Speech – Greens’ policies
The Green Party is the only party that hasn’t been panicked into a knee-jerk copying of UKIP’s paranoia about immigration.
I’m not going to waste your time or patronize you by preaching the many benefits of immigration. Instead, I ask you this: who caused our country most problems: the bankers who plunged us into economic disaster, the expenses-milking politicians who have the cheek to lecture the poor (the vast majority of whom are innocent) about benefit fraud, the wealthy tax-dodgers keeping £25 billion a year from the Exchequer; the poverty-wage paying bosses and rip-off-rent-charging landlords – or foreign health workers and farm labourers?
If we want the British unemployed to do the farm labouring that East European immigrants do today, we have to reform the benefits system. We shouldn’t penalize people for working for a few months and then being unemployed again – that’s the nature of farm work. We must increase the minimum wage, and enforce it. You can’t expect people to work for less than they get on the dole! And the answer to that isn’t to cut the dole, which anyone who’s had to rely on it for any length of time knows is not generous.
We need large numbers of new affordable homes, mostly on brownfield sites, rather than additional expensive houses spreading haphazardly on greenfield sites. We need more schools, and more teachers. We need development to be properly planned, and we need improved public transport – particularly rural bus services. The Green Party will fight for these things. We’re a rich country, we can afford it.
All in this together, are we, Mr Cameron?
Austerity is ideological, not an economic necessity. Its purpose is to transfer wealth from the general public to the already wealthy. It’s a failed policy by any other standards. In less than five years under this government the National Debt has grown more than it did in thirteen years under the previous one.
Who do we owe this money to? Directly or indirectly, mostly to private banks and their wealthy shareholders. Where did the banks get the money from? The government gave them permission to conjure it out of thin air! You can call it “quantitative easing,” but the truth is, the government said, “magic some money up, and lend it to us.” Then we – the taxpayers – have to pay it back. With interest. It’s a big con.
The Green Party is the only party in England that opposes austerity.
Don’t try to tell me Green Party economics doesn’t add up. I understand mathematics and economics only too well.
The Green party is the only party that still really believes in public ownership of crucial services. The Labour Party used to! But we are the only party left who will fight to reverse the immoral privatization of the National Health Service, the railways, the Royal Mail, and the distribution of water, electricity and gas. Given away for money magicked into existence with government permission!
The government says we can’t afford it; on the contrary, the taxpayer and consumer can’t afford for them to be in private hands.
The Green Party is genuinely concerned about environmental issues. Other parties pay lip service to them at best. Climate change is real, and will have real, serious consequences. Believe the knowledgeable scientists who tell us this, not the politicians, or business people with vested interests, who pretend it’s all lies! For the sake of our children and grandchildren, we must do something about it. It’s no use pussyfooting about pretending to do things, or doing trivial things that make almost no difference. It’s vital that thinking on these issues is properly joined up, and not short-term and opportunistic.
Maybe hundred metre wind turbines every five hundred metres around our area wouldn’t look particularly nice. But rather them than fracking wells, or a nuclear power station only 65 miles away, on the coast, with sea level rising because of carbon emissions. Building wind turbines uses a lot of concrete and steel, but building nuclear power stations, uranium mines, fuel manufacturing facilities etc. uses a great deal more. And there’s the still unsolved – unsolvable – problem of nuclear waste disposal. Unlike most politicians, I know plenty about engineering – nuclear engineering in particular.