Meet your Parliamentary Candidates

If you want to ask your General Election candidates a question you will have an opportunity on Tuesday 27th April at St Mark’s Broomhill (7 for 7.30pm). Jillian Creasy will be speaking for the Greens and I believe all the other candidates have been invited. There are lots of other hustings- (see the calendar on Sheffield Green Party website) but this is the only one I know of where all the Sheffield Central Candidates will be involved.

In all my years as standing in the local elections (and I have stood in every one since 1994-see all the results here) I have never been invited to debate with my fellow candidates to give people the opportunity to decide who they should vote for. Surely there is an organisation in Manor Castle Ward that could host a debate? Churches, mosques, societies etc need to get involved with democracy and quiz the would be councillors about their policies. This year I will be standing against the former leader of Sheffield Council Jan Wilson. I know Jan is a hard working local counsellor, for whom I have a lot of respect- but I do have fundamental differences with her on policies, and the people of Manor Castle should be able to understand those differences before they cast their vote.The two big parties are currently bombarding us with General Election leaflets, but very few of them contain any policies! The Green Party can’t afford to compete with that volume- we just don’t have the finance. But the literature we do give out will contain our policies so that you know what you are voting for, and it will also be easily found on our website.

So if you are involved with a local religious group or community organisation, why not organise a hustings? You will need to act quickly though as there are only 27 days to go before the election!