Following parliamentary hustings for Hendon and Finchley & Golders Green, the Barnet Muslim Forum organised a question time for the party group leaders on Barnet Council at Hendon Mosque last Tuesday (27 April 2010).
The video is now available online… just in time to give you a chance to review the party positions before going to the polls!
Participants: Lynn Hillan (Conservative, Leader of the Council), Barry Rawlings (Labour, Deputy Group Loader) and Jack Cohen (Liberal Democrat, Group Leader). Event chaired by Mustafa Arif.
Following our lively hustings at Hendon Mosque the Barnet Muslim Forum held a follow-up event at Finchley Mosque for the Finchley & Golders Green constituency on 7 April 2010. There were no earth-shattering revelations (that I recall) but a marked difference in approach and tone on the Middle East and other foreign policy issues between Mike Freer (Conservative) and Alison Moore (Labour) on the one hand and Laura Edge (Liberal Democrat) on the other.
The event got a little unwieldy with a number of frustrated residents making rambling speeches – and that was before everyone got excitable over the Middle East. Consequently the video upload has been delayed whilst I did a little ‘pruning’. The candidates’ speeches and answers to questions are published, unedited, but I’ve removed virtually all of the audience contributions. On the plus side it’s now just a 46 min video rather than 90 minutes!
Apologies in advance for some quality issues with the video. In particular there is some camera shake and microphone knock when we had to re-arrange the tripod. The lighting was also pretty poor.
Video footage of the last event in this series (a question time for the party group leaders on Barnet Council) to be uploaded in the next 24 hours… I do realise there’s an election due!
Last Thursday, on behalf of the Barnet Muslim Forum, I organised a parliamentary election hustings at Hendon mosque for the Hendon constituency. Present were the candidates from the three main parties: Andrew Dismore MP (Labour), Matthew Offord (Conservative) and Matthew Harris (Lib Dem).
No major gaffe’s from any of them, that I recall…. but a number of “interesting” answers that I wasn’t expecting. A couple of Labour party members present afterwards accused me of being a biased chair, against their candidate. That view was not shared by others present (including other Labour party members) but I apologise if this was the case: it certainly was not my intention to be partial, though in hindsight the seats could have been better spaced out! Anyway, judge for yourself.
Update 04 May 2010: If you are browsing from an iPhone or another device that doesn’t have Flash you can view it in HTML5 at the Daily Motion (ad-supported).
Perusing through news I came across the article on the fining of the “BNP leaker”. The whole affair has been somewhat surreal with members of an organisation associated with thuggery claiming fear of reprisal attacks. (This is not to say that BNP members are not entitled to data protection rights as citizens – of course they are, it’s just that it’s deliciously ironic.)
What caught my eye was the magistrate’s amusing summing up which pretty much captured the essence of what might be described as “council estate xenophobia”.
It comes as no surprise to me that somebody to do with an organisation that prides itself on Britishness is in fact living off the British people on Job Seeker’s Allowance and that is why the fine is so low as to be ridiculous.
This really ought to have been a tweet but I just couldn’t get it in 140 characters – and truncation simply would not have done Mr Stobart’s comments justice (no pun intended!)
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