Our local Green Party

I had a revealing discussion with Bill Shaw, formerly of Swarthmore Hall yesterday.

The local branch, I find, are following a simplistic strategy, recommended by Headquarters.
They believe that you put forward a candidate for every position so as ' to provide the voter with choice'.

Sounds good but what then happens is that you can have a candidate from another party who also shares Green philosophy but is a member of another party getting defeated because the green philosophy people have their votes split between two candidates and someone with totally different views gets in.

This happened recently when Jane Carson, Lib Dem, who had done a lot of work on behalf of a green philosophy for one term on the SLDC was defeated by Pauline Airey, Conservative who has done nothing for the people of Greenodd/ Penny Bridge. This happened because the green vote was split between Jane Carson and an unknown Green Party candidate - Jo-anne Duncan. See my previous posting here.

The underlying problem is the lack of thought being given to politics . We consistently miss out on good people because the electorate vote mindlessly with little thought. They even vote along national party lines one local people standing for local issues.

What first needs to change in all areas is for voters to vote for the candidate that supports the policies they favour. Secondly two candidates who hold similar views should never run against each other.

Sadly we can expect that with mindless local party leaders and with mindless voters the existing practise will continue. Shame on you Judith and Simon Filmore, our local Green Party leaders I'd hoped you were better motivated. Instead of working to achieve solutions on local issues you follow a mindless "vote for the party" strategy.

Things will not change until we get a lot of independent candidates so that people can vote for the person and what they stand for and not blindly for the party. This happens in more progressive towns when the the party candidates don't get a look in. Sadly Ulverston still lives in the Dark Ages and suffers from inertia because of the low quality of their councillors.