Are The Greens the new Raving Loony Party!

I do not see anything wrong with what both of them have said, POGS. They are both saying the same.
I do not see how it was a feeble answer, janea. It's true, they are not likely to be the government, although I do hope they can hold whoever is in power to account, along with other minority parties.

Loads of people say they do not trust any of the main parties, but would not vote for the minor parties. What do you want?
This is our chance to change the system. People thought they had done it in 2010, but did not realise how weak the Libdems would be. This time we can do it properly, by voting for the party which does most to support our views. We know there's a chance of having three or four parties sharing control.

durhamjen

How on earth can be saying the same thing.

You say you watched Natalie Bennett on Sunday Politics so you know she said it was a policy and put forward some minor ways of getting to the cost of doing it.

I would have thought anybody who heard /watched the interview would be surprised Caroline Lucas is not agreeing. Perhaps they just have different perceptions of what is or not policy for their manifesto.

www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2015/02/04/comment-the-knives-are-out-for-the-green-party

Andrew Neill actually apologised for interrupting Natalie Bennett too much.

The knives are out for every party, not just The Greens. It''s called campaigning before an election.

Some handle it well, some don't but at the end of the day you have to prove you can take it, give it back and prove you have the maturity to cope with the inevitable scrutiny you are sure to get .

If anybody feels pressure at this stage I don't fancy their chances much, from which ever party they are from.

I do not think that scrutinising a political parties manifesto very closely and challenging and questioning their policies can be described as 'getting the knives out'.

We are electing the people who will collectively be responsible for the governance of the country for the next five years. We need to make very sure before we make a decision on who to vote for that the policies we support are viable at every level - and this means asking deeply probing questions and challenging the answers we get.

It is so easy to be carried away by policies that promise a world we really want, only to find when the party gets elected that their policies are impossible to implement because of their cost or because people are not like they wanted them to be so the policy doesn't work.

I agree re the economy Eloethan. If all the governments and monetary organisations agreed that all international debts were cancelled what would happen??

" To allow one's fiscal position to be determined by the selfishness and whims of those who see no need to contribute to society seems spineless in the extreme. Of course the author is right that the rich will seek to avoid paying their fair share, but the role of a politician aiming to create a more equal society is to challenge and pursue them for the contribution they should be making, not to shy away and accept their power and the disfigured society it has brought us.

The fact that these attacks have focused entirely on the costings of our policies and not on the principle of why we wish to introduce them makes it clear that our opponents are involved in a self-interested rubbishing campaign. What could and should be an open and informed discussion about the kind of society we wish to live in is obscured by weapons of mass distraction - a series of accounting exercises, using figures as weapons dressed up as irrefutable truths. The reason is obvious: when you're talking about hypotheticals – and every econometric model or discussion about how finances might appear in two or three years' time is hypothetical – you are actually in the realm of posturing and performance."

Two paragraphs from the article.

I am going to bed!

I was quickly scanning the thread "headlines" and read Durhamjens post as, "To allow one's "faecal" position to be determined by the selfishness...."

Good night all.

durhamjen

'The fact that these attacks have focused entirely on the costings of our policies'

Looking at parties policies 'requires' looking at the costings to know how feasable the policies are.

It is not back stabbing, it is not spineless, it is not self interested. It is common sense, it is grown up politics, it is a perfectly rational thing to happen.

Are you saying if the Greens were in power it wouldn't/shouldn't matter if the sums don't add up? The voter should totally ignore thinking about a parties financial aptitude?

I think the fact policies are being scrutinized is looking more and more like a necessity.

Exactly. Look at the LibDems' promise to abolish University tuition fees. Once safely ensconsed within the coalition it was 'Oh, the conservatives wouldn't let us...'

They wouldn't Ana. The Lib Dems had 57 MP and the Conservatives 307. How would you suggest they could make the Conservatives agree?

In fact the Lib Dems seem to have got proportionately more of their manifesto commitments through than could be expected with the numbers they had.

It always seems to me that the University tuition fees argument is rolled out by people who wouldn't vote Lib Dem under any circumstances and has become quite a vacuous discussion point. The same happens with all the other parties and those who would never vote for them of course.

Durhamjen I read the two paras you quote from the Green Manifesto and went back to my previous posting.

It is so easy to be carried away by policies that promise a world we really want, only to find when the party gets elected that their policies are impossible to implement because of their cost or because people are not like they wanted them to be so the policy doesn't work.

I was listening to a discussion on R4 radio with the author of a book on the Moslem Brotherhood in Egypt. He was looking at the inner workings of the group rather than its external workings.

As he talked about how within the group members believed, essentially that they must change themselves to being religious and pious and that way change the culture of their whole society to become a religious and pious society which God would then come into and inhabit and his divine guidance would remove all obstacles that faced them.

I was, without the religious connotations, irresistibly drawn to making comparisons with the Green Party who have a vision of a perfectable world where we all live in harmony and peace. Their policies are essentially based on working within this transformed culture where we are all live in harmony and peace, similar to the 'religious and pious' society of the Moslem Brotherhood. Unfortunately, as the Moslem Brotherhood found when they got into power, society doesn't work like that and within a year Egypt was back under military dictatorship.

