The Greens have been invited-and my thoughts on election debates for the present and future.

Readers, our democratic pressure has finally paid off-the Greens, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru will be in the televised leaders' debates after all. The BBC and ITV plan to host some seven-way debates-let us wish the best of luck to Natalie, Nicola, and Leanne in those debates; I believe these debates will be some of the toughest and most contentious debates in the history of televised debating.

This step importantly means that major issues will now be properly debated on air which would not be if only the leaders from the four main capitalist parties (i.e. Dave, Ed, Nick, and Nigel) had been invited, as OFCOM and the main channels had intended. The inclusion of the Greens, SNP, and Plaid will mean proper debates about the need to protect the environment, about scrapping Trident (which should have been done years ago), and most importantly about the dangers of TTIP to the people of Britain. 

With more and more people abandoning television (mostly) in favour of the Internet and online radio, I believe that there should be more digital debates in the run-up to the election, and I believe that also the leader(s) any other decent (i.e. not racist) party able who has managed to get at least 100 prospective parliamentary candidates ready (so for example if Dave Nellist somehow gets the Trade Unionist and Socialist coalition to meet his hopes of standing over 100 PPCs, he should be allowed to come along to these debates in the interests of democracy as well). After all, if televised debates had been around for the 1992 general election, who knows what the public would have thought of the Natural Law Party debating its policy of yogic flying live on air?

This year marks the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, and the 750th anniversary of the first British Parliament-truly such a year for we the people to rise up, make all our voices heard, and give Britain a new direction, away from the lies of trickle-down economics (among other deceptions used by the rich and powerful).

Alan.



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