Why the Green Party is shit
- Thread starter SpineyNorman
- Start date
tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
of what?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Of the pro-cuts shenanigans in brighton.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Of the motion
If the story in the link BA provided is true then the argument that the scab-labour employing Brighton Greens were an exception doesn't hold, as this policy was driven by the parties National Council.
So are the Greens on here going to continue the line below?
Or do they oppose this motion and plan to oppose it, and if so how?
Last edited:
So, they spend ages trying to convince broadcasters to include their leader in the election debates...
...and now they're asking broadcasters to limit appearances by their leader in the election debates.
http://gu.com/p/46876
...and now they're asking broadcasters to limit appearances by their leader in the election debates.
http://gu.com/p/46876
the sense of middle class entitlement is palpable
tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
well literally all I know it is what I just read here, so it appears that the Brighton Greens are trying to partially offset central gov cuts by raising local taxes, and a substantial proportion of their councillors are opposing that and advocating no budget.
It does seem mad that the local party's decisions aren't binding on their councillors.
tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
yes because making a request in a negotiation is such an entitled thing to do
.oh well, maybe one day a left splinter of a renegade faction of the TUSC will break through and maybe some people on Urban will finally be pleased.
what is it with you 0000111 0011 111100000011000 idiots?
tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
i don't know, i guess i don't just think the same things as you because i'm just not smart enough
not very good at this debate lark are you? (something you have in common with Natalie Bennett I supose)i don't know, i guess i don't just think the same things as you because i'm just not smart enough
People point out the hypocrisy and laughable sense of entitlement of the Greens - you assume that means support for TUSC. There are more than two options in the world you know.
It's not about agreement it's about understanding how to engage with others in a constructive way, something that is clearly difficult for you.
J Ed
Follow Back Pro Expropriation
yes because making a request in a negotiation is such an entitled thing to do
oh well, maybe one day a left splinter of a renegade faction of the TUSC will break through and maybe some people on Urban will finally be pleased.
As a Green Party supporter would you like to comment on Brighton council reneging on their anti-cuts pledge?
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
tbf, I'm not sure that they've actually yet been able to agree amongst themselves to renege on their pledge.
tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
No I dont, the first part of my post was commenting on the supposed sense of entitlement. The second part was about the general inclination on here to shit on anything that's not hard left.
Your post wasn't constructive, it was a sneer.
SpineyNorman
Inappropriate content removed
50 pages soon 
rekil
to menny cranks
50 Shades Of Shit.50 pages soon
DaveCinzano
WATCH OUT, GEORGE, HE'S GOT A SCREWDRIVER!
Fertiliser Doolittle
tbtommyb
Well-Known Member
So, to respond (also Spanky Longhorn my previous one was rush-typed on a phone, I'll try and be better here).
First of all, despite being a Green Party supporter I don't follow Brighton politics that closely, beyond what's reported here. As far as I understand it, the Brighton council pledged to be anti-cuts to the extent that they could. The recent anti-cuts pledge was from the local party, the motions of which have no bearing on the councillors (which i think is a mad set-up, but anyway). So I'm not quite sure of the terms of your statement. But as someone who supports the Greens primarily because they are anti-austerity, I think the councillors should be much more aggressive in opposing cuts.
However, it's a question of what's achievable. the infographic in the page I linked to is quite illustrative, in that the 'rebel Green' position either leads to the fewest cuts, if they succeed, or the most cuts, if CLG take over. Would they succeed? Do they, as a minority council, have the popular support in Brighton to not pass a budget and defy central government? I don't know, really, but I doubt it. But then what use is an anti-austerity council that is so hamstrung by central government cuts? I think maybe sim667 posted up thread about people not really knowing what a government working in their interest would look like as it's been so long. I can see why many in the council think that raising local taxes to mitigate the cuts is the best they can achieve in their situation, and it's worth pointing out that they're more ambitious there than any of the other parties.
Maybe an intermediate step should be for the Greens to pass compromises now and explicitly seek to gain a mandate/popular support for a true no cuts budget.
I think this thread is interesting because it all essentially boils down to the eternal left-wing question of how to effect the change you want. You can:
1) Effect gradual change through the current system
2) overhaul the whole system because it's unreformable, or
3) It doesn't matter anyway as ecologically we're all fucked.
I think 3) won't really happen because in the rich world we'll muddle through the transition to a somewhat sustainable society. We could do it much more quickly, but that would require challenging current power structures, so instead we'll do it more slowly without big changes. This slow transition will be at the expense of hundreds of millions of people in the developing world who will suffer the greater effects of climate change, but when has the rich West ever concerned itself with the lives of hundreds of millions of poor people?
I don't think 1) really works because it is only ever a temporary ceding of wealth and power, not a permanent change in structures, e.g. post-1945 welfare state, and can be rolled back whenever the powerful choose to. Plus it doesn't deal with the fundamental issues.
So I have sympathy with many in this thread, who I assume go for 2). I think there is growing recognition that the current system is broken. Even the Evening Standard a few weeks ago had an article about 'how to fix capitalism'. It was written by a Rothschild and full of bollocks, but the fact that the ES recognises that capitalism is in crisis is significant. But the question then is 'how?' I look around and I simply don't see any viable, popular alternative. If there was some sudden, significant collapse in the political order in the UK I think a reactionary right-wing party would be more likely to take control.
