Why I am backing Caroline Russell to be Green Party candidate for Mayor of London in 2016

The Green Party selection for Mayor of London candidate, and London Assembly candidates for 2016 has opened, and here is why I am backing Caroline Russell, Green Party councillor for Highbury East, Islington and the sole opposition councillor to Labour in Islington, to be the Green Party candidate for Mayor of London next year and to be #1 on the Green Party's list of candidates for the London Assembly next year.

I believe Caroline Russell, who has been a diligent Green activist and Local Transport Spokesperson for the Green Party, has the integrity, innovation, and passion needed to forge a new, green path for London and give the office of Mayor of London a new, forward-thinking vision which Greater London needs. Caroline has been a considerate, caring, and diligent councillor for the people of Islington and helps provide a useful voice of dissent in an otherwise solidly Labour council chamber. Caroline is also an excellent campaigner at promoting green issues and the need for clean air in our towns and cities, and also about the effective use of walking, cycling and public transport as a means of travelling within London.

Caroline is also very helpful to new Green activists, and I was particularly pleased with her given me a helping hand when I was helping deliver leaflets for two council by-elections in Islington in 2013, just before I stood in a local election for the first time over back in Hertfordshire.

I therefore believe that if you are a Green Party activist living in Greater London, you should vote for Caroline Russell to be the Green Party's Mayor of London candidate for 2016 and to be #1 Green candidate for the London Assembly in 2016.

Alan.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The English local elections of 2023-Conservatives pay the penalty for failing to put a stop to sleaze and sewage in our rivers

The English local elections of 2023 (Northern Ireland's elections will finish next week and a separate blog post will be devoted to these) not only resulted in more than 1000 Conservative losses just as Rallings & Thrasher and Sir John Curtice predicted, they also resulted in sweeping Green and Liberal Democrat gains across the nation-sending a hard message to the Conservatives about the need to protect our environment and Labour for barely acting like an opposition at all. The Conservatives in total made a net loss of 1,061 seats, with the vast majority being in the shire districts where they once dominated-even councils such as Bracknell Forest and Surrey Heath, which they held in 1995 and 2019, fell, to Labour and the Liberal Democrats respectively in those two cases. Who they lost to varied widely by the nature of the authority-their losses to Labour came mainly in (ex) industrial "Red Wall" areas where they had made against-the-trend gains in 2019 or fared better
Read more

My analysis of the Swedish general election of 2022

The Swedish general election of 2022 generated some surprising results, despite also averting pollsters' predictions significantly. The last three years in particular proved to be a rough ride for the Social Democrat led governments of Stefan Lofven and Magdalena Andersson respectively. Although Sweden's laxer approach to the COVID-19 pandemic (compared to most countries in Europe, which imposed lockdowns during much of 2020 and 2021, an approach that arguably caused more problems than it solved) proved effective, Mr Lofven's desire to lift the austerity tax (which only affected a wealthy minority, similar in nature to the wealth tax initiative of former French President Francois Hollande) and to join NATO proved contentious, with two of the Social Democrats' former coalition partners (the Swedish Greens and Swedish Left Party, who had both pulled out of confidence and supply) unsurprisingly voting against Swedish accession to NATO membership (all other parties in the R
Read more

On the 2020 Serbian election: Why a boycott will only worsen things there

First of all, I apologise for the recent hiatus; however elections are still postponed or on hold in many countries, including the UK. Serbia, however, was able to proceed with its 2020 general election amidst this crisis. Its overall result proved reminiscent of Hungarian elections under Viktor Orban's tenure (2010-present), since the leading national-conservative coalition, the SNS (Progressive Party of Serbia) coalition led by Serbian President Aleksander Vucic (Ana Brnabic is the Serbian Prime Minister, and the first woman and openly homosexual person to hold that position), polled 61.6% of the vote, giving them as many as 191 seats out of 250 and a majority of as high as 132, almost unheard of in any country with proportional representation. Press freedom has endured significant curbs since President Vucic first came into power as Serbian PM in 2012 (he became President of Serbia in 2017), as have civil liberties of Serbs in general. Nepotism and corruption in the Serbian
Read more