A hustings held on Friday gave Shrewsbury college students the opportunity to quiz the town's parliamentary candidates.
Around 200 students and staff joined six of Shrewsbury's parliamentary candidates in a hustings event on Friday, June 21.
The event saw the Conservative's Daniel Kawczynski, Labour's Julia Buckley and the Liberal Dems' Alex Wagner join Julian Dean from the Green Party, independent James Gollins, and Mark Whittle, the North Shropshire Reform candidate who was standing in for Shrewsbury's Victor Applegate.
Each candidate presented their party's vision and policies before opening the floor to student questions on a range of topics, including public transport, flooding, the defunding of certain vocational courses, voting age being lowered to 16 and the proposed National Service policy.
Around 200 students and staff joined six of Shrewsbury's parliamentary candidates in a hustings event on Friday, June 21.
The event saw the Conservative's Daniel Kawczynski, Labour's Julia Buckley and the Liberal Dems' Alex Wagner join Julian Dean from the Green Party, independent James Gollins, and Mark Whittle, the North Shropshire Reform candidate who was standing in for Shrewsbury's Victor Applegate.
Each candidate presented their party's vision and policies before opening the floor to student questions on a range of topics, including public transport, flooding, the defunding of certain vocational courses, voting age being lowered to 16 and the proposed National Service policy.
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NewsTranscript
00:00If you talk with this colleague, you'll know I was never a great note-taker, but all I've written here is no, it's totally mad.
00:06The Tories know it's totally mad as well. Jokes aside, the Tories are completely aware that that isn't a serious political policy that's going to be enacted.
00:13They know they've lost the election. It's an absolutely desperate, cynical ploy to appeal to a certain sort of very cool voter on a very niche issue,
00:22which they know that the other parties, especially parties that might end up in government making decisions, can't possibly say.
00:28To go back to my initial point, it's totally mad. What we need to be talking about, and what we actually need to be getting young people doing,
00:35is doing the sort of jobs we need in our economy. I said earlier, if you look at the hospitality sector, if you look at the health service,
00:42if you look across the economy, people are crying out for staff, for trained people.
00:46And actually, part of the problem is that young people doing qualifications, going through the sixth form, and then heading into university,
00:54and then heading into the workplace, are just not being done properly. Conservative ministers will go on television and demean and belittle young people,
01:01and their choices, and people who work in the public sector, and across the board, for a few votes this election,
01:06so that they don't end up with absolutely no enemies. Well, I think the public are more clever than that,
01:10and I think the public are going to deliver them the result they deserve, which is complete electoral annihilation.
01:25Well, when I was 18, I was studying and potentially going to be an officer with the British Navy,
01:41and the biggest mistake I made was listening to my parents, who said, don't do it, don't go into the armed forces,
01:49go to university and go straight into commerce. And in that short time that I had, preparing myself and studying to go into the Navy,
01:57as a very young man of 18 years of age, it was some of the happiest times of my life, and I learned so much from other young people.
02:04As the first ever Polish-born British member of parliament, I'd seen how national service in Poland has done tremendous things for young people,
02:13teach them new skills, teach them a love for their nation, and give them a new outlook in so many different ways.
02:21So I'm very much supportive of the opportunity for young people to have national service in this country.
02:29In reform, we believe in freedom, freedom of the individual. You might see these here. I joined the army because I wanted to join the army, and I stayed in the army.
02:49I enjoyed it. You don't go around shooting people and killing people. It's not like that. Most of the time it's on peace talks.
02:56Well, you should not be forced into that. If a volunteer comes to me, I can get 100% more than out of a forced man.
03:05You will never, ever enjoy it if you don't want to do it. It's not something I would profess to do for anyone who doesn't want the armed forces.
03:13It is a choice. If you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a nurse, if you want to be a spaceman, that's your choice, and you'll do well at it.
03:22But if somebody forces you into the armed forces and puts you through a drill, you're not going to like it. You're not going to enjoy it.
03:28You could have diarrhoea, and in some training programmes right now, we have had suicide, and they're training packages.
03:35That would be far worse if you had people forced. The days of that ended with the Navy putting vinyl on their heads and throwing them in the ships.
03:43That ended hundreds of years ago. I'm totally against it, and for the freedom of the individual, that's you, to make your choice. Enjoy life.
03:52Thank you very much.
04:23...from high by this government, who have made it harder for you to get a home, harder for you to get a job for life,
04:29actually made it harder, if you are 18, to even vote, by introducing mad and completely unnecessary voter ID rules,
04:36which by and large don't apply to older people and make it really tough for young people to prove that they can vote,
04:41harder for you to move around to work, so we've lost our freedom of movement, harder for you to study abroad.
04:49The list goes on, doesn't it? So the idea that they should be imposing national service on you,
04:55having absolutely failed to deliver any of the services that you deserve, is frankly outrageous.
05:02Thank you.
05:14No, I don't think you should be forced to go into national service. If you want to go, go.
05:23There are lots of opportunities that you can pick up skill-wise, but there are plenty of other options too, you can volunteer in.
05:39That's all I've got to say.
05:53No, I'm surprised to hear that I don't support national service either, and I have two reasons for this.
06:00And the first reason is you, and everything that you've actually come through in the last few years.
06:06I have two children of my own, one is nearly 15, one is 11, so I know personally how really difficult it was for you guys,
06:13with Covid, the lockdowns, and now with the onslaught of social media.
06:19The disruption that you've had to your education, to your social life, to the emotional development that you would have otherwise had.
06:26I honestly think our job right now is to nurture you, and empower you, and to lift you up.
06:32Not to penalise you, and certainly not to punish you.
06:35I think the idea of volunteering, the clue is in the name, that you should choose to do it,
06:41and what I find with all the other people I come into contact with, is that you often have your own passions and interests that do light you up.
06:48And it's on those areas where you will find the courage and the confidence to step forward and volunteer,
06:54and then you will earn some of those transferable skills and confidence.
06:58And I would highly recommend it, starting with something that you care about, or that lights you up and makes you excited.
07:04There's another really important reason, and that's what's actually going on with our armed forces.
07:10You know, they're not properly funded.
07:12The last time we had decent funding was under a Labour government.
07:15They're facing very difficult challenges.
07:18Cyber attacks, terrorist attacks, and we're involved in some really brutal conflict in Syria, in Iraq, in Somalia.
07:25We don't need some 18-year-old volunteers to go and fight in those brutal and complex scenarios.
07:32We need highly qualified, highly specialist military personnel.
07:37So the idea of national service doesn't solve any of those problems.
07:41Thank you.