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Local Action - Other Issues
Members of the North Devon Green Party often involve themselves deeply with local issues, putting personal time and energy into making the green voice heard, when all other voices muddy into brown.
This area documents some of those campaigns.
A letter to the North Devon Gazette from Cllr Miranda Cox, 29th November 2006
Dear Sir,
The Northam by-election for Torridge District Council was won by the Conservative with 57% of the vote, 556 votes. As the Green candidate I came a close second with 43% of the vote with 414 votes. There was a turnout of about 22%. I would like to thank everyone who voted for me and say how much I enjoyed meeting people when out canvassing and appreciated the cups of tea (no cafe in Northam) and use of bathroom facilities! (no toilets in Northam).
This result shows that the Green Party is an important political party (there are already many green district councillors in Oxford, Stroud, Lancaster, Norwich, London ...and of course Peter Christie here). We will gain more seats as voters realise how important climate change and environmental concerns are for the well being of all of us, how we can have good living standards and conserve resources better and how the other political parties say much but do little for our beautiful world.
I wish our new district councillor well and hope that he is as green as he says he is. As a mamber of the Woodland Trust and RSPB I expect to see him preventing development in the countryside and protecting trees and hedges in new developments.
Yours Faithfully,
Miranda Cox
A letter to the North Devon Gazette from Earl Bramley-Howard, 27th November 2006
SIR- Philip Milton’s scepticism regarding the threat of rising sea levels due to global warming (November 22nd North Devon Gazette), shows us that the North Devon Conservative Party’s PPC is an old school Tory and not one of Mr Cameron's new Turquoise Conservatives.
When Mr Cameron visited the Arctic Research Station at Ny Alesund in Norway to see (and add to) the problem first hand, he said “We must have a much greater sense of urgency about tackling it”. However, it would appear that Mr Milton believes it is just “emotive opinion” and “scaremongering” to suggest that there might be serious global consequences to our actions here in North Devon. Can we really afford to continue to gamble that he is somehow right and that the growing body of scientific evidence is somehow wrong?
Is he perhaps suggesting that our elected representatives in North Devon should continue to bury their heads in the sand about the real causes and potential consequences of Global warming? I for one would like to see much more being done about it locally, nationally and internationally!
We can and should be planning to deal with these issues now, so that we have a local and a national plan of action in place for when the need arises, because the scientific evidence suggests that the consequences of rising sea levels will eventually affect millions of people in this country and around the globe.
It will also have serious effects on our economy, so let’s hope Mr Milton’s gamble that sea levels will remain where they are is correct, as many people in North Devon (including myself) live at sea level and failure to do anything about this will result in us finding our homes and businesses under water.
Furthermore, his reference to the discovery after 9/11 that airplanes’ con-trails caused a dimming effect, in reality only showed scientists that the problem of Global Warming was much further advanced than they had originally thought, so it is most peculiar that he raises it in support of his scepticism! The phenomenon has been dubbed Global Dimming and it is neither emotive opinion nor scaremongering; these are just scientific facts that Mr Milton doesn’t seem to grasp!
It would appear that Mr Milton has decided that he will not be going along with Mr Cameron’s programme of trying to ‘green up’ the Conservative Party’s image, in an attempt to make it more attractive to voters.
At least with this, his first foray into the media as Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the North Devon Conservatives, he has shown us his true colour.
Yours Sincerely,
Earl Bramley-Howard,
Green Party Candidate
Barnstaple
A letter to the BBC from Anne Rix, 21st April 2006
Dear BBC,
This morning's TV breakfast programme: I am horrified at the news item about people drilling into aquifer for personal water supplies to beat hosepipe bans - this will further lower the water table, making it harder for reservoirs to fill, reducing flows in streams and rivers, and depriving tree roots of the moisture they need. Extraction and use for garden watering etc. increases evaporation so the water is mainly lost to the soil. It's ridiculous that you need a licence to use a stream on your property to generate electricity (which only 'borrows' the water and returns it to the waterway) yet do not need one for a domestic borehole (well, only if over - was it 20,000 gal p.a.? - but lots of people doing that would soon add up to a lake! ).
