That Lunancy from the Greens in Full...

That Lunancy from the Greens in Full...

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cymtriks

4,560 posts

246 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
Gargamel said:
Includes such gems as

Large Schools with more than 700 pupils broken up and "localised"
Inheritance tax to apply to all transfers of wealth between generations.
£71 a week for everybody.
Remove VAT and replaced with a tax calculated on environmental damage
Aim for no economic growth ever again.
Instead of one massive local comprehensive in my area we'd have about three, each closer to where the pupils live and possibly more capable of dealing with the needs of different catchment areas. It would certainly stop the daily snarl up of the roads in the middle of my town which has two schools, one a fair size, almost next to each other.

IIRC some countries actually tried one rate for every kind of income, including inheritance, to deal with over complex systems and fraud. Given the number of taxes, rates of tax, ways to pay a different tax, etc I can't get too excited by this one either way.

Seventy one pounds a week for every adult is pretty much what we pay now in benefits. If this proposal replaces the current system it would simply share it all out without a bizarrely complex system of means testing that pretty much ensures that if you've managed to do anything right you won't get a bean and if you do manage to claim then it'll be very hard to justify ever not claiming. With this system the seventy pages of forms I helped my elderly MIL to fill in would be reduced to just one asking "do you exist?". If this payment replaced every other benefit it would remove the poverty trap, greatly reduce bureaucracy and everyone would know that at least some money would come their way every week. I wouldn't miss the current system so I can't get too excited about this proposal to replace it (assuming that they are actually proposing this).

VAT proposal is bonkers. I can see where they're coming from but the reality of it being implemented would be a complete mess.

Zero growth target is an odd one, can't see what they think they'd gain by aiming for this. Perhaps it's some association of growth with planet destroying evil.

So out of five that's one that might improve my area a little bit, two I just don't care either way on and two that I disagree with.

This is worse than other manifestos because...

dandarez

13,293 posts

284 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
BJG1 said:
turbobloke said:
"I was forced to participate with various Green delegates in some kind of non-competitive group bonding exercise where we all had to roll about on the floor. Someone let out the most repellent fart. It smelt evil but everyone present politely conspired to pretend that everything was normal. I sense something similar going on right now in the collective efforts of the media chattering classes to present the Green Party as a viable, vibrant and credible force in UK politics in the approach to the General Election."

Why the Greens are a not funny joke and wrong
Are you seriously putting forward something from a site as trashy as Breitbart by somebody as clearly anti-green and with an agenda as James Dellingpole as a serious argument? The bit you've quoted is from years ago, too.
edh said:
I do wish you'd post a warning before a link to that horrible website
Weak in the extreme, as per the Green Party manifesto. Shooting the messenger suggests neither of you has anything to say in countering the points made (including anecdotes relating to whenever which are offered in a current piece) about Green policy. Be assured that if there's material of relevance at that site it will get posted in future and if it offends your sensibilities that's for you to cope with.

The line of non-argument you're offering mimics some sort of attempt at censoring or excluding sources because you think they're not sufficiently bien pensant or, worse, lack receipt of your personal approval, which is simply arrogant. The article linked to isn't the entire website, smearing it via some general hatefest is infantile. You both present as lacking the analytical skills to offer anything beyond name calling. That's based on evidence btw and the source for that is you two.

The content is as follows, by way of summary, so be brave and have a go at addressing it if you've got the knowledge / ability / constitution to cope.

1. Apparently the Green Party’s membership has now overtaken UKIP’s. I’m quite prepared to believe this but I think it says more about the fiendish zealotry of the sort of people attracted to environmental causes than it does about the Green Party itself.

2. You know how at the beginning of each new primary school year there are one or two teachers you pray aren’t going to be the ones to whose class your children have been allocated? And it’s not that these teachers are malign, necessarily. It’s just that they’re wet, agonisingly prey to all the usual PC groupthink and frankly a bit thick – so, while you know your kids won’t necessarily be unhappy during their year with Ms X, they’re not going to learn anything more useful than how to colour in a picture of Mary Seacole for their Black History Week project. Well I’ve met the Green Party’s leader Natalie Bennett and I’m afraid she’s one of those.

