You will have seen by now I hope that we are going ahead with the hustings on Monday 24 June at the back of Wimbledon Library. You will be required to register in advance, so if you want to attend, please do so here where you can also raise any questions you have: bit.ly/WimbHust
The late addition of three further candidates before submissions closed presented us with a bit of a headache as you can imagine, as unlike with the TV stations where they can arrange a variety of different formats, we are only planning one here in Wimbledon, so we have had to think carefully about the arrangements for the evening given there are nine candidates overall.
We want to be even-handed and give all candidates an opportunity to speak but we also have to acknowledge that realistically some candidates are going to receive a lot more votes than others based on the polling data. We are looking at the best way to engage candidates relative to their likely popularity and the questions that people have been posting to us via the online registration form. More info is also here: https://wimbledoncommunity.org/election-hustings/
We will be assembling information from those questions so that we can cover various topics on the night. There is no perfect way of doing these things and time is naturally limited but we will try to cover as much as possible. We are still hoping to arrange livestreaming or video footage of the event to be watched after, but the arrangements for that are still being finalised and will be announced separately. Sadly, at the time of writing it appears the hustings that we were also planning for the Mitcham and Morden constituency will now no longer happen.
In person hustings which provide an opportunity to discuss and debate seem to be happening far less these days as parties and candidates appear to focus ever more on leafleting and door knocking alongside the inevitable social media and national party media campaigns.
I suspect some people have already made up their minds which way to vote regardless but hearing the other side of an argument is an important part of our democracy and our society and setting aside the theatrics which quite often go alongside some political dialogue, it is crucial to implementing peaceful change, which we have to address from time to time.
I have written before with various thoughts on how we connect via the internet and increasingly via our phones to pick up information. It strikes me one of the downsides of the algorithms which increasingly dominate what we are exposed to on the internet is that it can narrow our field of vision. The huge selling opportunities which come about from use of the internet are constantly targeting us towards things that we may be interested in and want to buy.
Arguably that applies to politics as well and to me this has played a large part in the increasing polarisation of some views and the rise of extremism that we see in so many parts of the world right now. One could argue that extremist views have always existed, and people have been carried down the path of irresponsible leaders through other means in the past without having to resort to the internet. People often group together around a single policy agenda.
It’s been said that the printing press was the first application of technology to advance mass communications and a specific viewpoint – constantly reading the same newspaper can simply enforce those views. Whilst we have a world of information and alternative views at our fingertips these days the scope to target audiences is a valuable commercial and political tool which I feel we need to be wary of. There are challenges of course having people of opposing views meeting in the same public space but we trust that attendees will behave responsibly.