If the Greens won power they would soon find, like the President Morsi in Egypt and the new Greek government, that it is one thing to promise Utopia, is far more difficult to impose it without damaging a damaged country even further.

My post about university tuition fees wasn't meant to be a vacuous discussion point, Gracesgran.

It was just an example reinforcing FlicketyB's observation that some policies proposed by parties who have no experience of actual government would either never work in the real world, or would be overruled by their coalition partners.

It is easy to propose Utopian ideas which will not work in practice if you think you will never have a chance of being in government.

The Lib Dems must have thought all their birthdays had come at once.
They certainly managed to have their way with a disproportionate number of ministerial posts.

Hardly a surprise I agree with Flickery B's analogy.

We have a world in which 1% of the population owns 50% of the wealth, and the gap is widening each year. If that isn't "loony", I don't know what is.

Why is it in the interests of the majority to allow multi-national corporations, financial institutions and wealthy individuals to dictate how a country should be run? We are already in a situation where politicians of all the mainstream parties are frightened to alienate these powerful groups by enforcing regulation and taxation. If this continues, will we eventually be in a situation where governments are superfluous - being merely "window dressing" to provide cover for those that wield the real power?

Good points in there.

A couple of points.
Are Governments worried about enforcing regulations?

and
the 50% of wealth point seems to come at having more than £570,000 worth of, assets minus liabilities.

I would have thought it was a lot higher than that. It doesnt seem that high?

But I struggle with the whole wealth concept a bit.
What about say, if you lived in say Sri Lanka, and owned 5 houses. I would have thought you would therefore be wealthy in your own country. But not I suppose worldwide, if you tried to sell those houses and find you have barely enough for an airfare [this example may be a bad one, but I hope you see the point I am trying to make?]

You are being oversensitive Ana. I did not say your post was vacuous but that the repeated use of the fact that 57 MPs could not beat 307 MPs in a vote, was an empty argument.

I agree that parties who have not been in power, or have not been in power for decades my not realise what is possible but the Lib Dems now have that experience so you can vote for them now .

Joking aside, you can vote for those who know how the system works for ever and you will basically get a government run by bureaucrats or you could vote for those who dream of a better society and then tell the real bureaucrats to get as close to it a possible.

Well, you can all vote Tory or Labour at the election. Then you will not have to put up with Green idealism, or the NHS, or people who have killed themselves because they owed £800 to HMRC, just be owned by people who write what they want in the papers, then retire to their money in tax havens.
What a choice.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-with-isis-go-have-a-drink-dont-pray-its-not-islam-dont-give-your-life-up-for-nothing-former-militant-advises-wouldbe-jihadists-10021616.html?origin=internalSearch

All these would be condemned by those who agree with Boris about jihadists.
Personally, it's another reason to vote Green.

I should have included rosequartz in my last post as she too, it appears want a neatly run government rather than one that reaches for the stars.

I agree "Eloethan*, business has become a god. You only have to see Digby Jones doing the rounds of the studios to put out his message that, oh my goodness, someone is opposing what business thinks it should be able to do.

I would say to everyone, repeat and repeat again, "there is no problem in earning what you are worth even if that is a stunning amount but business and capital have no morality and will continue to take from the rich to give to the poor." What? You don't think you are poor. The rich are ensuring that you or your children or your grandchildren will be moving closer and closer to that point while they lock up their assets and tell you they have earned them, passing them on to children and grandchildren to ensure they too are always at the top of the tree.

wants not want

take from the poor to give to the rich - I obviously need my dinner!

I should have included rosequartz in my last post as she too, it appears want a neatly run government rather than one that reaches for the stars

Totally by that remark!

If you mean by that 'Vote Green' Gracesgran I would prefer to vote for a government which pays my pension, runs the country in a reasonably sensible manner (bearing in mind that in fact big business is in charge, not governments as I have posted before) and, generally speaking, knows what it is doing from its past experiences.

Let the entrepreneurs 'reach for the stars'.

"Given that the actual economic evidence so clearly demonstrates that ideological austerity has been an abject failure in its own terms, how is it that so many people still laud George Osborne for his so-called "recovery"?

In my view it is not because they are stupid, it's because they're simply unaware of the reality that George Osborne's ideological austerity experiment is severely damaging the UK economy.

The mainstream press have refused to hold Osborne to account for his failed predictions and endlessly harp on about "the recovery" as if taking seven long years for the UK economy to return to pre-crisis levels is some kind of miracle. Not only do the mainstream press routinely ignore the fact that Osborne's austerity experiment has blatantly failed in it's own terms, they also ignore the fact that this so-called "recovery" has come at the cost of borrowing over quarter of a trillion more than Osborne said he would, and the longest sustained decline in wages since records began.

It's no surprise at all that billionaires like Jonathan Harmsworth (Daily Mail), Rupert Murdoch (The S*n, The Times, Sky TV), Richard Desmond (The Express, Channel 5) and the Barclay brothers (The Telegraph) are so keen to sing George Osborne's praises. After all, the wealthiest 1% are the only sector of society to have gained dramatically during George Osborne's austerity experiment. There's no way that media outlets owned by these people are ever going to openly explain how much of a failure Osbornomics has proven to be for the rest of us."

anotherangryvoice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/george-osborne-genius-how-think.html

For anyone who wants to read where that quotation comes from.