3. Watermelons. It stands, of course, for “green on the outside, red on the inside”. But as Matthew Holehouse rightly notes in this analysis of the Green Party’s policies, that doesn’t mean they’re as bad as Karl Marx whose main concern was the way wealth was distributed. No – and this really can’t be pointed out often enough – the Greens are much more dangerous than Karl Marx, because though they share his attitude to redistributionism they are also ideologically opposed to the one thing capable of offering each generation a better standard of living than the previous one: economic growth.

4. The policies for which they have agitated over the years – punching far above their weight – have caused the world and its inhabitants real harm. For the full ugly details read this damning new report by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation called Unintended Consequences Of Climate Change Policy.

5. In office they’re a disaster. As witness the hell they inflicted on the Green Republic of Brighton and Hove. It’s redolent of the loony left Councils which ran various London Boroughs in the 1980s, only with added eco-worthiness. So: out-of-control spending and uncollected rubbish, but with added nonsense like proposals that everyone should experience meat-free Mondays.

6. What all this is really all about, of course, is UKIP. The reason the “rise of the Greens” is getting so much enthusiastic coverage is because the mainstream media appears to have decided en masse that anything is better than UKIP, even a party which, if it got anywhere near the reins of power would bomb the UK economy back to the Dark Ages.

Basically the above content reflects comments to date in this thread. It's not as damning as it should be, the Green Party attempt to reinvent marxism is hidden in plain sight, the reality of what's on offer remain hidden behind a cuddly green cloak of polar bears and kaftans.

Some time ago Green candidate Peter Tatchell set out what's going down by writing on RedPepper in 'Green is the new Red' when he said:
Labour's great, historic achievement was the creation of the NHS and the Welfare State but Gordon Brown is gradually dismantling it. This creeping privatisation of health and education is something that not even Margaret Thatcher attempted. Blair and Brown have out-thatchered Thatcher.

The only alternative?

This poses a huge dilemma for the many good socialists who remain inside the Labour Party. Why stay with a party that isn't even democratic, let alone socialist? What is the alternative?

The most significant left alternative to Labour is Respect, but it is politically compromised. Following in New Labour's footsteps, it has an authoritarian, command-style leadership that has declared it is not a socialist party. They even support the monarchy!

The possibility of securing socialism through New Labour or left alternatives like Respect is zero. There is only one left option left - the Green Party which is why I joined and why I am standing as the Green Party's parliamentary candidate for Oxford East.

The Greens are now the most progressive force in British politics. With our radical agenda for grassroots democracy, social justice, human rights, global equity, environmental protection, peace and internationalism we are well to the left of New Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Green is the new red.

Green is the new red - an empowering political paradigm for human liberation which offers the most credible alternative to New Labour and the best hope for radical social progress.

Unlike the far left sects, the Greens are winners with a wide base of national support.
The Green Party manifesto is unworkable dreck as set out clearly in this thread, and any online article exposing their sum total of lunacy is doing a good job. What's on the rest of the host site is irrelevant.
Top post so far on this thread ...and the most accurate!

Ne'er a truer meaning.
GREEN
(Of a person) - inexperienced or naive.



BJG1

5,966 posts

213 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
Weak in the extreme, as per the Green Party manifesto. Shooting the messenger suggests neither of you has anything to say in countering the points made (including anecdotes relating to whenever which are offered in a current piece) about Green policy. Be assured that if there's material of relevance at that site it will get posted in future and if it offends your sensibilities that's for you to cope with.

The line of non-argument you're offering mimics some sort of attempt at censoring or excluding sources because you think they're not sufficiently bien pensant or, worse, lack receipt of your personal approval, which is simply arrogant. The article linked to isn't the entire website, smearing it via some general hatefest is infantile. You both present as lacking the analytical skills to offer anything beyond name calling. That's based on evidence btw and the source for that is you two.

The content is as follows, by way of summary, so be brave and have a go at addressing it if you've got the knowledge / ability / constitution to cope.

1. Apparently the Green Party’s membership has now overtaken UKIP’s. I’m quite prepared to believe this but I think it says more about the fiendish zealotry of the sort of people attracted to environmental causes than it does about the Green Party itself.

He's probably got a point about the party membership but he's so ridiculously flippant about it and it's obviously not just because of Yurt Dwellers. This argument ignores the fact that there's been a huge surge recently - which doesn't fit with his theory. If it's just because they attract people more likely to join a political party they'd have had a big membership before. Membership has risen because there's a large number of ordinary people who now feel to the left of modern politics and are worried by the lurch to the right that's happening.

