On Monday last week, current Isle of Wight MP, Andrew Turner, held a press conference at the Riverside Centre, Newport to launch his re-election campaign.
As well as filming the whole of the press conference (see them below), OnTheWight also reported live from the Riverside Centre (read our coverage).
Following Andrew’s opening presentation, which he read from a prepared statement, he said, due to his Aphasia (stroke survivors who have aphasia find it difficult to speak, read and write [Stroke Association]) and a introduction by Chris Whitehouse, questions were invited.
Easy question to start: Top five achievements?
OnTheWight was up first and wanting to ease Andrew in with a simple, non-challenging question, asked “Andrew, what would you say your top five achievements were in your latest term of office?”
Chris Whitehouse remarked before passing over to Andrew, “As ever, a provocative question.”
We saw it as quite the opposite – it was the most obvious question to ask at an event that was designed to launch the re-election attempts of a sitting MP.
Andrew Turner’s top five achievements
He said he felt “Island concerns” were the “most important”.
1 – The ferry companies – pushing them to be more effective and reliable
2 – Encouraging the schools to be more effective that they have been;
3 – “We’ve got to do things to push the health and so on”, that we’re doing reasonably well on;”
He then stopped and sat down. We asked for the other two.
4 – “Taxes are going down – which is jolly good for everyone who pays taxes … and more for those who don’t pay taxes.”
5 – “We’re doing very well and moving in the right direction for the economy.”
Whitehouse takes up the cudgels
Andrew then sat down and Chris Whitehouse (CW) stood up, stating that Andrew was “far too meek and humble”, so CW was “going to tell of one or two of his achievements over the last year or so.”
It was that Andrew had been voted on the the Executive Committee of the 1922 Committee, CW described as variously as “equivalent to (Conservative) backbenchers trade union” and “clothed in shadows”.
He said it was prestigious, as it gives access to senior members of the Conservative party.
(Background: This was a re-election.)
Fighting for Press Freedom
CW continued on to his next point – Last year, he’d been voted ‘Parliamentarian of the Year’. Whitehouse said, “It wasn’t reported extensively in the Island media, because he was too humble about it.”
This was followed by hearty applause from the assembled supporters of Andrew.
(Background: As the MP’s own Press Release of November 2013 (not last year) announced, Andrew was one of 15 MPs that received the award. Andrew’s award was specifically for Press Freedom, something that gained a ring of irony as he avoided questions on expenses later on in the press conference.)
Andrew Turner’s press launch
Below are the two videos of Andrew Turner launching his re-election campaign.
(Be aware – apologies for the alert sounds that pop up on the video now and again – they’re very loud)
Second video
The mobile signal was so poor, the software gave up, forcing us to switch video recording to the internal camera, which happily gave significantly better results.
http://youtu.be/Wr_YyvI_ny8
Update 17 April 2015: Swapped video of Andrew Turner answering the question for a message from BBC South Today.
“The BBC was initially happy for the video of Andrew Turner’s January Press conference to be made available to OnTheWight, but has now asked OnTheWight to remove this BBC Copyright footage because it is being used without permission by a third party.”
Output producer for BBC regional news (South Today)
21 April 2015: Added Bambuser video where YouTube video was.
