ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE was chosen as the location for the return of a flagship BBC political debate show.
Question Time, presented by Fiona Bruce, was back on our screens for the first episode of a new series on Thursday evening (September 19).
Secondary school Great Academy Ashton was the venue for the programme where political and media figures answer topical questions from members of the public.
Many Tameside residents packed into the Broadoak Road establishment after applying to be part of the audience, which is carefully selected so that it reflects the electoral picture of the country.
Labour are now the majority party in the House of Commons, with 411 of the 650 Members of Parliament.
Despite being broadcast from Tameside, none of the borough’s three Labour MPs – Angela Rayner, Jonathan Reynolds or Andrew Gwynne – were part of the panel.
Labour’s representative was Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell, who is the Leader of the House of Commons and former Shadow Secretary for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
She was joined by Conservative MP Graham Stuart, who has represented Beverley and Holderness in Parliament since 2005 and is a former Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Former Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron, multi-award winning economist Mariana Mazzucato, and Telegraph columnist Jill Kirby were also part of the panel.
The opening question by Nathaniel Welsby concerned whether there is ever any justification for an MP to accept a gift while in office. It came amid recent scrutiny of gifts received by both Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria.
The second topic, raised by an audience member called Gareth, asked the question of whether controversial cuts to the Winter Fuel payment – worth up to £300 – for millions of pensioners is the ‘start of austerity 2.0’.
The panel also discussed Danny Anderson’s question of whether it was right for the Labour government to ditch the previous Conservative government’s plan to send illegal immigrants to Rwanda, following the deaths of eight people earlier this week while trying to cross the Channel from France to England.
Among those in the audience included Dr Faisal Parvez, the husband of Mossley councillor and former Civic Mayor of Tameside Tafheen Sharif, and local trader Val Unwin, who is a member of Ashton Town Team.
Lastly, mental health counsellor Juliet Johnson asked the panellists about plans to improve mental health services. It came after eminent surgeon Lord Darzi published an independent report last week – commissioned by the government – into the NHS in England, which found around one million people were waiting for mental health services by April 2024.
The episode is available to watch on BBC iPlayer and listen to on BBC Sounds from Friday (September 20) in full for anyone who missed it.
I walked across Ashton’s fully lit market late last night en route to net zero and noticed that two of the clocks on the Market Hall tower were lit up – for the first time in years. Add in that the four-sided clock behind the Hall is now working and also lit up, what’s happening?
Is it so that a few VIPs visiting Ashton wouldn’t notice the way its town centre has been neglected over the years (with not a peep from the council’s yes-folk)?
At least Tameside council left the outside market fully lit (has been, round the clock, for ten months) so they could see the cheap and unpainted stalls before they’re ripped out after only 8 years service.
As for the lights on the market stalls, how the hypocrites within the council can pump out their ‘save the planet’, ‘cut the carbon’ nonsense stretches my imagination to the limit.
As with children’s services, outside investigation of Tameside council’s performance in other areas is long overdue.
P. S. Was having Operation AVRO on Question Time day a coincidence?
If ashton has been neglected I’d love to hear how the other towns in tameside have been treated. At least ashton has had/is planned to have significant investment