Reasons to be Green
Dear Editor,
Chester’s Green Party campaign team thanks all the intelligent and responsible people who voted Green.
The voters of Brighton show that where people believe a win is possible they will vote Green. That is because only the Greens are honest enough to tell it like it is.
The huge human population pushes at the limits of the planet and we now face the problems caused: not enough wild habitat to maintain the ‘ecosystem services’ needed for us to flourish, and resources disappearing.
Geologists tell us that oil and gas are running out and prices will increase year on year, forever. Everything made from oil, made using oil, or transported using oil is going to cost more; that’s everything. When prices go up, people buy less, and when people buy less, we have a recession.
Whatever the government cuts, we face a big and long recession.
Unless, that is, we invest in energy and resource conservation, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and renewable raw materials (things we can grow). Such a strategy will create a million new jobs and increase social wellbeing.
These are Green Party policies, and that is why the world needs the Greens.
Tom Barker, Chester
Dear Editor,
Chester’s Green Party campaign team thanks all the intelligent and responsible people who voted Green.
The voters of Brighton show that where people believe a win is possible they will vote Green. That is because only the Greens are honest enough to tell it like it is.
The huge human population pushes at the limits of the planet and we now face the problems caused: not enough wild habitat to maintain the ‘ecosystem services’ needed for us to flourish, and resources disappearing.
Geologists tell us that oil and gas are running out and prices will increase year on year, forever. Everything made from oil, made using oil, or transported using oil is going to cost more; that’s everything. When prices go up, people buy less, and when people buy less, we have a recession.
Whatever the government cuts, we face a big and long recession.
Unless, that is, we invest in energy and resource conservation, renewable energy sources like wind and solar, and renewable raw materials (things we can grow). Such a strategy will create a million new jobs and increase social wellbeing.
These are Green Party policies, and that is why the world needs the Greens.
Tom Barker, Chester
An image accord
Dear Editor,
I write whilst the country is in the midst of general election fever. I sincerely hope at least one or more of our candidates wins the election.
Having read the policy section of the national Green Party website I note our manifesto would quite rightly include creating jobs especially for the young unemployed. During my career I worked 35 years full-time, contributing NI and tax. In 1993 my brother, sister and I sold our parents’ house, after they died, and inherited around £20,000 each. I put my share into a savings account in order to finance anything which I may need in my own terraced house which I bought in 1978.
Imagine how upset I felt when my job was cut in 2001, when I was 50 years of age, and, despite trying temporary agency work, could not find another job. I was eventually forced to live on my savings as I had too much for Job Seekers’ Allowance (JSA). I worked as volunteer in a charity shop for six years whilst trying to find another job as I felt wrong not working and I felt proud I was living on my own money, including that earned from a small part-time job, instead of benefits. I was forced to return to JSA after 3 years due to my money having run out – I was told I would be on Income Based JSA as I “hadn’t paid NI for the past two years”!
I am now a few months from my 60th birthday but, instead of allowing me to claim a reduced pre-retirement pension on condition I did voluntary charity work, I am being put on a useless programme to “help me find work”.
My question is this – if people in jobs will be allowed to retire late on an increased pension surely those of us who are forced into early retirement after many years of working should be allowed to retire slightly early with a lower pension until official state pension age?
Lynda Edwards, Norwich
Dear Editor,
I write whilst the country is in the midst of general election fever. I sincerely hope at least one or more of our candidates wins the election.
Having read the policy section of the national Green Party website I note our manifesto would quite rightly include creating jobs especially for the young unemployed. During my career I worked 35 years full-time, contributing NI and tax. In 1993 my brother, sister and I sold our parents’ house, after they died, and inherited around £20,000 each. I put my share into a savings account in order to finance anything which I may need in my own terraced house which I bought in 1978.
Imagine how upset I felt when my job was cut in 2001, when I was 50 years of age, and, despite trying temporary agency work, could not find another job. I was eventually forced to live on my savings as I had too much for Job Seekers’ Allowance (JSA). I worked as volunteer in a charity shop for six years whilst trying to find another job as I felt wrong not working and I felt proud I was living on my own money, including that earned from a small part-time job, instead of benefits. I was forced to return to JSA after 3 years due to my money having run out – I was told I would be on Income Based JSA as I “hadn’t paid NI for the past two years”!
I am now a few months from my 60th birthday but, instead of allowing me to claim a reduced pre-retirement pension on condition I did voluntary charity work, I am being put on a useless programme to “help me find work”.
My question is this – if people in jobs will be allowed to retire late on an increased pension surely those of us who are forced into early retirement after many years of working should be allowed to retire slightly early with a lower pension until official state pension age?
