Friday 27 April 2007

The Green Party in Kirklees

I promised a post about the green party in Huddersfield. If you don't fancy reading it all though, i can summarise it fairly well, they're rubbish!

In Huddersfield the Greens currently hold three council seats, in the Newsome ward of Kirklees Council. The local councillors (if not the local party) are firmly on the right of the party, the most left activity that happened here recently was when co-party speaker Derek Wall spoke at a public meeting
Their actions on the council were partly responsible for ending the weekly collection of rubbish bins, instead changing collections to fortnightly. They did increase recycling bin collections from every four weeks to fortnightly too, but altogether it was a cut in services (there were 5 collections every 4 weeks, now there are only 4). This caused havoc at christmas as added to the usual reductions we didn't get bins collected for 4 weeks, leading to people having rubbish piles cos it wouldn't fit in bins. Most recently they joined in coalition with the liberal democrats and conservatices in voting through a cuts budget in the council.
Ultimately the greens in kirklees are pro-capitalist with a green tinge, they do happen to get a few prestige green projects the go-ahead such as installing two wind turbines on one of the council buildings, but this hardly makes a dint in the environmental catastrophes occuring under capitalism.

4 comments:

Tom said...

You said:
"Ultimately the greens in kirklees are pro-capitalist with a green tinge"
Same in Scotland mate and I think the same all over the UK. The only supporters of them I've met amongst working class people outside the Green party recently have been rabid "the world is doomed unless we drop democracy, worker's rights and other 'luxuries'in favour of a Green dictatoship" types. Unfortunately some on th left still look to the Grens as being something credible. Ah well. Some poor sods are still trying to reclaim the Labour party as well. LOL!

Frank Partisan said...

The Greens in Germany when in power, cut social services worse than the right.

Frank Partisan said...

Happy Belated May Day.

Anonymous said...

Here in Barnstaple, North Devon, they pledged before the recent elections to introduce a congestion charge and increase already exhorbitant car parking prices at the hospital.

All while opposing the construction of a new bypass which will significantly reduce traffic flows through Barnstaple and not proposing anything concrete for public transport, except more subsidies to go into the pockets of FirstGroup and Stagecoach shareholders.

They didn't outline any policies outside of environment/transport yet bleat when we accuse them of being single issue. Also, their scorched earth electoral tactics made sure North Devon now has a Tory council for the first time ever.

They're reactionary and opportunistic, and the likes of Derek Wall should stop giving them a left face they don't deserve and help build a real left alternative.