It's 6.27 p.m.

And welcome to the Pompey Politics Podcast.

Who in yellow till we die? I'm Ian Tiny Morris.

And I'm Simon Sandsbury.

And welcome to our penultimate hostings for the elections in May 2021.

And joining us this evening, we have Dr. Reni Raj from the Conservative Party and Kirstie Mellar from the Labour Party.

So this is, as I say, our penultimate hustings of our hustings.

I'm just going to introduce how those work and then I'm going to ask Ian to explain some

background information about the ward and then we'll get on to the introductions and then

the opening statements for the candidates.

Okay, so standing in this ward, so this is the candidates that you will see on

the ballot paper. You'll have Yaya Yard Chowdhury for the Liberal Democrats, Kirste Mitter for the

Labour Party, Chris Pickett for the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition, and Dr. Renu Raj,

for the Conservative Party. And welcome to our political

podcast virtual hustings for Charles Dickens. All of our questions have been submitted in advance

via the event on Facebook, by email, and if this time we will review some of the comments in

the live stream and see if we can fit those in. All of the questions are one of those are ones that can be answered by all of the candidates

and are applicable to the ward or to Portsmouth.

Questions have been selected by Ian and myself and will be put to all of the candidates in turn.

All candidates have the option to give a three minuteminute opening and then a three-minute closing speech.

Candidates that have responded to us but are unable to attend the hustings were given an option to pre-record or submit written speeches.

As the hustings are being held via Zoom, if we need to prevent interruptions we may mute any candidate while they are not answering the question.

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