Anne Rix
Torrington, Devon
Waiting with baited Breath
A letter to the North Devon Journal from Jon Hooper, 16th March 2006
Throughout North Devon and the rest of the UK, the twenty-five thousand people who responded to the government's proposals to kill badgers are now waiting with bated breath for the final decision. Last month I travelled to Exeter alongside other Green Party members and animal welfare groups to deliver our Green Party statement on Bovine Tuberculosis & Badgers directly to Animal Welfare Minister Ben Bradshaw.
As the Minister failed to show at his surgery and we were instead greeted by police with video cameras, I've now sent our statement by post. Our six-page statement which you can read on northdevongreens.org.uk looked at evidence from eight years and £34 million worth of badger culling trials, from which scientists have concluded that badger culling could actually lead to a rise in TB. The Lib-Dems and Conservatives appear to have had trouble understanding this recent evidence, and have stuck to their guns in calling for the widespread killing of badgers.
We know that many farmers do not blame the badger for TB, but it takes a brave farmer to risk upsetting pro-cull neighbours and the NFU by saying so in public.
World-renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough, the RSPCA and many others now stand alongside the Green Party in condemning the proposals for a badger cull, and in promoting more effective, economically viable, and ethically sound measures for tackling the spread of the disease. Ben Bradshaw admitted in Parliament that 80% of bovine TB outbreaks are caused by cattle, and the Green Party have concluded that we should tackle the problem through a combination of improved testing, movement controls, and biosecurity measures.
We believe it is important that these measures are funded by the Government, as the cost of proper TB prevention measures on farms is what makes the badger such an attractive scapegoat for some farmers.
I'm hopeful that the overwhelming strength of public support for the badger and for proper ways of tackling TB in cattle may well win the day. Hopeful because a wildlife cull to tackle a farming problem would set a very disturbing precedent, particularly with bird flu on the horizon. Would we be facing a summer empty of birdsong after a cull of wild birds to protect poultry farming?
A letter to the supermarkets from Cllr Miranda Cox, March 2006
Customer Services
Dear Sir/Madam,
I'm writing to for several reasons:
1) Please could you keep up the boycott of GM ingredients in any of the food or other products that you sell even though the EU has bowed to the pressure of the WTO. They have not been proven safe. They have been shown to be detrimental to wildlife and bio-diversity. Farmers have had crop failures and often had to use MORE pesticides and herbicides on them. Farmers have been treated very badly by the companies selling them. It is appalling to patent natural seeds especially those used by third world countries….need I go on? Please use your power and listen to our consumer voices that we DON'T want this stuff.
2) Connected to this - please
a) Phase out the use of GM animal feed in your products. Also the use of soya beans, often GM ones, grown in Brazil especially, are contributing to the destruction of the rainforests - the 'lungs' of the earth + home of indigenous people and incredible bio-diversity and beauty.
b) Palm tree plantations for palm oil are causing the clearance of rainforest too.
Please could you set up/join a group/coalition for the sustainable growth of soya beans and palm trees where the rainforests are protected, the farming uses organic methods and indigenous peoples' homes are respected.
3) Please could you sell more locally grown food to avoid the ridiculous amount of food miles accruing every year and much more English organic fruit and vegetables. Also stop the specification of shape and size - natural food isn't a perfect shape and size and tastes better for it.
4) Bags, bags, bags (and packaging) - I wish the government would introduce a charge of 9p a carrier bag like in Ireland or ban them along with plastic cutlery and plates as in Thailand. Why don't you take the initiative and do this and promote yourselves very favourably - earn lots of brownie (or greeny) points. I'm sure it would help your sales and appeal to consumers.
This is my wish list and unfortunately you consider your profits more important than any of these issues. However what will money be worth when the earth's resources dry up? If it's after you're gone do you really care for your children and grandchildren?
Yours Faithfully
Miranda Cox
Please excuse me writing on re-used paper. I find it hard to justify using new paper, often from destroyed rainforests too.
