Alan's Green Thoughts

Readers, the results from local by-elections that featured Green candidates on 19 May and 26 May were as follows: (19/05/2016) Merton LBC, St Helier: Labour 1436 (71.0%, +11.5%), Con 282 (13.9%, -1.0%), UKIP 191 (9.4%, -10.2%), Liberal Democrat 59 (2.9%, -3.1%), Green 55 (2.7%). (26/05/2016) East Staffordshire DC, Stapenhill: Lab 536 (44.3%, +12.5%), UKIP 348 (28.8%, -2.5%), Con 208 (17.2%, -7.0%), Independent 75 (6.2%), Green 24 (2.0%, -10.4%), Lib Dem 18 (1.5%). North Yorkshire CC, Northallerton: Con 654 (48.3%, -4.1%), UKIP 278 (20.5%, -10.6%), Lab 233 (17.2%, +0.7%), Yorkshire First 131 (9.7%), Green 58 (4.3%). It was quite appropriate that our best result in local by-elections this month would be in North Yorkshire, since North Yorkshire County Council recently voted to approve hydraulic fracking in the neighbouring district of Ryedale despite opposition from 99.2% of all residents who were consulted about the planned fracking operation and objections from residents ...

The historic 2016 Presidential election of Austria finally concluded yesterday, with the Green Party's Alexander van der Bellen the eventual winner in the second round over the Freedom Party's Norbert Hofer, and eventually by a margin of only 0.6%. With this result, Alexander becomes the first ever Green President of Austria, and only the second President of Austria not endorsed by the social-democratic Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO) or the conservative Austrian People's Party (OVP) elected since 1945. As a Green, I am particularly pleased with Alexander's win and it shows that green politics and values can win elections nationally as well as locally or regionally. As a political analyst, this election represents the start of a sea of political change in Austria, a nation whose vote on most elections since the end of World War II has resulted in the SPO or OVP, or both, forming the government of Austria, with the notorious exceptions of 1999 and 2002 when ...

Whilst the counting has been going on for the second round of the Austrian Presidential election of 2016 (final result to be announced later today), there was a parliamentary election on the island of Cyprus, although as usual the seats in the north of Cyprus are going unfilled. Both major parties suffered significant losses in this election, with the moderate conservatives Democratic Rally (DISY) losing 2 seats and the socialist Progressive Party of Working People (AKEL) continuing to decline and losing 4 seats, which can be attributed to their perceived faults within Cyprus' economic crisis of 2012-13. There are only 59 seats in southern Cyprus, 3 of which are reserved for economic minorities leaving 56 up for election at any one time. This makes any multiple seat changes in any party's results significant. The overall mood was for change, with new and minor parties achieving comparatively good results compared to 2011. The Citizens' Alliance gained 3 seats, with its ...

It is rather interesting that the Tooting by-election, held due to Sadiq Khan resigning from the House of Commons to take up his post of Mayor of London, has as many as 14 candidates, especially when seven only appeared at the last minute. This raises some interesting questions about this by-election, which has some similarities to the Henley by-election of 2008 caused by the resignation of Boris Johnson when he became Mayor of London; this by-election was in a safe seat (Tooting is reasonably safe for Labour since it is only marginal at times) and featured as many as 12 candidates from a wide variety of parties (and some independents). My five key questions for the Tooting by-election, whose polling day is 16th June, are: 1. How high will the winning majority be? 2. With Labour's candidate and the Conservative candidate at the top and bottom of the ballot paper, how much of a difference will the order of the ballot paper make to the candidates' performances? 3. As the...

The Queen's Speech of yesterday outlined some of the most worrying plans the Conservatives have come up with in recent years. Here are 5 key reasons why the Queen's Speech 2016 means danger: 1. They plan to replace the Human Rights Act with a weakened a watered-down British Bill of Rights. Given how much the Human Rights Act has achieved, with the most recent example being justice for the 96 victims of the Hillsborough Stadium disaster of 1989, and the Conservatives' attitude to respect for human rights (nationally and internationally) especially whilst Theresa May has been Home Secretary, this will in all likelihood end up being disastrous in practice. We should instead keep the Human Rights Act and remain part of the European Convention of Human Rights, which Britain helped with the foundations of back in 1948. 2. They have not really U-turned on their 'all schools to become academies' plan after all. The Conservatives and their Education Secretary, Ni...