I do think that we need a radical overhaul of our current system, but I think we need to build up a popular, broad based understanding and desire for what the alternative could be, which is why I currently support the Greens.
An element of this perennial debate is whether you work to improve workers' living situations in the short-term at the expense of the long-term, or let things get worse and then push through to a new, truly better system in the future. I think that in favouring the latter you can underestimate how much truly worse things can get without getting any better.
I support the Greens because I genuinely believe that their stated policy aims, such as a citizen's income and worker/common ownership are radical enough to not only improve people's living standards in the medium-term but also can help create a common understanding of how a new, overhauled system could work. I think that this is what sets them apart from Labour. Labour will always position themselves slightly to the left of the Tories and have given up on any kind of vision. I don't think their policies are radical enough to use a basis for a different society.
Will the Greens manage to achieve any of this? I really don't know. They run the danger, like Labour in the 20s, of trying to be seen as a 'party of government' and abandoning what defined them. I do think they should be stronger about challenging the assumptions of the current political class. Like with this whole furore over the costing of their social housing policy - who seriously gives a fuck? I strongly think we need more social housing and I'll vote for a party that offers that. Am I suddenly going to not vote for that because it's not fully costed? Why is that important? That's what you use the civil servants for when you get into power, or you borrow on the capital markets because using cheap government borrowing to fund a massive programme of social housing sounds like a great idea to me. Should I suddenly back the Tories' plan to take from the poor and give to the rich because they've got the Treasury to fully cost how they'll do it? Absolute bollocks.
But anyway, this post is very long because I'm dumping all of my thoughts about the Greens. To be honest I find it odd that so many here (or a vocal minority at least) are so anti-Green. Yes, they are fairly bourgeois, but they're also polling well on what is a pretty radical policy statement. I think that should be seen as a promising sign for the left, but instead this thread is full of people complaining that support isn't going to TUSC or Left Unity or whatever ideological pure party. I just don't see such parties ever having sufficient electoral support to be able to make an alternative system seem achievable. Probably the Greens won't do that either, and I'll just go back to trying to make my local community a better place and fuck everything else, but I think they're worth a punt.
tl;dr: Yes the Greens aren't the hard left but then that won't work either and we're all fucked anyway so just try and do good to your neighbour.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
That article was written before the vote.
https://marchthefury.wordpress.com/tag/brighton-green-party/
As far as I can figure it out, 6 Green Councillors voted against the GP proposal for 5.9% council tax increase and £20 million cuts, to ensure that didn't pass, the entire green party councillors voted against the tory and labour proposals, then refused to support the labour proposals when the chief exec tried to bang heads together and get a budget agreed, so the meeting ended with no budget agreement.
http://fignews.info/2015/02/27/brighton-council-refuses-to-set-cuts-budget-at-epic-7-hour-meeting/
I'm not sure what went on with the reported national gp involvement. I'll see if I can get any clarification on that, but I'm a bit new so can't promise I'll get a response. I'd thought it was just that the local councillors had called another meeting with more members at it / voting by proxy, and got the previous decision overturned, but I'm not sure where I got that from now.
ps I've been pleasantly surprised by how left wing all the Green Party candidates and activists I've met so far have been. There probably will be a few who aren't so left wing, but virtually all the new support is coming from the left, or at least left wing enough to be anti-austerity, anti cuts, anti privatisation, anti-neoliberalism etc. Nothing like the lib dems, other than maybe that the grassroots are probably more left wing than those at the top, but those at the top seem relatively left wing and happy to be described as green on the outside, red on the inside, which isn't exactly something that Clegg would have come out with.
I now seem to be designing the local leaflets, and just a leaflet with clear anti-austerity policies highlighted passed for print without anyone objecting (other than wondering how well known the word austerity was).
It does feel like quite a different party to the one I had brief dealings with 10-15 years ago, and it seems that the more left wing of former lib dem and labour supporters are moving to Greens. The Green surge in membership has definitely been largely / almost entirely from the left, so unlike the lib dems, the Greens as a party are moving further left as they come into the election. Though struggling a bit for the capacity to attempt to integrate such a big increase in membership - eg new members meeting in a house for the local party, trying to crowd 20 new members into a living room, as they'd not expected so many people to come.
Though the conference next weekend will really show where the core activists are at on this. I'm a bit nervous that there's 1300 at the conference making the decisions on behalf of 50,000 membership, as that 1300 will mostly be the longer term members so may not really reflect the current membership that well. Time will tell, I can't go anyway as it's my brother's stag do.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
You say 6 councillors voted against the cuts budget (with UKIP) - well 15 green councillors voted for cuts.
Last edited:
This is still important, yet I have just googled for msm coverage of the issue and can find nothing.
btw, a lot of councillors/high profile members are small business owners, in fact there seems to be a growing trend amongst progressive activists, but especially the young, to see 'independent businesses' as something to be fetishized.
btw, a lot of councillors/high profile members are small business owners, in fact there seems to be a growing trend amongst progressive activists, but especially the young, to see 'independent businesses' as something to be fetishized.
Last edited:
elbows
Well-Known Member
Pesky facts. Down with emissions, yay for omissions.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
by that well known Green Party member and candidate, Jello Biafra
elbows
Well-Known Member
Only about 10 of the green deciders thought he was a better choice than Ralph for their 2000 presidential candidate though, shucks.
belboid
Exasperated, not angry.
sooner or later, you're gonna listen to Ralph Nader
except Clegg was a better media performer
Similar threads