2. You know how at the beginning of each new primary school year there are one or two teachers you pray aren’t going to be the ones to whose class your children have been allocated? And it’s not that these teachers are malign, necessarily. It’s just that they’re wet, agonisingly prey to all the usual PC groupthink and frankly a bit thick – so, while you know your kids won’t necessarily be unhappy during their year with Ms X, they’re not going to learn anything more useful than how to colour in a picture of Mary Seacole for their Black History Week project. Well I’ve met the Green Party’s leader Natalie Bennett and I’m afraid she’s one of those.

Pure conjecture, not semblance of fact here. It's just a character assassination with no grounding. This is why I asked if you were seriously linking to an article by such a childish journalist.

3. Watermelons. It stands, of course, for “green on the outside, red on the inside”. But as Matthew Holehouse rightly notes in this analysis of the Green Party’s policies, that doesn’t mean they’re as bad as Karl Marx whose main concern was the way wealth was distributed. No – and this really can’t be pointed out often enough – the Greens are much more dangerous than Karl Marx, because though they share his attitude to redistributionism they are also ideologically opposed to the one thing capable of offering each generation a better standard of living than the previous one: economic growth.

Once again a whole heap of conjecture. As others have pointed out, a vote for Green isn't one to see them in power anyway. I know several Green party members and they're not Marxists. I'm sure some in the party are but they don't have a stated Marxist ideology and just because Delingpole doesn't think their policies are conductive to economic growth doesn't mean they're ideologically opposed to it.

4. The policies for which they have agitated over the years – punching far above their weight – have caused the world and its inhabitants real harm. For the full ugly details read this damning new report by Andrew Montford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation called Unintended Consequences Of Climate Change Policy.

I'm not going to get into a climate change debate. I am sure some policies haven't been the right ones and some implementations haven't worked out but attempting to combat it is a good aim and we shouldn't let failures detract from that. I won't be entertaining a debate on that though because there's already several very tedious threads

5. In office they’re a disaster. As witness the hell they inflicted on the Green Republic of Brighton and Hove. It’s redolent of the loony left Councils which ran various London Boroughs in the 1980s, only with added eco-worthiness. So: out-of-control spending and uncollected rubbish, but with added nonsense like proposals that everyone should experience meat-free Mondays.

They won't get into power so it's not really a problem. People are voting Green because their views not represented by the main parties but in reality those principles will only be implemented when they're adopted by a party with a chance of winning an election.

6. What all this is really all about, of course, is UKIP. The reason the “rise of the Greens” is getting so much enthusiastic coverage is because the mainstream media appears to have decided en masse that anything is better than UKIP, even a party which, if it got anywhere near the reins of power would bomb the UK economy back to the Dark Ages.

The lefty media are out to get us!!!!!!! Please, this is nonsense. UKIP get more than their fair share of coverage, Farage has been on Question Time almost as much as Dimbleby
Replies in bold

steveatesh

4,900 posts

165 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
BJG1 said:
Replies in bold
I would suspect many people who join the Green Party, like many who join UKIP, have not got a clue about the actual policies they are signing up to.

It says more about the nature of a large section of voters than it does about either party in my opinion.

For me the success of the Green Party in growing it's membership is more a marketing success than a growing support for their actual policies. Saving the world is an easy wrapper to place around its totalitarian ideology and many people don't look beyond that wrapper.

edh

3,498 posts

270 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
Weak in the extreme, as per the Green Party manifesto. Shooting the messenger suggests neither of you has anything to say in countering the points made (including anecdotes relating to whenever which are offered in a current piece) about Green policy. Be assured that if there's material of relevance at that site it will get posted in future and if it offends your sensibilities that's for you to cope with.

The line of non-argument you're offering mimics some sort of attempt at censoring or excluding sources because you think they're not sufficiently bien pensant or, worse, lack receipt of your personal approval, which is simply arrogant. The article linked to isn't the entire website, smearing it via some general hatefest is infantile. You both present as lacking the analytical skills to offer anything beyond name calling. That's based on evidence btw and the source for that is you two.
Patronising nonsense.. I find Breitbart (and Delingpole) repulsive. I acknowledge there is a "car crash" fascination with stuff like this - also stuff like the comments on Guido Fawkes posts. I'm not advocating stopping him publishing, just don't want to read it. There are plenty of other sources of right wing opinion that don't operate at this level.

