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    Some thoughts on the #RemainAlliance "Green with Envy?" Archived Message

    Posted by Gerard on November 10, 2019, 9:45 am

    Well the two things that strike one immediately is that it is not an #antiausterityalliance and it is with the Liberals not the Labour Party. Have the Greens not learned from the Liberal's own painful experience with the Tories (getting in to bed with those who have only just recently got out of bed with the Tory Party is at the very least guilt by association)? The Liberals are also avowedly a party of nuclear power as are the Labour Party but will they be investing in Hinkley? A question that must surely concern Green Party Members.

    "The project was first mooted under Tony Blair’s Labour government as an answer to the UK’s looming energy supply gap after years of underinvestment in the UK’s fleet of power plants.

    The nuclear mantle was taken up in the coalition years by the Liberal Democrat energy secretary Ed Davey*, before it was given the green light by the Conservative government." https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/aug/13/hinkley-point-c-rising-costs-long-delays-power-station

    *Italics mine.

    So what is the alliance for? Is it for a return to the expansionist, NATO loving EU we were a member of before, no questions asked; "all done now and friends once more"? There is no reformist stance to the posturing of the Remain Alliance.
    What of public ownership? The British Liberal Party have never shown the slightest interest in public ownership only Labour propose nationalising the utilities and the railways and as usual the Green Party coughs and shuffles its feet awkwardly, mumbling into its hands whenever such proposals are aired.

    Who is to protect the NHS? Surely not the franchise loving sell-out merchants of the Liberal Party! So what is the British Green movement for? It might (some of them), be in favour of devolution and institutional and electoral reform but what kind of a republic do Mrs. Lucas and co. propose? One in which we still call our heads of state "sir" and "maam" or would "your imperial holinesses" suit?

    The bottom line surely is that under both the Tories and the Liberals our state has massively expanded its (eugenicist), pogrom against the poorest and most vulnerable. The only way..the only god-d**n way we can address this and try to begin healing the wounds created by years of neo-liberal/conservative; asset stripping, theft, bullying, negligence (esp. re: Grenfell tower etc.), duplicity and graft (et.al), is to vote in a government seriously committed to investment in our communities, public spending and public ownership of both vital services and those vital indigenous industries at which we excel. This was Schumacher's programme! Schumacher the very environmental and political philosopher so lauded by the Green Welly Brigade.
    In the past the Green Movement has been prepared to entertain a Red/Green Alliance so what has changed? Have they partially perceived our likely future and recoiled from the recognition of such because consciousness of same entails a response that faint middle-class hearts cannot bear the burden of? They've done it before re: incineration for despite all the issues concerned with providing the oil industry of a (apparently and "aye there's the rub"), end user for the oil industry British Greens have consistently failed to grasp-the-(true)-nettle of reduce, reuse, recycle condemning a generation to the incredibly volatile and dangerous by-products of both the private and municipal (public), incineration industry. Part time bl**dy ecology by amateurs! Is this what we need from our anti-climate change lobby?

    "...and did those feet in ancient times walk upon England's mountains green?" He'd have better had...we could do with a miracle now..

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