Sent To:
Tesco, PO Box 73, Baird Ave, Dryburgh Industrial Estate, Dundee DD1 9NF Tel 0800 505555William Morrison Supermarkets Plc, Parry Lane, Bradford BD4 8TD Tel 012774 3566000Sainsburys Supermarkets, 33 Holborn, London EC1 2HT Tel 0800 6362662Waitrose Ltd, Roncastle Rd, Bracknell, Berks RG12 8YA Tel 0800 188884Asda, Asda House, Southbank, Great Wilson St, Leeds LS11 5AD Tel 0500 100055Somerfield Stores Ltd, Somerfield House, Whitchurch Lane, Whitchurch, Bristol BS! 0TJ Tel 01179 789359Iceland Foods Ltd, Second Avenue, Deeside Industrial Pk, Deeside, Flintshire CH5 2NW Tel 01244 842842M&S, Chester Business Pk, Wrexham Rd, Chester CH4 9GB Tel 0845 3021234The Co-op Group (CWS) Ltd, PO Box53, New Century House, Manchester M60 4ES Tel 0800 0686727
A letter to the North Devon Journal from Earl Bramley-Howard, Oct 2005 (unpublished)
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to thank the electorate of Forches and Whiddon Valley who voted for the Green Party on the 27th of October in the recent by-election for that ward. The Green Party share of the vote doubled from the previous by-election, from around 19% to a very encouraging 36% and I would like to express my gratitude to those people that took the time to vote for me on the day. It is heartening to know that people are still prepared to vote for what they believe in, regardless of all the attempts by the Liberal Democrats to suggest it was a waste of time and money to participate in such a fundamental democratic process.
Unfortunately the majority of people didn’t feel it was worth voting on this occasion and only 6.96% of those eligible to vote did so. It would seem the Liberal Democrats aren’t worried in the slightest by their inability to get the majority of the people of Forches and Whiddon Valley to participate in local politics. However, I am extremely encouraged as it would appear the majority of those that did vote on the day actually voted Green; it would appear it was the postal vote, a relatively recent innovation to the electoral process that swung it for the Liberal Democrats on this occasion.
This result shows that the voters rejected the Lib Dem leaflet claiming that spending money on local democracy is somehow money down the drain and I would suggest their negative campaigning on this issue was at best undemocratic and at worst shows just how cavalier they have become with the right to choose who represents you on the Council. Cllr MacBeth's suggestion that they would have organised all three recent by-elections to coincide, is not just misleading but, even if it were possible, underlines the arrogance of power exercised by a party that wishes to stifle all opposition parties and expects to call all the shots unopposed in North Devon.
The Green Party were the only party to contest the two Town Council seats and if they hadn’t done so, then the policy is that the ruling party (The Liberal Democrats) would have simply co-opted someone by appointment. This is contrary to their claim to want “quality councils” where every Councillor is duly elected and why would they call an election if they knew that no-one was going to stand against them? That certainly would have been a waste of money! Since it was they themselves that decided to contest this election, despite the fact that the disqualified Councillor was not even, at this stage, in the Lib Dems any longer, it was ironically they that, by their definition, were wasting tax-payers money. Nonetheless, the Green Party have never considered the democratic process to be a waste of money despite the inequities of a “first past the post” system. The Green Party’s average poll between these two Town Council by-elections was about 28%. In a ward with 4 Town Council seats, that percentage should have translated into one seat and it would appear that in spite of the Liberal Democrats’ claim to want more proportional representation in British politics, the reality is somewhat different.
They were the ones with prior knowledge that Cllr Higgins was to be disqualified, as it was only after the previous by-election in September had already been called, that we were made aware of the fact there was to be another seat vacant. If they had approached us with this insider information before the September election was called, we would certainly have made every effort to save everyone money and hold all three elections together. It also costs us to pay for leaflets etc and as I have mobility problems, I was relying entirely on our volunteers’ time and efforts to deliver our message to the people of Forches and Whiddon Valley, but above all, we believe in saving resources wherever possible! The fact is that from our perspective, these two elections could not have been timed to coincide. But one thing is certain; we would never suggest the democratic process should be abandoned because of perceived costs!
Thirdly, and most damningly, Cllr Macbeth contacted the Green Party on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, asking us not to stand a candidate for this election! He was clearly hoping we would not stand again so they could appoint yet another of their own to Barnstaple Town Council, without the inconvenience of asking the electorate. It is preposterous for him to pay lip-service to Barnstaple Town Council wishing to avoid co-options, in their bid to achieve Quality Council Status, when this is precisely what he was asking us to allow!
