The meeting was supposed to finish at 8pm, but there were lots more questions on the list, and the consensus from the audience was that they should carry on - the Globe allowed the meeting to continue until 8.30pm, when they really did have to kick everyone out!
One question came from a seventeen year old girl called Daisy, who was probably the youngest person in the room. She pointed out that she had lived under a Tory government for fourteen of her seventeen years, and wanted to know if her future looked brighter?
Fay Jones said something about educational standards (and was heckled with "She's lying!"). Matthew Dorrance said that the system was broken, and the last Labour government had been better, and Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal, who works with secondary school children, said that kids today are much more aware of the issues, and they need empowerment. Later, she mentioned being in favour of young people voting from the age of sixteen. David Chadwick quipped that asset prices are better.
The candidates were also asked what their priorities would be as an MP.
Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal said it would be dealing with issues for constituents.
David Chadwick said there were different responsibilities between the Welsh government and Westminster, and who controls what, and that funding was important.
Fay Jones talked about better broadband for rural areas.
Matthew Dorrance talked about stopping younger people from needing to move away from the area, and international development.
And at one point there was uproar as David Chadwick went completely off the topic of the question to attack Vaughan Gething, the Labour First Minister of Wales and his funding scandal. Despite shouting from the audience and the efforts of the moderator , he would not stop. Roger Williams, the previous Liberal Democrat MP for Brecon and Radnor, was in the audience, and he actually stood up to remonstrate with him. It took some time for order to be restored. Matthew Dorrance also mentioned that he was a friend of Vaughan Gething.
Up until that point, David Chadwick was looking like quite a reasonable candidate, but he did himself no favours with that outburst. Matthew Dorrance has a lot of local experience, and he was getting on quite well with Fay Jones, chatting quietly between questions. After all, they have been working together locally. Ammi Kaur-Dhaliwal impressed me too. I'm afraid that, whatever her personal qualities, Fay Jones is part of the Conservative government that has got the country into the state that it is now in, so I can't bring myself to recommend her as a candidate.
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