Lively debate at Taunton school

Representatives of the four Taunton Deane political parties stood in front of a large audience at Taunton School for a debate set in similar vein to the national one being televised at the same time on Thursday night.

In the absence of Tory Mark Formosa, Lord King stepped in and said: “It’s just Tom, no one in Somerset knows me as Lord.”  He freely admitted he knew little of Taunton issues and was careful to refer to a book of the party manifesto to make sure he didn’t make up any new policies but in the end, as the debate focussed more on national issues than local ones for which his years of experience stood him in good stead this appeared not to matter.

When introducing the candidates ,Head teacher Dr John Newton  referred to the Gordon Brown scandal by commenting that as no one present was wearing a microphone there was no risk of embarrassing remarks and that unlike the TV they would like to hear what we had to say.

Jeremy Browne ( lib Dem), Tony McIntyre( UKIP) and Martin Jevon( Labour)together with Tom King were each given a minute to say why we should vote for them  before the question began.

Jeremy  who has been the  Taunton MP for the last five years said he had tried to be a hands on energetic MP and hoped we would think about how to transform the old two party based politics by voting for him.

Tony said he was not a career politician having been a teacher for 31 years and how he had become involved when he had been horrified with our integration with Europe. He said with 13 MEP’s they were now looking to gain representation in parliament.

Tom explained that  following the death of his mother, Mark Formosa would be back to pick up his campaign on Saturday and he was very impressed to see so many people in the hall despite the competition on the TV.

Martin said that one of the most exciting things about the campaign for him has been talking to a variety of people and as a local person he wanted the opportunity to continue the work started by Labour,trying to introduce a fair society for all.

Because most of the questions were about national issues, many of the answers were party manifesto answers and ones we have all heard more than once throughout this whole election campaign.  

 There were some issues they all seemed to agree on, to varying degrees, when asked if financial cuts were necessary now and where they could be made, they all said they were necessary to balance the economy but were less forth coming in how that should be achieved.

On the question of public service pay freezes, Tom King said no one could be really sure of the actual financial state of the country because Gordon Brown has been very good at putting out good news and hiding the bad and therefore his figures should not be trusted.

Jeremy Browne said that reducing waste was not enough and a few paper clips and pot plants were not enough to sort things out while Martin Jevon reminded us that most public sector workers were actually on minimum wage, such as hospital cleaners which Tom was quick to pick up an correct that only the higher paid public sector workers would have a pay freeze.

Jeremy Browne said he was in favour of a progressive tax system and that the starting point for paying tax should be raised to £10,000 to help low to middle income workers have more self-reliance.

Immigration and integration was another hot topic as someone questioned why family benefits were going to children who didn’t live here because of Europeans coming here to work and sending money home.

Jeremy said to be careful on that one because although there was extra pressure on housing and basic amenities,a lot of businesses had told him they would not be viable without the European workers and they had a great work ethic, also there were plenty of British people wanting to do the same in Spain.

Tony disagreed and said there were more coming in than going out and those going to Spain were retired and living on their own means. He thought it was ridiculous and unsustainable that we should be paying child benefits to Romanians.

Martin said we get a lot of Europeans working in Somerset, Polish bus drivers and Filipino nurses, they are working and paying taxes so they should be entitled to benefits.

Tom harked back to the war years and the fact that if we hadn’t had the Jewish scientists here who were on the run from Hitler, we would have been in real trouble but that immigration had been allowed to let rip( thanks to Blair) and should be controlled as in USA and Australia. Asylum no longer had the same validation when so many were fleeing from their countries in droves all over the world.

Jeremy remarked that speaking to teenagers their aspiration were not to work in a residential home looking after the increasing aging population but Polish and Filipinos  were  he had it pointed out by a gentleman with an accent that there were plenty of local people working in the residential homes in Taunton and doing a very good job. He said he had not implied they weren’t.

A comment from the floor was that British people could not afford to live on the minimum wage,that Eastern Europeans  often lived several to one house to split the bills. Another said they had no problems with those that wanted to work here, only those who came here then claimed the benefits.