However inconvenient it is for the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party is a bona fide political party with local policies as well as global policies to present to the British electorate, which has been in British politics for over 30 years and is here to stay.
Finally, I would like to say to the majority of the people of Forches and Whiddon Valley, those who didn’t vote, that if you think your vote doesn’t make a difference, please be assured that it makes a huge difference when you don’t vote. The Liberal Democrats are relying on your continued disinterest to allow their inert vote and their well-organised postal voters to maintain the status quo in local politics.
Yours Sincerely
Earl Bramley-Howard. The Green Party Candidate.
A letter to the North Devon Gazette and Advertiser (unpublished) from Earl Bramley-Howard, Oct 2005
Dear Sir,
I am writing this because it has come to my attention that there is a very negative campaign to thwart democracy in North Devon being perpetrated by the local Liberal Democrat Party.
This is an absolute travesty and needs to be brought to the attention of the voting public.
The Liberal Democrats have put out a leaflet claiming that it is a waste of money to have a by-election and are suggesting that this money is somehow going down the drain.
Since when has the cost of democracy been an issue in this country?
Yes, it’s yet another by-election! We can thank our lucky stars that we have the right to vote in this country! It’s called democracy!
There are people dying all over the planet, who are more than willing to give their lives in pursuit of democracy for themselves and their fellow countrymen!
There are young men from our very own armed forces laying down their lives in Iraq as I write this, attempting to bring democracy to that country and whatever you or I may think about the legalities of that war, it is the only issue that is now used to justify that war!
But our local Liberal Party would have preferred it if we didn’t have the right to vote at all this time! They approached us (the Green Party) and suggested that we shouldn’t call an election, because it is an expensive business. But we believe that people’s right to vote for whoever they want is paramount. Perhaps they should look a bit closer at why it is so expensive. Perhaps they should have saved some of the £250,000 overspend that they have wasted implementing their highly unpopular green bin initiative. Perhaps they could have called this election themselves as they seem to have known in advance of Cllr Higgins’ disqualification. But no! They want our voices to be silenced! They want a cosy arrangement where the voters don’t decide and they just co-opt one of their own onto the Town Council!
They would have been unopposed for the Town Council seat that was available in September if the Greens hadn’t fought the seat. They, the Liberals, would have simply co-opted one of their own onto the council without giving the voter, a chance to vote for or against that person! Now they would prefer it if we didn’t give the voters that opportunity again!
We make no excuses for giving people this opportunity again, because we are upholding the rights of everyone (whether Green, Labour, Independent, Tory or Liberal) to have their voices heard? That’s what democracy is all about! It is our right to vote for whoever we see fit! Not their right to co-opt whoever they see fit onto the council thereby denying us our voice!
The Greens polled 20% of the vote last time and we intend to do better this time, but it’s up to the voters, not me or the Liberals to decide! Incidentally 20% is roughly what the Liberals poll nationally. Perhaps they would now prefer not to fight national by-elections, as their showing is so poor nationally? I think not!
If people don’t want to see their right to vote suppressed even further by this inward looking, sycophantic group of Liberal Democrats, then the only alternative they have is to vote Green, as none of the other parties think it is even worth standing for Town Council seats! We will uphold and maintain people’s rights and we will address the myriad of other problems that affect our town, to better effect and for the good of all.
The Liberals are basically saying that it is too expensive to have democracy in Barnstaple! They claim that it will cost £3000 to hold this election and that the money could be better spent elsewhere or even saved! Perhaps we should just do away with democracy all together as it costs the country millions of pounds every year? Or perhaps they would like to pay themselves less of our money each year, in an attempt to keep Council Tax rates lower? Again, I think not.
This country has a long tradition of democracy! My father fought in the Second World War to protect the democratic way of life and I resent deeply, the Liberal’s suggestion that we shouldn’t exercise that right at every available opportunity!
My family come from South Africa and my father was jailed along with Nelson Mandela for standing up for the rights of those who had been disenfranchised by that regime. Nelson Mandela is my sister’s Godfather and my family was at the forefront of the opposition to that regime. If you don’t stand up for what you believe in, you will have your rights taken from you.
The Greens did indeed call the previous election, and after it had been called we heard about Cllr Higgins’ disqualification. We naturally decided to fight this election too, as we believe that the issues facing the world today are far too urgent to be ignored and we will continue to fight on a broad platform of pressing issues. We are not in the habit of rolling over and giving up just because it is inconvenient or expensive to hold an election. We believe that the issues facing society are too urgent simply to give in to this sort of negative campaigning. The right to vote is a right that we hold dear and in my opinion the Green Party is the ONLY party that addresses the real issues facing us today! The other parties have all tried (and failed) to be “seen to be Green”; because they know that the issues we stand for are becoming more and more urgent! I am astounded by the Liberal’s attitude and negative campaigning on this issue of cost. I would hope the residents of Forches and Whiddon Valley will register their opposition to the Liberals’ attempt to silence their voice and will vote Green this Thursday, come rain or shine!
Yours Sincerely
Earl Bramley-Howard (Forches and Whiddon Valley Green Party candidate)
A reply to Green MEP Jean Lambert's letter in the Guardian from Green Cllr Rosemary Brian
Dear Mrs Lambert,
I write in response to your letter in the Guardian, Tuesday 23rd August. I am a member of the Green party, North Devon Constituency.
The Governments main responsibility to its citizens is to ensure their safety. As Tony Blair said about three weeks ago, before going on holiday, the balance of the argument between security of its citizens, and human rights, has tipped in favour of security issues, following the killings on the London Transport system 7th July 2005. I agree with Tony Blair’s assessment entirely, [ though I should say that it is rare for me to agree with him on any important policy issue].
Your letter states that ’ the news that the majority of the public in the UK would chose to lose civil rights in order to improve security is particularly disturbing for all UK residents’. How can this be ‘particularly disturbing for all UK residents’? This is a sweeping statement and the facts don’t bear it out. This is a limited loss of civil rights for a specific purpose. It is aimed at apprehending those whose purpose is to perpetuate death and injury in public places to innocent civilians going about their everyday business and those who support them in this. Any suggestion that this is the thin edge of the wedge which will eventually lead us to a fascist state is wildly exaggerated. As the events of 7th July indicate, there are those in the community who will maim and kill innocent civilians, and they must be apprehended and punished. This fact cannot be ignored and swept under the carpet by well meaning Greens and policies must be adopted to deal with the issue.
Why ‘will the public be more exposed than ever to danger’ by some limited curtailment of civil liberties? You give no reasons to support your assertion? There is no proposal to ban Islamic groups who do not advocate violence. As the panorama programme on Sunday 21st August sought to demonstrate, radical Islamic groups speak with many voices and can be at pains to disguise their more sinister objectives behind a veil of peaceful intent and respectability.
People are not being targeted because of their religious beliefs. This is to completely miss the nature and extent of the measures being proposed. People are being targeted because of their intention to kill innocent people or for their support of those who do are prepared to maim and kill. This is an entirely different matter and has to be addressed by the government and all responsible politicians including the Green party.
My partner, also a member of the Green party, works in Central London and commutes to North Devon at weekends. He and millions of workers like him who use the London Transport Network everyday, are being put at risk by people who have shown they have no respect for the lives of ordinary workers in this country. Your letter will have no resonance with ordinary people like us.
Please don’t help to turn the Green party into a fringe party who can’t think on behalf of ordinary people.
On the subject of Islam in general and those Islamists in particular who advocate Sharia Law in this country [and they exist as yet as only a vociferous minority] they are far more of a threat to Civil Liberties particularly of the Civil liberties of women than anything the government t is proposing. Are you going to have anything to say about this? Where Sharia law operates in Islamist states women’s rights are curtailed to a various degree. In some states there are no votes for women, in Saudi women are not allowed to drive, in other states education is curtailed, in north eastern Turkey female children’s births are not even registered [after all girls are only going to be useful as cheap domestic labour]. There are many, many other examples including cultural pressure on women to wear the veil. These are major civil liberties issues. As a prominent woman in the Green Party these are the issues you should seek to campaign about. I certainly intend to do so in my small way.
Sincerely Yours,
Rosemary Brian.
[Jean Lambert's letter to the Guardian]
The news that the majority of the public in the UK would choose to lose civil rights in order to improve security (Report, August 22) is particularly disturbing for all UK residents. The government is supposed to be protecting us, but slowly our civil liberties are being eroded. Surely by losing civil liberties and introducing policies that breach the Human Rights Act, the public will be more exposed to danger than ever.
The proposal to ban radical Islamist groups, even if they don't advocate violence or racial or religious hatred, is absurd. Unquestionably, by casting the net so wide we will end up with all sorts of accidental by-catch. Targeting people because of their religious or political beliefs is not the answer to security problems in the UK. Are we really recruiting the thought police, making the world of Minority Report a reality?
We must question the evidence that supports the implementation of these measures and ask how the government can guarantee that these policies will be successful. Implementing the suggested procedures will almost certainly lead to further unrest, not just throughout minority ethnic communities. Is this really what the government and public want?Jean Lambert MEP
Green, London
The Greens and Business – Let the Courtship Begin.
An article written for the SW Small Businesses Forum by Cllr Ricky Knight, PPC Devon, North
Unfortunately it is easy to imagine why it could be construed that Greens and Business don’t sit happily together. I consider this to be more a matter of perception, based upon the belief that, since the Greens are in favour of nil-growth, then they must be anti-profit and therefore anti-business. This is absolutely not the case: protecting and supporting smaller, local businesses is not just a manifesto slogan but is at the core of our policies and indeed, entire philosophical basis.
The principle of sustainability underpins all our policies, particularly those on agriculture, fishing, transport, fair trade, tourism, housing and industry. Essentially, sustainability is a way of ensuring that our children and grandchildren inherit a tomorrow that is at least as good as today, preferably better. I believe that every business can identify with that ideal and would aspire to that ambition.
Big business creates trade that is unsustainable in every way; this includes flying food across the world, setting up out-of-town shopping malls, and driving down market prices so that small farmers are forced to farm intensively or go bust.
Our policies support small businesses and aim to regenerate the local economy. We would re-build the public transport network to ensure that rural people have access to local city centres, fight WTO and EU plans that open up small business to unfair competition from multi-nationals. Our planning policies would curtail the spread of out-of-town malls. We would encourage small and family farms and responsible and organic farming through subsidies. We would impose eco-taxes on polluting corporations.
I come from a local business family that was driven to bankruptcy by intense competition. It’s a hard world and the realities of business pressures are immense.
It is sadly not a level playing field, when national and international concerns increasingly dominate our High Streets. The Corner Shop, the Post Office, Small-Holders, Co-operatives, a myriad small businesses – all are integral to a thriving local economy but are being driven to the wall by imposed “market-forces”. The Greens fundamentally believe in the decentralisation of economic power, whereby the local economy is encouraged and can thrive without unaccountable outside bodies holding them to ransom.
The Disaster We CreatedA letter to the Journal (unpublished) from Jon Hooper, 11th Jan 2005
It’s heartening to see so much compassion and generosity coming from North Devonians for the plight of the tsunami victims. But while we are undoubtedly helping to save many lives, sadly even more people are dying as a result of the Government’s foreign policy.
The largest global disaster and the biggest killer of people is the poverty Western Governments have created and perpetuated through Third World Debt and Free Trade. Since the Boxing Day disaster, more people in the world have died as a result of Western Governments’ foreign policy than from the tsunami. As a country, we’re giving with one hand and taking with the other. As individuals, we’re generous and considerate, but those we elect to represent us have been firmly in the pockets of big business. Too many decisions have been made by the Conservative and Labour Governments that benefit multinational corporations and Western economies, at the expense of human rights and global justice.
One of the biggest tragedies following our Government’s part in the military displays of firepower in Afghanistan and Iraq has been the total inability to follow through and reconstruct the communities they obliterated. The media spotlight inevitably moves on, and Blair’s promises are forgotten. What little American and British “aid” did finally arrive was mostly paid to Western businesses and military forces operating in the regions.
Award-winning journalist John Pilger reports that Blair has spent far more of our money bombing Iraqi civilians than he is intending to spend on the tsunami disaster relief. He gave more money to the oppressive Indonesian regime to help them buy weapons to massacre the East Timorese than he’s giving to the tsunami victims.
So many of us made a big effort to send money and clothing in response to the disaster in the Indian Ocean, but somehow we must get the message through to Blair and Bush that our compassion for the less fortunate in the world is not limited to gifts and donations, but that we wish for an end to the selfish foreign policies which drain developing nations of their wealth and resources.
A letter to the Journal from Ricky Knight, 14th June 2004
Dear Sir,
In one sense, England lost twice on Sunday. The soccer result, once more a case of “we wuz robbed”, should have been eclipsed by the European Election results but, dream on, it didn’t even come close. Quite an eventful week, in terms of our relationship with Europe – the previous Sunday, we commemorated the role we played in liberating Europe from the stain of Fascism, then seven days later, an enormous number of people more or less reversed the Churchillian hand gesture, in a massive rejection of all that European union has attempted to achieve.
Where does this leave local, regional and national politics? Can all these new UKIP MEP’s deliver on their entirely negative and totally impossible intention of taking us out of Europe? Of course not, and most of those who voted for them realise that. What will they do in the European Parliament to justify their “immense” salaries – return them? Will they simply filibuster, veto, abstain, wreck? Will they even debate? How many of those that voted for UKIP have really looked behind their immigration policies and made the right connections - how many apologists are there for their silken media-manipulator leader? Does this logically mean that the French and the Spanish, not to mention the Indians and the decimated indigenous populations of the British Empire, can all take a lead from this party's stand on immigration and tell the Brit ex-pats to return home too? The hypocrisy is breathtaking. It is a painfully myopic attitude too, in the light that this country needs a serious injection of new labour into the work-force, to do those menial, low-paid tasks, that so few are willing to undertake any more.
And independent from whom? Europe and the World? Their SW lead candidate, Mr Booth, said in Poole on Sunday that this result sees the British regaining control of Britain, yet it is clear to everyone that this country is totally reliant upon world trade and is dominated politically, diplomatically and militarily by the US. Fortunately, the UKIP did not need to answer any of these questions because the media, particularly ther Press, have been working on their campaign for them for months - they only have to mention bent bananas, the pint, the pounds and ounces, "Brussels has gone Bonkers" and another swathe of votes goes their way.
Bad loser? You bet! The South West Green Party campaigned its socks off, spending in the process tens of thousands of pounds it did not have which will take us another four years to recuperate, money collected in small sums from ordinary sympathisers around the region. We invested in a ten-week Bus Tour of the South West, taking the Campaign to the people, hoping the media would beat a path to our door. Some hope! In the name of balanced reporting, nothing appeared, because the other parties were either not bothering to do anything or were too busy reminding the electorate just who owns the hedgerows of England - it sure ain't the Greens. We managed to poll more than 20,000 more votes than at the last euro-elections. Such statistics were swamped by the UKIP avalanche however, leaving the SW with five out of seven right (very) of centre, euro-sceptic (very!) MEP's. That is the will of the electorate - those that turned out, that is. Doubtless, many of those who did not, (that's over 62%, hardly a democratic percentage to be proud of) will now maintain that there's no point; nothing ever changes. This is a pretty self-fulfilling prophecy - apart from the fact that something did change last week - the UK went backwards, retreating into our Island mentality. From what? The French football team? The advancing hordes, intent on reaping the benefits of our infamous welfare system and national health and education systems. To steal our house, jobs and wives? No, to escape from the legendary bureaucrats of Brussels. Oh dear, oh dear.
Finally, if what many pundits are maintaining is true, that the vote represented a backlash against Blair, sending him a dire domestic warning, then how come the N.D. Liberal Democrats did not benefit more? Their proudly pro-european message, together with that of Labour, did not strike a chord with the electorate. I don't believe the Electorate want to go backwards - I believe they want real change, real progress - that was the Campaigning message of the Green Party. We are in it for the long haul but it still hurts when the count goes against you and once again, a system purporting to be representative, can send five euro-sceptics to the European Parliament on 54% of the vote, with the remaining two seats going, to all intents and purposes, to the remainder, leaving nearly 104,000 Green Party voters unrepresented - again!
Yours faithfully,
Ricky Knight
Co-ordinator – South West Green Party
Website designed by Jon Hooper
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