"not sufficiently bien pensant or, worse, lack receipt of your personal approval".. I see plenty of spite and ridicule aimed at sources from the left...

The point about the Greens being left wing - Anyone who cares to read their extensive policy proposals would see that they sit to the left of any of the other main UK parties. It's not hidden. Why is it such a big deal?

btw - You think I support the Greens?

turbobloke

104,009 posts

261 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
More commentary on Green Party fruitloopery from a couple of PH's favourite websites, followed by some bullet point Green 'thinking' to cheer us all up as we approach the weekend, now just visible in the middle distance.

Lunacy of the town that turned green

Welcome to the completely bonkers world of the Green Party manifesto

  • Top-ups [will be] given for people with children or disabilities, or to pay rent and mortgages. No-one will see a reduction in benefits, and most will see a substantial increase. Parents will be entitled to two years’ paid leave from work. The policy will enable people to “choose their own types and patterns of work”, and will allow people to take up “personally satisfying and socially useful work”. [It will cost somewhere between £240-280 billion a year – more than double the current health budget, and ten times the defence budget.]
  • Under Green plans, inheritance tax – “to prevent the accumulation of wealth and power by a privileged class” – will no longer just tax the dead. Under radical reforms, it will cover gifts made while the giver is still alive – raising the prospect of levies on cars, jewellery or furniture given by parents to their children.
  • New resource taxes would apply to wood, metal and minerals, and steeper levies imposed on cars. Crucially, import taxes will be levied on goods brought to Britain reflecting the “ecological impact” of making them – with tariffs reintroduced for trade between Britain and the rest of Europe, ending the free trade bloc.
  • All elements of the sex industry will be decriminalised, and prostitutes could no longer be discriminated against in child custody cases.
  • The Greens also want to see “significantly reduced” levels of imprisonment, with jail only used when there is a “substantial risk of a further grave crime” or in cases where offences are so horrific that offenders would be at risk of vigilantes. Prisoners will be given the vote.
  • SATS, early years tests and league tables will be abolished, and “creative” subjects given equal parity to the “academic”.
  • The England football, rugby and cricket teams would no longer play against countries where “normal, friendly, respectful or diplomatic relations are not possible.” Football clubs would be owned by co-operatives and not traded on the stock markets.
  • No more new airports or runways will be built, and existing ones nationalised. All new homes and businesses must by law provide bicycle parking. Helicopter travel would be regulated “more strictly”.
  • Advertising of holiday flights will be controlled by law to halt the “promotion of a high-carbon lifestyle”. New taxes would be imposed on carriers to reduce passenger numbers.
  • Assisted dying will be legalised, and the law on abortion liberalised to allow nurses to carry it out. “Alternative” medicine will be promoted. Private healthcare will be more heavily taxed, with special levies on private hospitals that employ staff who were trained on the NHS.
  • It will be a criminal offence, with “significant fines”, to stop a woman from breastfeeding in a restaurant or shop, and formula milk will be more tightly regulated.
  • In order to prevent “overpopulation” burdening the earth, the state will provide free condoms and fund research for new contraceptives. Merely being a member of al-Qaeda, the IRA and other currently proscribed terrorist groups will no longer be a criminal offence under Green plans, and instead a Green Government should seek to “address desperate motivations that lie behind many atrocities labelled ‘terrorist’,” the policy book states.
  • Terrorism, it adds, “is an extremely loaded term. Sometimes governments justify their own terrorist acts by labelling any groups that resist their monopoly of violence ‘terrorist’.”
  • Britain will leave NATO, end the special relationship with the US, and unilaterally abandon nuclear weapons. A standing army, navy and airforce is “unnecessary”. Bases will be turned into nature reserves and the arms industry “converted” to producing windturbines.
  • “Richer regions do not have the right to use migration controls to protect their privileges from others in the long term,” the party’s policy book states.
  • A Green Government will “progressively reduce” border controls, including an amnesty for illegal immigrants after five years. Access to benefits, the right to vote and tax obligations will apply to everyone living on British soil, regardless of passport.
  • The policy book states: “We will work to create a world of global inter-responsibility in which the concept of a ‘British national’ is irrelevant and outdated.” UK political parties will be funded by the state, and the electoral system changed.

allergictocheese

1,290 posts

114 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
The greens are not trying to form government. Their policies are not realistic, nor do I think they're all supposed to be. What they do do is garner a level of support that keeps the main parties understanding that green issues are important and need to be addressed.

