The Blackpool Gazette and Blackpool Lead invited the candidates standing for the Blackpool North constituency at next month's general election to a hustings in which they fielded questions from voters.
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.
Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.
In order of appearance on stage:
PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party)
JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party)
GITA GORDON (Independent)
BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats)
TINA ROTHERY (Green Party)
DAN BARKER (Reform UK)
CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])
The candidates standing for election on 4th July were each given 90 seconds to answer questions from an audience at a Cleveleys venue.
Six out of the eight people on the ballot took part in the event with Jeannine Creswell (Social Democratic Party) missing and a stand-in taking the place of the absent Lorraine Beavers.
In order of appearance on stage:
PAUL MAYNARD (Conservative Party)
JAMES RUST (Monster Raving Loony Party)
GITA GORDON (Independent)
BILL GREENE (Liberal Democrats)
TINA ROTHERY (Green Party)
DAN BARKER (Reform UK)
CLIVE GRUNSHAW (Labour [Stand-in])
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NewsTranscript
00:00The first question is on the subject of tourism and it is what would you or your party do to make
00:07this area more competitive and attractive to visitors at a time when the cost of living
00:13crisis is impacting local businesses and hotels?
00:17I'm going to focus on the national issues at all because you can all watch the TV and hear about
00:42them. Let's talk about the local issues maybe. So there are two aspects of this. I'll talk about
00:46Cleveleys, the work of the town board that I've been sitting on. Its precise role is to work out
00:51how to attract more visitors to Cleveleys which is focused upon attracting more coach visitors by
00:57improving coach parking, attracting the right businesses like the new milk store which is doing
01:02just that and that's why he's moved to Cleveleys for that very reason. In terms of Fleetwood,
01:07in 12 seconds it always used to be a resort town before a resort, a destination that people came
01:14to. That's why regeneration is so important that we have to get that right. Let's spend the 20
01:18million that I have secured at Fleetwood in a way that improves the visitor economy.
01:30Having just been to the modern 24-hour race, I think we should introduce a 24-hour tram race
01:37between Stargate and Fleetwood and that will attract lots of people. There are over 300,000
01:43people. We could get at least 300,000 people to watch the trams racing and the buses.
01:53Thank you. Blackpool was always a tourism town and look what they did to it. We lost everything.
02:02There was to be a Disneyland style of a fun park here. That never came here. So for tourism,
02:11let's start with that. It's all about people. Putting the people here first. The hotels,
02:18the smaller hotels are struggling. The taxi drivers are struggling. There are lots of unregulated,
02:26unlicensed taxi cars that run. So that is affecting the tourism as well.
02:33Then how many of us know that our own Blackpool rock that we were so very proud of,
02:42that was destroyed. Cheap imports from China. I'm not against China. I'm not against Chinese stuff.
02:49Okay, thank you very much. But there is a lot we can do with putting our own industry here first.
03:03I do not see how I can attract anybody to any place if you've got storage in the seas and in
03:10the rivers. Therefore, the one thing we have got to do before we do anything is to clean our rivers,
03:19clean our seas and indefinitely clean our beaches.
03:26Damn, I hate it when someone steals my line. So my line is, we have a brown flat beach.
03:32Which just sounds icky. And it's true. And that's how tourism is based on that. But I'd also like
03:37to add, we brought in hotels from like big conglomerates, rather than salvaging and saving
03:43and helping our small B&Bs that have now been left to rack and ruin, which makes the town look
03:48terrible. Why did we not ease their tax burden and help them rather than bringing in big companies
03:53for whom the profits go to the shareholders who don't live here, rather than the B&B owners who
03:58would have continued to add to the character of our town.
04:05Thank you. So all the people I've spoken to on the doorstep in the last few weeks,
04:09no one's talked to me about tourism. No one has mentioned that at all. They've asked me,
04:13how do I keep my young people here? How do I stop them moving out of the area? How do we have
04:17year-round jobs to keep people here? And so my plan is to get fishing back in Fleetwood, to reopen
04:23the railway line, and also to bring a film studio to the Fylde Coast, because that will actually
04:29open up opportunities for young people for high value, high skill jobs, which means we're not
04:34dependent on the tourism industry, that's seasonal, that's up and down, depends on the weather. I want
04:39to give an alternative and diversify the economy. Okay, much has been said, but I'll say the way
04:50that can, I know Lorraine is a huge supporter of that, because behind that, you could have a lagoon
04:56that you could use for sports activities that would bring people in, and that would regenerate
05:01Fleetwood. The Blackpool Airport, potential for bringing more tourists into the local area,
05:08so if we can invest in that, get Blackpool back to the standard it used to be. So tackle HMOs,
05:15tackle anti-social behaviour, invest in the local community, work with the holiday industry,
05:21come up the town far more than what we're doing now. So there are a number of things
05:27that can make a real difference.