for a
while, something I thought she’d try not to mention given her underwhelming
performance in the role. She stated that
mental health funding had gone up but, being a mental health service user
myself, I know that local mental health services have been subject to massive
cuts. In my response, I corrected her by
noting that the local psychotherapy team was cut by 50%, leading to long
waiting times for psychotherapy and group therapy that is supposed to be
offered in 18-24 month lengths was downgraded to a mere 6 month long
offer. Hardly a glowing tribute to a
mental health service in a constituency represented by the Minister for Mental
Health, something that she would have been aware of if she had bothered to
listen to those of us who were trying to bring it to her attention or if she
was doing her job as the local MP and responsible Minister.
I also
picked up on a point made by John Kent who said that MPs should listen to the
mental health service users by telling him that I was part of a three-year-long
project during my psychologically better days in which service users went
around Essex, Thurrock and Southend asking what service users wanted out of the
mental health service but that our findings were ignored. I was cut off by the moderator before I could
say that the findings would have helped reduce expenditure on services that
weren’t helpful and channelled the money saved into services and projects that
would have had much better outcomes.
Just before I got cut off, my ex-wife put her hand on my leg because she
thought I was getting upset and she wanted to calm me down; I wasn’t but it was
nice that she cared enough to make the gesture.
I
didn’t know what to expect from the other candidates but I knew Jackie
Doyle-Price and her attitude to mental health issues from our correspondence in
the days before she started ignoring me.
She was dismissive of my concerns and downright insulting to me
personally so I didn’t hold out much hope from her.
The
next question was about Orsett Hospital although I can’t remember the exact
details of the question. The only reason
I remember anything to do with at all was because Jackie Doyle-Price name
checked me in her answer and there was no reason to do so because Orsett
Hospital is concerned with physical health, not mental health. Although I wasn’t the questioner, I was given
the chance to add a response (which was lucky for the moderator because I would
have kicked up a stink if I hadn’t been given the chance to respond). “Please don’t name check me because the
question was about Orsett Hospital that deals with physical health, not mental
health,” I said, nice and respectfully.
She tried to say something but I couldn’t hear what she said and by that
point I didn’t care. I wasn’t planning
to vote for her anyway but she wasn’t even trying to get my vote.
The
final question I can remember anything about was from my ex-wife (although, to
be totally honest, it was a question I worded on her behalf for her to ask) – “Disabled
people have been subjected to vile interrogations to justify their paltry
benefit income. They are treated worse
than criminals and considered guilty of fraud.
What are you planning to do to rectify this appalling state of affairs?”
There
was a good deal of consensus amongst the candidates that the benefits system
has treated disabled claimants terribly but all of them seemed to concentrate
on Universal Credit as the part that needed changing and this is understandable
as UC gets a lot of press and new claimants are put onto that new benefit
rather than the old disability benefits, however, in Thurrock there are still
many disabled people on those old disability benefits so concentrating on UC
was a bit of a mistake for all of the candidates.
My
ex-wife was given the chance to respond to the answers she got but I hadn’t had
time to coach her with the response I would have given and I wasn’t chosen to
add any response either. However, a lady
in the back of the audience made the point I would have made anyway, slapping
Jackie Doyle-Price down with the fact that Employment and Support Allowance and
Personal Independence Payments were the more generally claimed benefits at the
moment and that she had voted to reduce benefits by £30. I felt a warm glow as Doyle-Price was made to
look a fool for the third time. The only
thing that would have made it better would have been if I could have brought up
the fact that she refused to go to a mock Work Capability Assessment that some
mental health organisations had set up to show MPs how unfit for purpose the
WCA was for people with mental health issues.
Again,
Jackie Doyle-Price’s record on welfare is pretty appalling. She voted 16 times
for reducing housing benefit for
social tenants deemed to have excess bedrooms (which Labour describe as the
"bedroom tax"), voted 5 times against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices, voted 12 times
against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work due
to illness or disability, voted 4 times
for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount
spent on such support, voted 46 times for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits and voted 8 times against
spending public money to create guaranteed
jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed (statistics
from TheyWorkForYou.com).
There
were some questions from the audience that hadn’t been pre-selected and were
therefore completely unknown to the candidates beforehand and then they each
got a chance to make a closing statement.
As the
audience filed out of the church, I was standing with my poster reading “Our
NHS is Not for Sale” that got some thumbs up and some nice comments from some
of the audience members.
I had a
nice chat with my local councillor who was in attendance with whom I discussed
the NHS and disability assessments and a chat with the Green Party candidate
and his female companion about the shocking pollution in Thurrock, the destruction
of ancient woodlands for the HS2 project and the need for better public
transport. Mr Harvey had mentioned
during the question session that the Green Party was proposing legalising drugs
so they could be taxed and controlled, taking it out of the hands of criminals
so I suggested that, perhaps, legalising prostitutes might also be a good idea
because it could be taxed like legalising drugs and be safer for the
prostitutes as well. Apparently, it’s
already in the Green Party manifesto so it’s nice to see some really sensible
policies are being proposed to take drugs and prostitution out of the hands of
criminals although I’m sure it will upset a lot of Tory MPs if it ever
happened.
As
Peter Perrin tried to sneak past and out the door I called after him that I was
still waiting for the apology he owes me for attacking me in one of his
pointless submissions to Your Thurrock. He stuck his aged head through the doorway
saying he didn’t owe me anything and he didn’t apologise to rude people which
was wrong on two levels – he attacked me in his column so he owes me an apology
and attacking me in his rant was incredibly rude as was his attitude to me when
he spoke to me (an irony that is probably lost on the poor old man) so his
holier than thou attitude is a bit rich.