The Green Party is a bona fide pressure group over environmental issues, in the same way UKIP are with the EU and immigration.

Taking any of them too literally or seriously is unnecessary.

hairykrishna

13,183 posts

204 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
turbobloke said:
“Alternative” medicine will be promoted.
I can't seem to find this in their policies. Do you have a reference?

Do you consider all of those bullet points lunacy?

skyrover

12,674 posts

205 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
Isn't the point of a pressure group to implement or push your policy/agenda?

Sadly it seems there really are people ignorant or worse, mad enough to believe in these policies...

Alternatively, some people is seems just want to watch the world burn

turbobloke

104,009 posts

261 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
skyrover said:
Isn't the point of a pressure group to implement or push your policy/agenda?
Is a manifesto not a set of policies from a Party - not a pressure group - that either seeks Government or seeks to contribute to Government? Green policies in their manifesto if implemented will not just contribute to, but achieve, the destruction of the UK economy.

skyrover said:
Sadly it seems there really are people ignorant or worse, mad enough to believe in these policies...
As mentioned earlier in the thread, it's more likely most grass roots Greens haven't read the manifesto, and think anything with the word 'green' in it must be cuddly and will save bears. There will be econutters who think the policies should be implemented. They were referred to after their take-over of Greenpeace as 'extremists and ultra-leftists' by co-founder Moore.

skyrover said:
Alternatively, some people is seems just want to watch the world burn
Is that a metaphor?

Jasandjules

69,924 posts

230 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
And the money fairy will be found to pay for it all?

Andy Zarse

10,868 posts

248 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
hairykrishna said:
turbobloke said:
“Alternative” medicine will be promoted.
I can't seem to find this in their policies. Do you have a reference?

Do you consider all of those bullet points lunacy?
Can't speak for TB but by and large, yes I do. Almost all are completely and utterly bonkers, practically without exception. I'd expect a year 7 debating group to be able to come up with more sensible, workable policies than this load of utter drivel. I assume you find them highly attractive?

otolith

56,201 posts

205 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
On the plus side, we will all be able to smoke what they're evidently smoking. Though I think they need to take more tobacco with it.

skyrover

12,674 posts

205 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
hairykrishna said:
Do you consider all of those bullet points lunacy?
Do you?

Scuffers

20,887 posts

275 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
Andy Zarse said:
Can't speak for TB but by and large, yes I do. Almost all are completely and utterly bonkers, practically without exception. I'd expect a year 7 debating group to be able to come up with more sensible, workable policies than this load of utter drivel. I assume you find them highly attractive?
this ^^^^

hw they can garner any serious support beggars belief.

it's really just a sad indictment of our society that we have people this ill-informed and stupid among us who actually don't understand just how stupid they truly are.


TTwiggy

11,548 posts

205 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
Scuffers said:
this ^^^^

hw they can garner any serious support beggars belief.

it's really just a sad indictment of our society that we have people this ill-informed and stupid among us who actually don't understand just how stupid they truly are.
Absolutely. But enough about Ukip voters; how do you feel about the Greens? smile

turbobloke

104,009 posts

261 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
TTwiggy said:
Scuffers said:
this ^^^^

hw they can garner any serious support beggars belief.

it's really just a sad indictment of our society that we have people this ill-informed and stupid among us who actually don't understand just how stupid they truly are.
Absolutely. But enough about Ukip voters; how do you feel about the Greens? smile
heheredcard

UKIP poicies are sane in isolation and massively so in comparison with Green lunacy. But enough about sanity, back to the Green Party.

Hoofy

76,386 posts

283 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
fk me.

There were one or two ideas which sounded good but it was like trying to find a packet of crisps in a sea of sewage.

turbobloke

104,009 posts

261 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
Hoofy said:
fk me.

There were one or two ideas which sounded good but it was like trying to find a packet of crisps in a sea of sewage.
hehe

Breastfeeding is best. See p3 wink but not in the Green Party manifesto probably.

hairykrishna

13,183 posts

204 months

Thursday 22nd January 2015
quotequote all
skyrover said:
hairykrishna said:
Do you consider all of those bullet points lunacy?
Do you?
Not all of them. I largely agree with the health one, which is why I queried the "alternative medicine" bit (which I do not agree with). Pretty much the statements on terrorism and prisons too.