If you wear a yellow badge you might as well wear a blue one

 

Lib Dems ‘get a kicking’ in Barnsley

“The voters here in Barnsley have given me and the Lib Dems a kicking”, admitted candidate Dominic Carman after coming sixth and losing his deposit in the Barnsley Central by-election on 3 March. Not that their coalition partners the Tories did much better, getting less than 2,000 votes, beaten by UK Independence Party (UKIP) who came second.

Five out of six who voted Lib Dem in the general election deserted them. This was their lowest placed result ever in a by-election in England. Carman reported that: “In the minds of many voters, if you wear a yellow badge you might as well wear a blue one.” Despite Nick Clegg’s claims that “we have nothing to learn from this result”, the Lib Dems face growing splits at their Spring conference in Sheffield next weekend as well as electoral wipe-out in May’s local elections.

Any way think about it why mix the two colours they turn To guess what? you got it Green so don’t waste time get your Green colours today.

Funny day

I was out today canvassing and a resident recognised me,she said something that made me smile.”  Hi Joe don’t tell me you standing for the Bloody Liberals again my Dad would have never forgiven me if he thought i had voted for the Conservatives” i think people have got the message. The second person gave me some case work that i handed over this afternoon while making small talk i asked him he had seen anything of Labour or the Condems his answer was the best, he said i vote at the bowling club and the only time i know who the other candidates are is when i look on the Ballot paper.

Time for a Laugh

The poorest should not be forgotten in the chase for the “squeezed middle”, says Caroline

04 March 2011

On this week’s Guardian Politics Weekly podcast, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas MP challenged Ed Miliband on inequality and took the government to task on its green record.

Discussing Ed Miliband’s recent speech at the Resolution Foundation, where he claimed there is a “quiet crisis” around kitchen tables over the failure of “rising prosperity [to] benefit the bulk of working people”, Caroline welcomed the fact that Labour were starting to put issues such as inequality back on the agenda.

“Inequality matters,” she said, “but I worry a little bit, in terms of Ed Miliband’s ‘squeezed middle’, about exactly where that fits—is this an electoral ploy to try to appeal to some groups he may feel are not going to vote for him next time around?”

Caroline expressed her concern that “squeezed middle” and “alarm clock Britain” rhetoric could shift the focus away from the very poorest, who will be particularly hard hit by the coalition’s cuts. She said Miliband could afford to be more radical, highlighting the appetite across the UK for making bankers pay more and moving more convincingly against tax evasion and avoidance.

She also said that now is a good time to push for a living wage, increasing productivity, reducing absenteeism, and certainly not leading to doom as suggested in some quarters, just as the minimum wage didn’t.

On David Cameron’s claims to be the greenest government ever, the Green MP said that the abolition of both the Sustainable Development Commission and the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution hardly back this up. Nor do cuts to the Energy Savings Trust and the Carbon Trust, and the weakening of Natural England.

She said that the u-turn on forests showed the government has “no real feeling for the value that people in Britain put on the forests at all,” and stressed that the environmental and economic crises must be tackled at the same time—“they are not mutually exclusive—you can do both if you have a bit of imagination.”

The full podcast can be listened to or downloaded here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/audio/2011/mar/03/politics-weekly-podcast-squeezed-middle-green-agenda

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Big Thank You

Thanks to the People taking out the latest leaflets to Swinton North Tomorrow,it’s hard keeping up at the moment thank god we have the second riso,with luck we could have a Colour operational by Next week,hope we get a manual with it this time.talk about trail and error,i suppose it’s the best way to learn. Get rid of my sore feet i should be ok.

What Greens are Doing within Local Councils full details are available just drop me a line.

What we Have Achieved for Norwich

The Green Party is the second largest party on Norwich City Council, holding fourteen seats, just two seats behind Labour. At County Hall, the Green Party holds seven seats and is the third largest party. In both cases, we play a constructive role in proposing Green policies and influencing Council decisions where we can – although there is much more we could do if we were the largest party.

Green Councillors in Norwich have achieved many breakthroughs in improving City and County Council policies, enhancing people’s quality of life and protecting vital services. Here is a selection of those achievements:

• Helping children and families
• Protecting parks, green spaces and allotments
• Public services and housing
• Public transport and cycling
• Fair trade, animal welfare, and ethical policies
• Energy and climate change
• Recycling and waste
• Safer and cleaner streets

Thought of the day

Alistair Darling promised a re-elected Labour Government would introduce cuts that were “deeper and tougher” than Margaret Thatcher. This could not have been more provocative given how Thatcherism is regarded by millions of Labour supporters living in communities that were devastated in the .1980s

So what would Labour have done if re-elected?how much in real terms would they have slashed, we have all seen what the Tories and their Liberal Democrat chums are doing to rip the heart and soul out of our society. lets take it a step further not one of them to be realistic were honest enough to talk turkey and give us something to look closely at,so are they as bad has each other? any comments.

Hello Hello what’s going on here then?

If Cllr Drake turned up at PFI meetings @SteveMiddleton would know he’s being a bit premature with his blog entry. Money still NOT confirmed

Miss information ? i suppose Clr Ws right it does pay to turn up at meetings.

Lets hope the Money comes through Salford Deserves it the Amount the Tories and Liberal Democrats have bleed from the Budget.

Part of one article i read early this morning god are they right.

Public policy: Failures of nerve and vision

Clearer policymaking at an earlier stage could have mitigated two serious failures made by the coalition

• Policy failures come in many shapes and sizes. But they are almost invariably accentuated by the choices that have to be made in periods of financial shortage. Yesterday the coalition government found itself confronted by two of them, one in policing policy and the other in higher education. The failures are radically different in many details. But they have this in common: they are both serious failures, and they were both foreseeable. They could both have been mitigated by clearer policymaking at an earlier stage. Instead each has been allowed to fester and become more difficult to solve politically as well as practically. Downing Street must be thanking Prince Andrew for providing some distraction.