Lynda Edwards, Norwich
Policing policy
Dear Editor,
I hope we’re not going to end up like the Lib Dems! I mean: in GW68 Brighton & Hove boast of increasing police community support officer numbers so that “the streets were made safer”. Putting more bobbies on the beat – even cardboard ones – may be a popular, not to say populist, policy. That doesn’t mean it does much good. Most things the Greens stand for are counter-intuitive to (post-) industrial thinking and we need to be explaining to citizens that there are more effective ways to spend the police budget; or, if they must have more bobbies on the beat because it makes them feel safer, then they are paying for feeling not for effect. Which is up to them.
The debate about policing in GW never really took off. So, in hope of reigniting it, here are a few thoughts:
• All policing is political. The police are how a state controls citizens who will not conform to its rules – and you can’t get much more political than that.
• Policemen are professionals of violence. Harsh but true. You can’t appoint as a copper someone who would never use force. Hiring and empowering someone to use violence has many and profound implications.
• The job of the police is to preserve the status quo. This means protecting householders from burglars and the City and arms dealers from longhaired weirdos.
• Policing is about enforcing conformity. The police will therefore always struggle with concepts such as human rights which they see as privileging non-conformist behaviour.
It follows that police work will mostly tend to attract conformist individuals who are comfortable with, or crave, rules and hierarchy. Such people are also at risk of being intolerant of difference, of having low emotional intelligence and poor interpersonal skills. Is that a problem; or do we just want troublemakers hit over, or shot in, the head efficiently?
If we now come to grips with these issues we may be able to form a philosophy of policing fit for a Green society.
B J Fearnley, Debenham
Dear Editor,
I hope we’re not going to end up like the Lib Dems! I mean: in GW68 Brighton & Hove boast of increasing police community support officer numbers so that “the streets were made safer”. Putting more bobbies on the beat – even cardboard ones – may be a popular, not to say populist, policy. That doesn’t mean it does much good. Most things the Greens stand for are counter-intuitive to (post-) industrial thinking and we need to be explaining to citizens that there are more effective ways to spend the police budget; or, if they must have more bobbies on the beat because it makes them feel safer, then they are paying for feeling not for effect. Which is up to them.
The debate about policing in GW never really took off. So, in hope of reigniting it, here are a few thoughts:
• All policing is political. The police are how a state controls citizens who will not conform to its rules – and you can’t get much more political than that.
• Policemen are professionals of violence. Harsh but true. You can’t appoint as a copper someone who would never use force. Hiring and empowering someone to use violence has many and profound implications.
• The job of the police is to preserve the status quo. This means protecting householders from burglars and the City and arms dealers from longhaired weirdos.
• Policing is about enforcing conformity. The police will therefore always struggle with concepts such as human rights which they see as privileging non-conformist behaviour.
It follows that police work will mostly tend to attract conformist individuals who are comfortable with, or crave, rules and hierarchy. Such people are also at risk of being intolerant of difference, of having low emotional intelligence and poor interpersonal skills. Is that a problem; or do we just want troublemakers hit over, or shot in, the head efficiently?
If we now come to grips with these issues we may be able to form a philosophy of policing fit for a Green society.
B J Fearnley, Debenham
Where to cut?
Dear Editor
Jenny Hunt is wrong to claim humans are the only animal that does not limit its own population. War, abortion and capital punishment are some examples of state-sponsored “culling”; there’s never been a moment in the history of humanity and probably never will be when someone somewhere in the world hasn’t been killing someone else.
Anyone who has used carbon footprint calculators will know that even entering nil values for every single variable can’t avoid a large carbon footprint, because so much carbon is emitted through infrastructure that would keep emitting whether we were alive or not. In other words, the majority of carbon emissions are not caused by the consumption of individuals such as our own car journeys, but in importing and distributing food, water supply and waste etc, the maintenance of schools, roads and hospitals etc.
Suggesting we reduce our numbers to below 5bn in the extreme sounds remarkably similar to the Final Solution, or at least suggests misanthropy. Who else other than humanity are we trying to make a fairer world for?
Daniel Carins, Smethwick
Dear Editor
Jenny Hunt is wrong to claim humans are the only animal that does not limit its own population. War, abortion and capital punishment are some examples of state-sponsored “culling”; there’s never been a moment in the history of humanity and probably never will be when someone somewhere in the world hasn’t been killing someone else.
Anyone who has used carbon footprint calculators will know that even entering nil values for every single variable can’t avoid a large carbon footprint, because so much carbon is emitted through infrastructure that would keep emitting whether we were alive or not. In other words, the majority of carbon emissions are not caused by the consumption of individuals such as our own car journeys, but in importing and distributing food, water supply and waste etc, the maintenance of schools, roads and hospitals etc.
Suggesting we reduce our numbers to below 5bn in the extreme sounds remarkably similar to the Final Solution, or at least suggests misanthropy. Who else other than humanity are we trying to make a fairer world for?
Daniel Carins, Smethwick
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