Alan's Green Thoughts

Yesterday, the (now UKIP) Conservative MP for Clacton, Essex, Douglas Carswell, took many (including myself) totally by surprised when he announced that not only had he defected to UKIP but also that he would resign to recontest his seat under his new party colours.  This is the first time since 1982 that this exact situation has happened-and the last time it happened, Bruce Douglas-Mann (who defected to the SDP from Labour) lost heavily in the resulting by-election in Mitcham and Morden of 1982, finished third in 1983 but still allowed Conservative Angela Rumbold to hold that seat by splitting the Labour vote, and he never subsequently returned to Parliament.  In an interesting twist, UKIP's general election candidate, Roger Lord, is refusing to stand aside for Mr. Carswell, in the same way that, returning to the 1980s, Michael O'Halloran (MP for Islington North back in 1982) refused to stand aside for John Grant (MP for Islington Central, a seat that no longer exists,back

Green songs and poetry: Vote yes, as it's the right thing (a song about Scottish independence, chorus to the tune of 'Follow Me' by Uncle Kracker) From the UK, home to you and me, Scotland does soon hope to be free, From the constraints of Whitehall and Westminster elites, And the unfair, cruel dogma of austerity.  I hope they'll Vote yes to freedom,as it's the right thing, And ignore the lies of Alistair Darling,  If in 2014 the Scots break away It'll bring much hope to all the UK. If the Scots support independence come 2014, Cheers will flourish from Dumfries to Aberdeen,  A yes vote means real control of money and energy, And more importantly, their future destiny.     I hope they'll Vote yes to freedom, as it's the right thing,   And ignore the lies of Alistair Darling,  If in 2014 the Scots break away, It'll bring much hope to all the UK.   Yes to freedom means that Holyrood   Never again has to bow to Old Etonians'

Earlier today, the recently-appointed Prime Minister of France, Manuel Valls, resigned along with the entire cabinet of the French government amid the serious damage austerity is doing to France. Just before this, France's (soon to be ex-) Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg correctly blamed Angela Merkel for spreading it across the Eurozone (most of the European Union these days), especially to Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain where austerity measures are hurting the people the most for a recession they never caused. With this incident and so many others in the past two years, I sometimes wonder if French President Francois Hollande will end his term prematurely, given how ineffectual and disappointing he has been overall in France. Monsieur Montebourg has correctly pointed out that these budget cuts to meet Eurozone deficits, far from reducing deficits, actually prolong the recession in European countries and do not achieve anything-proving once again that 'austeri

Yesterday, the first, (and I hope it will be the last) by-election for a Police and Crime Commissioner took place in the United Kingdom, in the West Midlands to replace former commissioner Bob Jones who died earlier this year. I barely wanted to notice due to the clear lack of a mandate shown for Police and Crime Commissioners across the country back in 2012-and as it turns out, so did almost 90% of the electorate of the area covered by West Midlands Police. The final result recorded the worst ever turnout for any notable by-election in British peacetime history-the turnout was a staggeringly low 10.3%. I will just say that the Labour candidate, David Jamieson, won easily by winning 50.8% of the vote and therefore he did not have to go through a second round of voting (PCC elections use alternative vote, not first past the post) This once again affirms that really, we should scrap Police and Crime Commissioners-they are unnecessary and with turnouts like those that occurred two yea

I would like to give my thanks to those of you who demonstrated at various rail stations across the UK yesterday-especially as yet another above-inflation train fare rise, of 3.5%, will come into effect in January 2015. Bringing the railways back into public hands (as well as other types of public transport) needs to be a priority, and I am once again glad that the Green Party is fully committed to this. To prove to you that railway privatisation has just resulted in grand theft from honest users like yourselves and I, and with worse service (especially on First Capital Connect!) to boot, here is a comparison of return fares of short, middle distance, and long return journeys in the UK and several other EU nations: Short journey (~20 miles, the distance from my home town of Ware into London): Great Britain (Ware to London): £17 (one day travelcard) Ireland (Cork to Mallow; I stayed in Cork on my holiday in Ireland back in 2012): £14.35 France (Calais to Boulogne-sur-Mer): £6.60

In an earlier blog post, I made predictions about the most likely Green gains at next year's general election, the most likely UKIP gains at next year's general election, and the most likely (not likely at all, in reality) Liberal Democrat gains at next year's general election. There has been some speculation about how many seats each party will win in 2015, based on opinion polling and current trends, and whether Labour under Ed Miliband will obtain an overall majority or not. I do not believe Labour will gain a majority at present even though they are likely to win the most seats next year, and that uniform swings will no longer be a remotely reliable measure of predicting next year's general election results. It would be more exciting if my fellow Greens were competitive in many more seats, but sadly despite the fact we are increasingly becoming the main alternative to the neoliberal consensus held by the three major parties (and UKIP to a greater extent), there ar