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Thursday 5 November 2009

STV Debate for the 4 main parties in the Glasgow North East by-election

A blow by blow account of tonight's STV debate from Conservative, Ruth Davidson, Labour, Willie Bain, Liberal Democrats Eileen Baxendale and SNP David Kerr.

Labours Willie Bain is first in the hot seat.

David Kerr starts the debate with a stunt, he throws a £2 coin at Willie Bain saying that's all Labour have spent in Glasgow North East on education.

Then he moves onto Margaret Thatcher and asks Willie Bain, repeatedly if he would have invited her into No 10.

Ruth Davidson from the Tories has a pop about Labour air brushing Gordon Brown out of all the by-election literature, Willie denied it!

Then she moves onto the number of Scots who have become unemployed and then asks him how many job centres have been closed - 53.

Lib Dem Eileen Baxendale questions Willie on immigration and asylum cases that have taken over 5 years and then moves onto children being incarcerated.

Eileen then moves onto the illegal war on Iraq and then questions whether he will keep the Whip if he wins because he disagrees with Labour so often.

Now, David Kerr takes the hot seat;

Willie Bain taunts David on the stories in his leaflets, then moves onto whether he supports the air link being scrapped, yes David does.

David Kerr rebutts and attacks Willie Bain for the personal attacks on him and praises Eileen and Ruth for fighting a clean campaign.

David Kerr goes on the defensive about the number of jobs brought into Glasgow North East by the First Minister

Willie Bain questions David on knife crime, David goes on the defensive. David states it is assumed that if a crime is committed with a knife then they should be prosecuted.

Eileen Baxendale goes on the attack on the cost of the SNPs National Conversation and an Independence Referendum, £7 million and £9 million respectively. David thinks both are a good use of public money.

Eileen makes a great point about SNP u-turns - David trots out the usual SNP nonsense rehearsed lines.

Ruth questions David Kerrs political hero, John Mason, (another SNP yes man). Then asks if he would accept Independence even if it made Scots poorer, not sure he really answered.

Ruth then moves onto the Lockerbie bomber and David Kerr's quote, which then reversed only days later. David claims he was wrong and changed his mind.

Next in the hot seat is Ruth Davidson from the Conservatives;

Eileen Baxendale questions Ruth on Climate Change, and the Tory alignment in Europe (good question), a spluttered non answer by Ruth.

Eileen then attacks the Tories on pensions, and questions whether they would increase pensions above the poverty line - no answer.

Willie Bain goes on the attack on the Tory's inheritance tax policy, Ruth fails to answer and waffles on other tax instead.

Willie attacks George Osborne getting it wrong on the recession.

Willie asks why Ruth changed her mind on the knife crime question, Ruth denies it and answers well explaining a joiner shouldn't be jailed for having a knife for his job.

David Kerr questions Ruth on free prescriptions, good answer by Ruth.

David Kerr goes on the attack on Trident, questioning why spend £100 billion when it could be better spent, Ruth says it has been a good deterrent and gives us a seat at the top table and she attacks the SNP on their defence strategy.

Ruth wants to keep nuclear weapons.

Now, the Liberal Democrats Eileen Baxendale takes the hot seat for the final part.

Willie Bain questions why the Lib Dems would scrap the child trust fund, Eileen defends it with a review of all taxes. Eileen defends our new policy of lowering the tax threshold so that most tax payers get £700 back!

Willie asks if Eileen agrees with Vince about scrapping child benefit, Eileen explains that we need to review all tax and benefits.

Ruth Davidson asks Eileen about Mansion Tax, Eileen states that all tax needs to be reviewed and wants tax threshold lowered for low and middle income earners.

Ruth asks if Eileen agrees with her that its good that the First Minister and the Prime Minister didn't meet to talk about the recession? Eileen says of course its a good idea that there is a strong a relationship between the two governments.

David Kerr talks about Nick Cleggs line on savage cuts and whether that was a suitable wording. Eileen points out that all party leaders are now talking the same language.

David Kerr then asks where the savage cuts would fall, Eileen says trident.

Alcohol related deaths, SNP wants to introduce alcohol minimum pricing, UK Lib Dems back it and Scottish Lib Dems don't, where do you stand?

Eileen talks passionately about when she ran alcohol projects in Glasgow, and explains that people who drink will continue to buy alcohol, whatever the price.

A good debate with the two boys squabbling like school kids.

I would say Eileen and Willie both 8 out of 10, Ruth 7 out of 10 and David just 5 out of 10.

Polling days is Thursday 12th November for the Glasgow North East by-election.
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4 comments:

subrosa said...

I've got Willie Bain and David Kerr equal on their Newnicht appearances. Haven't seen the other two yet and have also not watched the green party candidate but I will do that tomorrow (or later today).

Thanks for that rundown. It was football night here so I missed it.

Joe Middleton said...

Sadly it was an extremely biased version of events. Kerr had a passion and a rightous anger that was missing from the others and to dismiss the hardworking John Mason as a 'yes man' shows the presence of union jack tinted specs.

In my opinion the Lib Dem candidate started well with some decent questions but she fell to bits when she was individually interrogated.

She seemed to think that getting rid of universal benefits was a great idea but when asked about child benefit she wavered all over the place. In fact child benefit like other universal benefits serve an extremely useful purpose. If the tortuous process of means testing and tax credits become involved then a lot of people lose the benefits they actually need.

Why does it make sense to deny JSA after six months when a person might have worked for over 30 years? Is this really about 'fixing' the unemployment figures? Why should a partner working over 24 hours deny an individual their rights to benefit?

The facts are that the benefits system is in a terrible state, neither Labour or Tories can be trusted to fix it and the Scottish Government needs the powers of independence to sort it out.

If as the lib Dem claimed the National Conversation is a waste of money then what on earth was the rigged Calman commission? At least the NC is willing to debate other options.

Kerr was right our chance of self determination on the national stage is indeed priceless and the Lib Dems have yet to give a good reason for blocking asking our people if they support the union or want independence.

For the others the Labour candidate seemed to have improved his presentational skills but still sounded quite vapid.

The Conservative also appeared quite professional but couldn't come up with any justification for Trident or tax cuts for the obscenely rich. It's between Labour and SNP and I suspect the locals would like there to be a real change rather than more of the same.

Electing the SNP would stop Labour taking the area for granted.

pure jamie said...

Does Gordon Brown or anyone really know anything about William Bain, the Labour candidate in Glasgow North East?

He is curently employed as a law lecturer in London at the London South Bank University but there are no other proper biographical details about him. As a lecturer you would think he did research and attended academic conferences but there is no record of these on Google. He is a mystery man. Does anyone know:

- what did he do between 1995 and 2003?

- where does he live when he is working at LSBU?

- what does he do in his non-work life?

juliodebate said...

I think it is a closed discussion and leaving concretas.Más solutions than a debate we can say that was an interview with interesting content without actually transmitting a message to people on the management

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