Winchester Green Party

News and Ideas from Winchester Green Party — Issue 2, April 2010

To unsubscribe from this newsletter, please use the link at the foot of this email.

News

It's been confirmed that the General Election will be on May 6th, coinciding with District elections. As the big parties are already squaring up in the national media, and the same old pots are criticising the blackness of the same old kettles, the hustings process has begun even in Winchester.

Winchester Greens are going flat out to get the first ever Green Party councillor in Hampshire elected: Alison Craig is our candidate in the St Bartholomew Ward.

She says her chances are good: ‘Brighton, Oxford, and Norwich have had Green councillors for years. As a result they are much greener places than Winchester. Once Green councillors get elected, they stay elected, and their numbers grow.’

Although Winchester Greens have stood in the local elections in previous years, this is the first time they have run a campaign in a target Ward. Their top opponent is Liberal Democrat and retiring Mayor, Dominic Hiscock. Alison says, ‘The current incumbent has done the job for ten years and it is time for a change. We need fresh ideas on Winchester City Council.’

This year Greens are set to make history with their first ever MP elected to Parliament. Local Greens are pulling out all the stops so Hampshire can have its first Green elected representative too.

Please see the new Green Party General Election manifesto and the Winchester Green Party manifesto - our priorities for the Winchester District.

If you think the Green Party is just an environmental organisation, think again. A single underlying philosophy does not make us a single issue party, and we tackle all the usual areas of policy – and means of paying for them – including economic policy, education, housing, health, transport, food and more. Find out more about us...

What we stand for in the Winchester District

Winchester Green Party is fighting the local Winchester City Council election on 6th May, and our candidate in the St Bartholomew Ward is Alison Craig.

About Alison Craig

Alison was born and bred in the District (Twyford), and is a Winchester GP's daughter. She has been a longtime supporter of the Green Party, and is now the Hampshire Regional Liaison Officer for Caroline Lucas MEP, Leader of the Green Party. Alison has worked in both local government and for environmental organisations, and is currently a communications manager for an international children’s charity.

She says:

The Winchester Green Party Newsletter —  Issue 1, October 2009

The Winchester Green Party was formed in 2007. While we have published election campaign literature before, this is our first edition of a more general paper that will bring, not just news of what we are doing, but what we hope will be seen as thought-provoking comment.

We don’t have all the answers. There should be no debate now about the scale of the problem facing us, but there will be much disagreement about the effectiveness of solutions. This is matter that we can debate within these columns.

We hope through this means to raise an awareness of the issues, but also to encourage a belief that, despite the seemingly appalling future of the planet, here in Winchester we can do something that matters.

To unsubscribe from this newsletter, please use the link at the foot of this email.

What's the Problem?

The Green Party is literally about world problems. The Credit Crunch is a world problem that none of our supposedly expert and worldly-minded political parties or financial gurus saw coming. The Green Party did.

But it is not the only world problem, nor even the greatest one. None of the mainstream parties are paying attention to the other, much bigger impending Crunches - we are living beyond our means in so many ways and our credit is exhausted - the world is running out of oil, water, land and food. And the population of those who want to use what is left is growing.

All of the mainstream parties know this, but they pretend it is not true. They do nothing on the assumption that uninvented, magical technological bullets will solve all the problems. They stick to the absurd notion that there can be a 'sustainable growth' for ever.

We were recently approached by people living near the Three Maids Hill area north of Winchester who are rightly concerned about the recent planning application (deadline recently extended to 28th May) to expand the site, increase its hours of use and make the site permanent.

We at Winchester Green Party are strongly opposed to this application.

Whilst we understand that some people enjoy motocross, we think the amount of noise - a very annoying and constantly changing buzz - produced by these motorbikes means the idea of having very regular or daily meetings and races there is unacceptable. There are places in the country that already have such courses and we think any new trails or extensions of use should occur in already noise-polluted places - not north Winchester where 3,000 homes are a mile from the course.

If we really must have more bikes and regular sports meetings in Winchester's rural surroundings, I propose the quiet, non-polluting and extremely fitness-enhancing sports of mountain biking and BMXing is given some space and investment instead.

As the election period gets into full swing, we at Winchester Green Party would like to remind you that on the 4th of June there are two elections - for Hampshire County Council and for the European Parliament.

We say a vote for the old fashioned parties - the largely indistinguishable New Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats - is simply a wasted vote because at their cores they all believe the same old rubbish that got us into this bank-destroying, climate-changing, stressed, unequal mess we find ourselves in. Only the Green Party been saying for over 3 decades that we need the kind of clearly different ideas and policies that come from a coherent view of the world.

Send a message and get some real change, vote Green Party!

Hampshire County Council Elections

After we beat Labour in every ward we stood in last summer we became the 3rd place party in Winchester. This time around it's for the much larger County Council divisions and we want to continue to make inroads on the two largely identical leading parties!

When Green councillors get in, they make a real difference as the following video outlines.

Green councillor Andrew Cooper (Leader, Kirklees Green Party), discusses ground-breaking home insulation projects in Huddersfield, led by Green Party councillors.

The Greens have scrupulously analysed the Conservatives' green paper number 8 on de-carbonising Britain, which was published in January and which forms the basis of current thinking at the top of the Conservative Party, if not necessarily amongst Tory MPs and councillors.

A communique from the Green Party said: "A few of the Tories' new ideas closely mirror pre-existing Green Party policies - except that despite all experience, the Tories have preserved their somewhat naive faith in the market - while some of their ideas are frankly stupid, like building more nuclear power stations.

"Nuclear power is not and never will be green. It can't deliver CO2 reductions as fast as we need them. It does nothing to help the green recovery we urgently need to tackle the recession. Nuclear sustains far fewer jobs per megawatt than renewables, so it will create too few jobs far too late."

The communique continued:

"But the more closely you examine the Tory green paper, the more flaws and shortcomings appear."

"They wholeheartedly back so-called 'clean coal,' even while they admit the technology isn't yet proven and might not even be economical. But anyway, unlike renewables, carbon capture isn't even zero-carbon, and it can't deliver emissions reductions fast enough, because it doesn't yet work. Also it will create far fewer jobs per megawatt than renewables."

"They want high-speed rail links to replace some internal flights, but they won't end the massive tax-breaks that make flying artificially cheap and attractive to consumers."

"They misunderstand the issue of biofuels."

"They speak warmly of offshore wind energy, but references to onshore wind in their green paper are few and potentially hostile."

We are dismayed that the transport secretary, Geoff Hoon, gave the go-ahead to a third runway and sixth terminal at Heathrow airport recently.

This is very obviously unwise short termism winning over the needs of the environment, our communities and our lives. The threat from climate change is so immediate and serious that giving the go-ahead to expand Heathrow is dangerous and shows the government's lack of understanding and responsibility.

Not only is this acting in contempt of our threatened planet, but this is not in the long-term interest of the British economy. Many commentators now set the estimate of the peak in oil production considerably ahead of 2030 and as we approach this peak the cost of liquid fuels is expected to soar, with profound consequences for us all, not least the airline industry.

Hoon and Brown’s vision for Heathrow will be cause climate harm and become an expensive white elephant – we will use all our might to stop it and the hypocrisy it represents. We at Winchester Green Party will be fighting this decision with everything we have.