Louis Stephen

Effective from (06.00 am) Monday 24th May 2010 the Government has announced that with immediate effect it is withdrawing all future grants for energy saving micro-generation. This will save £43 million in the next 12 months but shows starkly that we are now getting what the people voted for – cuts in the investment in our low carbon future to avoid tax rises on those well able to pay for it. This is the start of a very long road. If you want to fight the cuts join me, join the Green Party and fight for a better future.

When someone has been a life long supporter of any party it takes a lot of courage to change your party allegiances. However I believe that Alex’s beliefs and values have not changed – simply that the party he once supported has changed from beneath him. For some time now the Lib Dems have been tracking to the Right in the hope of protecting seats in the home counties – clearly it did not work last week. The Green Party is a growing party, that although still small, offers the only true alternative to the main stream big three parties that seem to be offering the same things these days. In contrast the Green Party has positive policies to invest in improving our housing and railways, new technologies and creating a million new jobs. We believe in a fairer society with a living minimum wage of £8.10 per hour and decent non-means tested pension of £170 per week.

I welcome Alex with open arms to the Green Party – with his existing Councillor experience he will be a great asset to the local Green Party.

With our current voting system, some may be worrying if there is any point in voting Green. Here’s why I think it makes sense:

• The three main parties are all pretty much saying the same thing these days on health, education and things like troops in Afghanistan. Even on Trident – the Lib Dems although saying they would cancel the new Trident system have not made any commitment to scrap the existing system.
• The Green’s are the only party that have a fully costed manifesto – the next best of the main parties are the Lib Dems but they have only spelt out 29% of how they would half the public deficit. The Green Party have committed to fully protect jobs and services and raise the money through higher taxation of those most able to pay it – the sort of thing Labour use to be saying years ago and now abandoned.

Politics these days seems to be more about presentation and personalities than about policy and manifesto commitments. I believe the only wasted vote is a vote for a party you don’t believe in.

It seems the Lib Dems’ 10-point jump in the polls has been almost entirely attributable to Mr Clegg’s 90 minutes of prime-time television. He performed well. But could he have performed equally well had he not been confident in a set of policies he believes enjoy a good deal of public support?

The independent Vote for Policies, Not Personalities website (www.voteforpolicies.org.uk) has had over 150,000 people participate in its survey to ascertain which party?s policies they most support, without initially revealing which parties follow which policies. The Liberal Democrats are currently showing in second place, with just over 18%, ahead of Labour (17.6%) and the Conservatives (16.5%).

The Greens, however, are way ahead of them all, with well over 27% of respondents preferring Green Party policies.

The Green Party’s flagship policy of a £44 billion government investment programme, to create a million new jobs in the UK, funded by tax reforms that would leave 87% of Britons better off, is a policy well worth voting for. I think a high proportion of the electorate would vote for it, if the Green Party were given even a quarter of the airtime the big three parties get to explain their policies.

It is quite difficult to find the policies of all the different political parties in the 2010 General Election in an easily accessible form. The “big three” at times seem to be the only show in town – it is quite refreshing then to see a website that compares the 6 biggest parties policies and allows you to select your preferred policies – the program then gives you an indication of which party or parties most suit your preferences. If nothing else it is a bit of fun.
http://voteforpolicies.org.uk/

• 153 – size of the prison population in Britain expressed as inmates per 100,000 population. (the highest in Western Europe)
• £40,000 – the cost per inmate per year to keep them locked up.
• 40% – the typical re-offending rates once released from prison.
• 80,000 – the size of the prison population in England and Wales.

The Probation Service is an integral part of the Criminal Justice System. It supervises offenders who have been imprisoned and those given a community punishment instead of prison. According to its website, each year the service supervises 175,000 offenders. It assists magistrates and judges in their sentencing decisions through the provision of about 246,000 pre-sentence reports and 20,000 bail information reports. It supervises 8 million hours of unpaid work by offenders in local communities and provides supervision programmes designed to reduce re-offending. [1]

When there are less people to deal with an increasing workload, cracks are bound to show. This was illustrated horrifically by the murder of two French students in London by Dano Sonnex, who was being supervised by a newly qualified Probation Officer who had a caseload of 127 offenders — compared with an average of 37.7 cases per probation officer across London. [2]

It is well-known that in times of economic hardship crime tends to rise; therefore it would be financial madness to shrink an organisation that deals with people who have committed crime.

There are no quick fixes. I believe that we need to look at the causes of crime. We need to rebuild our communities. We need to give young people the skills, jobs and training they need. We need to solve the drugs problem that leads to all this crime. I don’t think we can afford to carry on like this.

[1] http://www.probation.homeoffice.gov.uk/output/page2.asp

[2] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article6433747.ece

I was honoured to be present at a meeting (Tuesday 9/3/10) in Stanley Road where two woman from Palestine gave a moving first hand account of what it is really like living in the occupied territories of Gaza and East Jerusalem.

Their experiences included the problems of underfunded crumbling schools and severely limited access to health care. They explained what is like to have to queue and pass through Israeli controlled check points, standing in line maybe for an hour, to be standing in the heat maybe waiting with children trying to get to a doctor. These check points exist even with the cities and additional check points can be added and removed at the Israeli’s will making many journeys frustrating and inefficient. The internal check points stop Arab buses but not the Israeli buses. Palestinians are compelled to pay the same tax as the Israelis but do not get the same services. Read more »

Caroline Lucas asked ‘What would make you leave the Green Party?’

(Shameless reproduction of Blog by Derek Wall http://bit.ly/dairYS)

Greens are unusual for a political party – though we’re small, we’re one of the few political parties in Britain in which membership has actually grown over the recent years – membership is around 40% up over the past year.

Over the years, I’ve had many friends who have been active members of the Labour Party.

Some of them – long-term members and people with deep principles – left Labour in despair over issues from the illegal invasion of Iraq to the erosion of civil liberties and the renewal of the Trident Nuclear weapons system. Read more »

As the opinion polls narrow the Conservatives will be fighting for every single vote in marginal constituencies like Worcester. As such the Conservatives will increasingly need to listen to the electorate. You can lobby the candidates at the following web site www.keepcrueltyhistory.com

It is a great shame that the Conservatives seem intent on wasting valuable House of Commons time to reopen the debate on this cruel blood sport.

The Green Party is big on animal welfare, campaigning to curb factory farming, would ban live animal exports and, of course, fully supports the ban on fox hunting with dogs.

Louis Stephen
Green Party Parliamentary Candidate

At this stage of the General Election campaign with the incumbent ruling party being at the end of their third term in office you might expect the Tories, with all their resources, to have been able to persuade over 40% of the electorate – why are they still struggling in the opinion polls at  between 38 and 40%?

It’s about having a clear vision for the future that’s based on core values and principles. What is the Conservative key message for the election? It seems confused – they are not really offering change, the main parties policies seem so similar, their main proposition seems to be “we will do the same sort of things slightly better”. Not exactly gripping stuff. Read more »