27/02/2011

With just four campaigning days left before the polling stations open to decided who will take the vacant seat of Barnsley Central the candidates come together to discuss the issues.
In a specially recorded edition at Oakwell, the home of Barnsley football club, Tim Iredale will be in the chair.
Len Tingle will report from the streets where he looks at how the campaign has gone so far.
Will Labour be able to draw a line under the fact the only reason the by-election had to be called is because its veteran member Eric Illsley is now behind bars?
How much effort have the coalition partners put into a contest which has seen Labour MPs elected for the constituency since 1935?
Will minor parties like the far-right BNP, the UK Independence Party and the English Democrats be able to make any headway?
James Vincent has been looking at one of the key issues of the campaign. How does a town find jobs for the third of its adult population out of work?
He has been talking to residents of Barnsley’s Kendray Estate. It is one of the poorest in the North. Here even staff running the estate’s job advice centre face the dole because its budget has been cut. He also talks to council leader Steve Houghton who says neither the Coalition Government nor the previous Labour administration really understand that spending billions upgrading the skills of the unemployed is useless unless there are real jobs for them to fill.
And Tim Iredale explores the North/South divide. Are councils in the North able to deal with their economic problems after this year’s local government finance settlement? He compares Kingston upon Hull with Kingston upon Thames. One is facing a multi-million pound reduction in its funding from Central Government the other will see hardly any squeeze at all. No prizes for guessing which one is which.