It’s
actually a real shame because I once had some respect for Perrin as we both
advocate for better mental health services but the fact that he regularly get
his nonsense published on Your Thurrock
and he appears at virtually every council meeting to ask a question has given
him an inflated ego that only Boris Johnson or Donald Trump could match and
with as little reason. He plays on his
poor little old man façade to get sympathy, hiding his contemptuous true self
until he momentarily lets the mask slip and the bitter twisted insignificant
old man struggling for relevance is revealed.
I truly pity him.
The
final excitement of the evening was when Jackie Doyle-Price passed me on her
way out and I asked her if she’d like to take my poster home in case she needed
reminding that the NHS isn’t for sale.
She said thank you for advertising Tory policy and I corrected her
because it is a matter of public record that US trade talks have included full
access to the NHS. I didn’t get personal
when I responded to her but she got very snippy (probably because I’d made her
look a fool and a liar during the question session). Her ‘husband’, Mark Coxshall (henceforth
known as Gollum), also thanked me for promoting Tory policy and upped the
snippy stakes and a young Tory lout did the same ramping up the hatred a
further notch all witnessed by the young lady from the Green Party who thought
how the Tory trio treated me was appalling.
I
didn’t mind the pissy attitude of Doyle-Price, Gollum and the lout because I’d
scored more points against her than she could have got against me and because
the fact that she really believes that her party isn’t prepared to dismantle
the NHS and sell it to US companies shows that she really is more stupid than
she looks when there’s a 451-page document proving her wrong. She believes every word she’s told by her superiors in the Parliamentary Party
which is why she’s only rebelled 17 times out of 1928 votes she’s attended
because she puts party allegiance above everything even on matters of
conscience, not that she has a conscience, in my honest opinion. I have described her as a mindless Tory drone
in the past and last night only reinforced that opinion of her. She’s getting better at lying but not much
when her lies are uncovered so easily and publically as they were last
night. It’s actually hard not to feel
pity for her. She’s an insignificant cog
in the Tory machine who rose to a junior ministerial position because she was
loyal to her bosses only to be thrown out with the rubbish back onto the back
benches because she just isn’t as extreme as the new management want her to be
and because of her loyalty to her previous leaders. Poor old Jackie – a pointless drone,
‘married’ to a man who looks like he ran through a forest of ugly trees,
smacking into every one of them twice so his exterior is as hideous as his soul,
and hanging around with brainless Tory louts.
You may
say that I’m being very rude towards some of the people mentioned in this blog
entry but I’m not really. I just speak
as I find and tell people what they might not want to hear and Jackie
Doyle-Price must be able to appreciate that about me because that’s what she
says she does.
Addendum
Here’s
the full list of questions that I submitted but didn’t get chosen for your
further entertainment:
The language being used by senior politicians
like Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage has led to an increase in hate crime. Should politicians be held to account for
their hate-filled rhetoric and, if so, if your party wins the election, will we
see some prosecutions for incitement?
At the 2017 hustings the Naylor Report on the
NHS was covered in the questions asked.
Does your party agree with the Naylor Report and are you going to
implement the recommendations?
The Grenfell tragedy still casts a shadow
over the UK but the lessons learned still don’t seem to be being acted on. What are you going to do to make sure that
sprinkler systems are going to be fitted in all tower blocks?
The amount of lies and deception being
bandied about on social media by political parties that is left unchallenged by
social media platforms during this election campaign is a disgrace. What will you do to toughen up the laws
regarding political advertising on social media?
If the climate crisis isn’t addressed soon,
although the planet itself will survive, life will become extremely and
increasingly tough for the coming generations and we will see the number of
animal extinctions explode. What are you
planning to do to avert this dystopian future?
David Rowland, Director of the Centre for
Health and the Public Interest, states that privatisation of the NHS is higher
than advertised because some of the money from Clinical Commissioning Groups
and NHS Trusts is going to local authorities and the voluntary sector which
isn’t counted as private expenditure even when those organisations are merely
funnelling the money to private companies.
What will you do to stop this and further privatisation of the NHS?
Is the NHS on the table in trade talks with
America?
The Conservatives have stated in their
manifesto that they will be building 40 new hospitals. Despite this being proven to be a lie (the
plans are for 6 refurbishments of current hospitals), the plans for the 40 hospitals
are all in Conservative marginal seats.
Does that mean that Thurrock is going to get a new hospital to replace
Orsett Hospital that is being closed?
Thurrock Council is pushing ahead with plans
for their new council office building at the cost of £10 million and against
the wishes of the residents of Thurrock.
Will you stop the building going ahead and insist the money is spent on
Children’s Services or social care both of which could do with the extra
injection of funds?
Since 2010 there has been a rise in mental
ill-health, suicides and early deaths amongst the benefit claimant community
that has been directly attributed to the so-called welfare reforms but that
attribution was never highlighted despite the last Conservative administration
having created a role to deal with suicide prevention. Giving any relevant current or past titles
you had, if your party becomes the next government, what will you do about the
atrocious rise in welfare related mental ill-health, suicides and early deaths? And would your party bring charges against
those who pushed on with the welfare policies regardless of the death toll?
Given the recent revelations regarding the
un-redacted US trade talks papers, is your party in favour of lowering our food
standards, allowing US companies access to our NHS and radically reducing the
rights and protections for both workers and consumers in order to get a
post-Brexit trade deal with Donald Trump which will only actually benefit the
US due to Trump's "America First" policy stance?
Leaks from the official document into Russian
interference in the 2016 EU Referendum state that there was indeed evidence of
Russian interference in the poll. Given this, the illegal activity by the Leave
campaign and the fact that, despite David Cameron's assertion that the result
would be legally binding, such referendums are, in fact, not legally binding,
only advisory - should there be a second referendum based on the confirmation
of any Brexit deal on the table with the option to Remain which could have
legal enforcement of the result written into the Act of Parliament?
