Earlier today the organisers of @TwestionTime announced that Andrew Turner was pulling out of today’s online hustings.
Turner claims he didn’t agree to attend
In advance of publishing, we had contacted his office for a response, a mere four+ hours later they sent us the following, denying that Andrew had ever agreed to take part in the event:-
Just to be clear, Andrew did not drop out of Twestion time, he never accepted the invitation to the event in the first place.
As he is still the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight he has Parliamentary business for a further week, which involves being in Westminster this afternoon and for the rest of the week.
He did, in fact, draft an email to the college to explain why he would not be able to attend but unfortunately that email wasn’t sent until this morning when I realised.
College claims he agreed
This is in stark contrast to the press release put out for Isle of Wight College by The Agency on 12th March, which said (Our emphasis):-
Twestion Time will take place at Isle of Wight College on 23rd May between 5pm-6pm.
Invitations have been dispatched to all this year’s candidates; the college has already received responses from Andrew Turner, Vix Lowthion and Iain McKie, and are hopeful that all candidates will choose to be represented.
Although the event will physically take place at the College, as a public forum the Island’s voters will all have the opportunity to get involved. Questions can be sent in advance to @twestiontime using the hashtag #twestiontime.
We checked with The Agency today and they told OnTheWight they understood that Andrew Turner had given the college a verbal acceptance, although they weren’t present at the time.
They also confirmed the College had signed off the wording of the press release before it was released.
Awaiting Chris Harpum
OnTheWight put a call into Head of Sixth Form and Politics Lecturer, Chris Harpum, who is organising the event, to get his understanding of what was/wasn’t agreed. At time of publishing, we haven’t heard back from him – perhaps understandable as the event starts at 5pm today.
We’ve also contacted Andrew Turner’s office asking him if the College’s press release was wrong, where it was said AT was attending.
Watch #Twestiontime from 5pm
Don’t miss out – even if Andrew Turner isn’t there, the event is still going ahead. If you’re not a twitter person, no matter, you can still watch it developing on the dedicated page the College has setup for it.