Readers, I would first of all like to thank Natalie Bennett, who is standing down after four years as Green Party of England and Wales leader, for all her hard work and for her role in helping transform the party into a real force for change which has established itself well in all corners of England and Wales. I also thank her for helping emphasise the need for British politics to become more open and inclusive, internally and externally. I would also like to announce, amidst the excitement surrounding who the next Green Party Leader will be, that I will be running for Green Party Deputy Leader in the 2016 leadership elections. I believe green politics can be force for good anywhere in Britain, as recent elections have shown, and that we can all benefit from the four core green pillars, which are grassroots democracy, peace, ecological wisdom (knowledge about how protecting our planet is necessary and in fact beneficial for us all), and social justice which can benefit anyo...

Investigations into Conservative MPs' (and the Conservative Party's) overspending on election expenses and false declarations of said election expenses in order to overspend without being caught are starting, after police forces wisely asked for extensions to investigate just as the statutory period was running out. Which begs the question: How much can it cost to defend or take marginal seats or seats that could change hands for another reason? A by-election will take place in the Tooting constituency next month, since Sadiq Khan has been sworn in as Mayor of London and has officially vacated his seat. Tooting has on several occasions in its recent history been a marginal constituency, including the two last general elections of 2010 and 2015. The Conservatives hoped to take Tooting at the last general election, but failed to do so in spite of being able to keep Labour's majority in check against Greater London's trend of moving towards Labour last year. In his d...

' And finally, FINALLY....nothing much happens.' (Narrator, Space Quest IV game) This year's council elections were crucial for all major parties in the UK-not just Labour and the Conservatives as the BBC (aka the Biased Brainwashing Corporation) tried to make out, with better organisation from other parties, especially the Green Party, compared to 2012 when those seats were last up for election. Despite many councils having all-out elections, and with many key marginal seats being up for election, little or no net change happened in the majority of councils, and out of the 124 councils up for election just six changed hands, and then only to or from no overall control. These six councils were Dudley (Labour lose to NOC), Worcester (Conservative lose to NOC), Elmbridge (Conservative lose to NOC), Peterborough (Conservative gain from NOC, with majority of just 2 seats over all other parties), Watford (Liberal Democrat gain from NOC with majority of 14), and finally Brist...

'Super Thursday's results counts are nearly over, although Bristol's will not be released until tomorrow for some reason. London Assembly and Mayor of London: Being a London commuter and postgraduate student at London Metropolitan University, this is the election I heard most about and helped the Green Party with on occasion during the campaign. It started off close between Sadiq Khan and Zac Goldsmith before the short campaign kicked off, but it became clear towards the end that Sadiq would score a decisive victory for Labour in the Mayoral election, which is just what he did. He had to wait until the second round to be elected as the new Mayor of London, but in the final round he trounced Zac by a margin of 56.85% to 43.15%, with Labour achieving nearly twice as many second preferences as the Conservatives in round two. This cannot be attributable merely to London trending towards Labour as a whole (which was shown in the last general election)-the Conservative camp...

Last week, there was a Hansard debate in Westminster for World Autism Awareness Week, which occurred in the first week of April; what we really need is Autism Acceptance as well as Autism Awareness. This debate, which lasted 3 hours and 23 minutes, can be found here: https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2016-04-28/debates/16042848000001/WorldAutismAwarenessWeek Much about autism was crucially missing from this debate, however. There was a lot of talk about autism awareness but no mention of specifically autism acceptance, and for that matter, acceptance of neurodiversity (which also covers conditions like ADHD), which is what this country really needs; most people are aware of autism but not many people understand and accept autism for what it is and the contributions autistic people can make for us all. Highlighting the problems we face, such as significant problems with employment (the unemployment rate for autistic adults exceeds 80% and a quarter of all autistic adult...