Manifest Stupidity II: Green Walleted Monster aka How Much?!?

Generali

The Green manifesto gets a look over. First impressions. It's very, very long and very, very specific.

> The local council will stop calling you a customer. They spend 3 pages on this which means it's Important.

> Fully costed policies (this surprises me pleasantly). Borrowing to be £338,000,000,000 under a Green Government vs £115,000,000,000 under the Tories.

> Protect the countryside (duh). Everyone to live 5 mins walk from green space (grass verges?). Ban pesticides that might be killing bees just in case. Getting the French to agree to change the CAP to protect the countryside.

> Hope food gets cheaper but more like organic food too(!). Hope for more Fair Trade food, i.e. encouraging oversupply and worsening conditions for excluded farmers. Encourage kids to grow food. 'Encourage' less meat eating. No more intensive animal farming. CCTV in slaughterhouses. Ban: foie gras, live animal exports, cloning, overuse of antibiotics, 'low welfare farm imports', exotic pets, monkeys as pets (will nobody think of the organ grinders?), shooting for fun, badger cull, fur imports and horsewhips.

> Spend a lot more on science. Stop patenting genes. Ban food waste going to landfill. Reduce waste.

> Energy. Fit insulation in 9million homes. Require LLs to improve energy efficiency in rentals. More renewables. Nationalise the National Grid. Ban producing and retailing electricity. Regulators to target climate change as well as bills. Higher targets for renewables. No fracking. Close coal power stations by 2023 and nuclear ones by 2025. Electricity to come from the magic electricity tree.

I'm losing the will to live here.

> Equality. Lots more diversity liaison people. Stop jailing refugees. Don't be horrid to gays. Pay women more. Force companies to have 40% women boards. Ban soft !!!!!!. Give disabled people a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Give children a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Stop children from committing crimes by raising the age of criminal responsibility so they aren't crimes any more. Give young adults a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Give old people a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Give cyclists a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to be more horrid to white, middle-aged men instead?

> Health. No more privatisation of the NHS. Inquiry into the privatisation of the NHS in case there were bribes or something. People to become patients rather than customers. Spend a bunch of money. Increase taxes on fagz 'n' booze. Free social care. Kill old people. Ban cancer. Ban AIDS. Ban TB. Subsidise fruit and veggies. Give gay people a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them.

> Edukashun. No school 'til you're 7. Free food for more kids. More apprenticeships. Free uni. Cancel student debt. Poorer university chancellors.

> Housing. Stop treating BTL like a business. End VAT on renovations. End SDLT and introduce a land value tax. Mansion tax. 500k council houses. More tax dodges for people taking in lodgers.

> Economy. 1 million new public sector 'public works' jobs. £10/hr minimum wage by 2020. 35 hour week. No zero hours contracts. Take control of the money box. Abolish the City of London Corporation. Employee and consumer reps on large company boards. Give football fans a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Cut tax. Increase tax. Cheap broadband for business. Pay rich people less and poor people more in the private and public sectors.

> Tax and benefits. Everyone, including kids, gets a 'basic income'. More tax. More benefits.

> Government. HoL to be elected with 10 year terms. PR for elections. Recall votes if people don't like the sitting MP very much. More Legal Aid. Give local councils a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Cornwall gets a Parliament like the Welsh Assembly (seriously). More pub bands. Give Plaid Cymru a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Force women to play sports.

> Transport. Give disabled people, cyclists, potholes and walkers a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Public transport to go where people don't live or work. Give drivers a less money and generally be horrid to them.

> Foreign people. Give foreign people a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Ban the permanent seats on the UNSC. Ban war. Ban being horrid to people (except presumably the white middle-aged). Ban CO2. Ban Trident. Be nicer to poor foreigners and more horrid to rich foreigners.

> