Why the Green Party is shit

[DaveCinzano]

Brighton Greens had a meeting at the weekend & asked Kitcat to stand down

http://www.brightonandhovenews.org/...arty-asks-jason-kitcat-to-go-before-elections

No, not 'stand down'....

HAVE A BREAK

 

[elbows]

I just thought I'd have a look at GP policy on energy and power generation, seeing as it's something I know a little about.

Didn't expect it to include rather strong endorsements of biomass and CCS...

http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ey.html

It's somewhat less surprising once we get to the details rather than the bullet points. They have certain ideas about making biomass greener, and their CCS long-term plan is all about biogas.

EN221 We will ensure energy produced from biomass, including biogas, yields reductions in greenhouse gas emissions using sustainable wastes and domestic feedstocks for which indirect substitution emissions can be shown to be minimal. We will ensure that biomass generation, uses sustainably-sourced fuels produced according to stringent sustainability standards and is as far as possible carbon neutral.

EN250 We will assist in making carbon capture and storage (CCS) a reality by investing in the testing of commercial-scale CCS technology and will encourage bids for EU funding (such as NER300) to ensure that the UK secures a leadership position and competitive advantage in both the development and deployment of CCS technology.

EN251 If CCS is proven at a commercial scale, we will support deployment of the technology, on a specifically transitional basis, to existing sustainable biomass and gas power stations and existing incineration plant. We will support deployment on a long term basis for sustainable biogas generating plant.

 

[killer b]

how anyone could consider supporting a party that talks about 'securing leadership position and competitive advantage' is beyond me.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

how anyone could consider supporting a party that talks about 'securing leadership position and competitive advantage' is beyond me.

I don't know why anyone would bother to vote for a government that sought to do the opposite?

 

[elbows]

We will ensure biomass is sustainable by continuing to hone our ability to spew shit from additional orifices such as our gobs, increasing the availability of burnable turds by 40% by 2030.

 

[killer b]

Language like that demonstrates better than anything else (to my mind) that the greens offer nothing - just middle management bullshit. More neo-liberal economics and managerial politics, but with some windfarms. Fuck that.

 

[free spirit]

how anyone could consider supporting a party that talks about 'securing leadership position and competitive advantage' is beyond me.

why not?

should we not lead the world in any industrial technologies anymore?

just do the research then allow the chinese, german's, danes, americans, Japanese etc to actually bring it to market, then flog the technology we invented to the rest of the world because we don't do that sort of thing anymore?

 

[killer b]

see above.

 

[DaveCinzano]

It's somewhat less surprising once we get to the details rather than the bullet points. They have certain ideas about making biomass greener, and their CCS long-term plan is all about biogas.

Having already read the bits you have quoted (and then posted the link to that page), it is neither more nor less ‘surprising’.

 

[free spirit]

see above.

says you're clueless when it comes to UK industrial policy to me.

seeking to become world leaders in one of the leading power generation sources of the next generation would secure large numbers of high quality engineering and manufacturing jobs for a generation, and it is technology that we really are fucking good at, and have done a lot of research and development work on already.

 

[elbows]

Having already read the bits you have quoted (and then posted the link to that page), it is neither more nor less ‘surprising’.

OK then. It was much less surprising to me once I bored myself with the detail.

 

[killer b]

says you're clueless when it comes to UK industrial policy to me.

seeking to become world leaders in one of the leading power generation sources of the next generation would secure large numbers of high quality engineering and manufacturing jobs for a generation, and it is technology that we really are fucking good at, and have done a lot of research and development work on already.

I don't think you really understand what I was saying.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

says you're clueless when it comes to UK industrial policy to me.

seeking to become world leaders in one of the leading power generation sources of the next generation would secure large numbers of high quality engineering and manufacturing jobs for a generation, and it is technology that we really are fucking good at, and have done a lot of research and development work on already.

I agree - I don't think that the Greens are the party to deliver this - but it's essential that we develop the skills to create and provide affordable, sustainable energy for all - and if we're self sufficient so much the better.

 

[free spirit]

I don't think you really understand what I was saying.

no I do, I just think you're nitpicking on language while missing the fact that they're making an entirely valid point about the potential for the UK to become world leaders in a novel technology that has the potential to be rolled out around the world and secure tens thousands of UK engineering, manufacturing and construction jobs in the process.

The list of energy technologies that we've either invented or done a lot of the original r&d in, then failed to develop and just allowed those countries with proper industrial policies to steal from us, bring to market, and sell back to us and the rest of the world is far too long.

We used to be and could still be a world leading industrial and engineering powerhouse, and the remaining newrenewables and low carbon energy sources offer us probably the last chance in a generation to actually develop this sort of world leading technology that we can sell to the world ourselves on a large scale.

For starters, I'll give you fluidised bed coal power stations, low NOx CCGT's above 50MW, largescale offshore and onshore wind turbines, Nuclear (we sold one of the world's leading nuclear power plant developers about 2-3 years before deciding to have a new generation of nuclear plants built), solar PV, Thorium Molten Salt Reactors, Tidal Barrage.

To me that sentence actually shows the greens have someone writing that policy that at least vaguely knows what they're talking about, as they're able to quote the specific EU funding pots they'd target to support this development.

 

[SpineyNorman]

We will ensure biomass is sustainable by continuing to hone our ability to spew shit from additional orifices such as our gobs, increasing the availability of burnable turds by 40% by 2030.

If only self-righteousness could be harnessed for the generation of electricity then the greens would have us energy self-sufficient using only renewables.

 

[killer b]

I'm not missing any facts, they just aren't relevant to the point I was making. Nitpicking if you insist, but personally I prefer my politics to read less like a powerpoint presentation to the board of the east midlands' second biggest paper merchant.

 

[free spirit]

More neo-liberal economics.

actually I'm going to take issue with this.

The neoliberalists don't give a fuck who develops and manufactures a technology, they'd just want to leave it to the global market to develop whereever had the most competitive manufacturing environment, and ignoring the fact that other countries aren't playing by those rules, and actually do support their industry, protect it from foreign take over, support it to develop new technologies, provide soft loans to bail them out when they're in danger of going bust etc etc.

Which is the opposite of what this sentence says.

For the neoliberalist version of this see the lib dem / tory reaction to the request for a soft loan by sheffield forgemasters to build the plant needed to manufacture the massive steel core housing's* for the new generation of nuclear plants they'd announced they were intending to have built in the UK. No loan, so we'll instead be getting shoddy Chinese workmanship because there is no UK manufacturing plant capable of building it (without that loan).


*I forget what it's actually called.

 

[elbows]

Language like that demonstrates better than anything else (to my mind) that the greens offer nothing - just middle management bullshit. More neo-liberal economics and managerial politics, but with some windfarms. Fuck that.

You have to scroll down their economic policy page a bit to get to the really wadical stuff. To be fair there is actually quite a lot of it, but at some point they admit that they can't actually do most of it so long as we remain part of the EU as it is today, lol.

EC850 Many of the national level policies outlined here would be difficult if not impossible to pursue while the European Union pursues unsustainable and corporatist economic policies.

http://policy.greenparty.org.uk/ec.html

I suspect there is a gap between the policies on that page and the ones on the energy page because they are rather keen to try to make their energy numbers somewhat add up, such things being relatively easy to scrutinise and an obvious focus of mainstream attention towards their party. And since they want to ditch nuclear they are limited as to what else they can reject and still retain credibility. Whereas on the economics page they can go wild without serious scrutiny or ability to see if their numbers add up.

 

[elbows]

shoddy Chinese workmanship

Cunt.

 

[free spirit]

Cunt.

fuck off.

talk to any nuclear engineers working on these plants then come back to me on that. Nuclear plants require very very high grade steel work, sheffield would have been capable of producing that, the Chinese plants have apparently had issues with this.

 

[butchersapron]

shoddy Chinese workmanship

Cunt.

Ah back on track of why the GP is shit.

 

[SpineyNorman]

Cunt.

and about 20 years out of date if the stuff I've dealt with is anything to go by. in the 90s you'd buy bulk from China in the knowledge that you'd have to do your own QC and about 20% of the units wouldn't be up to standard but it didn't matter cos they were offering stuff for so much less than anyone else. These days they'rethough not by as much and still cheaper and at least as good as their european counterparts. (I'm talking about components for machines used in the confectionary industry and more recently hydraulics and control unit components).

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

and about 20 years out of date if the stuff I've dealt with is anything to go by. in the 90s you'd buy bulk from China in the knowledge that you'd have to do your own QC and about 20% of the units wouldn't be up to standard but it didn't matter cos they were offering stuff for so much less than anyone else. These days they'rethough not by as much and still cheaper and at least as good as their european counterparts. (I'm talking about components for machines used in the confectionary industry and more recently hydraulics and control unit components).

I'd rather stuff was made in the UK because jobs. The shoddy workmanship thing is a red herring

 

[elbows]

fuck off.

talk to any nuclear engineers working on these plants then come back to me on that. Nuclear plants require very very high grade steel work, sheffield would have been capable of producing that, the Chinese plants have apparently had issues with this.

Given Green Party policies regarding the WTO, import tariffs and related matters, the greenies need to be extra careful not to leave themselves open to accusations of protectionism should they ever be in a position to press for these changes. Sloppy generalisations about the standards of work produced by another nation would fall into that territory. Likewise the relations between local, national and global will be a challenge on so many levels, and will require much solidarity on fronts easily offended by crap sentiments expressed poorly.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Given Green Party policies regarding the WTO, import tariffs and related matters, the greenies need to be extra careful not to leave themselves open to accusations of protectionism should they ever be in a position to press for these changes. Sloppy generalisations about the standards of work produced by another nation would fall into that territory. Likewise the relations between local, national and global will be a challenge on so many levels, and will require much solidarity on fronts easily offended by crap sentiments expressed poorly.

yes protectionism is a terrible idea

 

[elbows]

Or at least they will need to rescue the term protectionism by focusing on what/who it is protecting, and how not to leave others unprotected from the consequences. Same implications as my earlier point.

 

[free spirit]

Given Green Party policies regarding the WTO, import tariffs and related matters, the greenies need to be extra careful not to leave themselves open to accusations of protectionism should they ever be in a position to press for these changes. Sloppy generalisations about the standards of work produced by another nation would fall into that territory. Likewise the relations between local, national and global will be a challenge on so many levels, and will require much solidarity on fronts easily offended by crap sentiments expressed poorly.

it's not a sloppy generalisation it's a specific allegation about this specific technology.

or do you think that pressure vessels that are welded together as opposed to being fully cast in one piece are of the same quality?

 

[SpineyNorman]

I'd rather stuff was made in the UK because jobs. The shoddy workmanship thing is a red herring

and because it's fucking stupid the way we waste fuel shipping stuff across the world just cos it's slightly more profitable - saves a few pence per 100 units or whatever - when we could make it down the road

 

[elbows]

yes protectionism is a terrible idea

But I'm speaking of what the Greens do and say and the pressures they will face, not what each of us think should be said and done and considered good or bad.

They have positioned themselves in a way that I think makes them vulnerable on this front if they were ever properly tested. They would be desperate to wriggle around accusations of protectionism, and might justify their policies in a manner that tries to please opposing ideologies, just as their policy documents contradict themselves in spirit at times.

It's not simply their fault though. There haven't been enough opportunities to test fair and sustainable trade concepts against the same pressures that the wider world of trade faces in practice. Even if some people on this forum have some avenues for expressing international worker solidarity and know some mistakes to avoid when trying to marry protection for local communities, workers and jobs with the plight of their international brethren, I'm not sure it gets woven into these sorts of discussions often enough.

 

[elbows]

For the Green Party to begin to escape the sort of criticisms I've levelled at it, it would have to decide exactly where it stood on the very concept of competition. Or, as the Blair years repeatedly tried to rebrand it 'choice'.

Because at the moment I think it avoided making that choice, ha. It is worshipping several contradictory gods, and it shows in the policy documents.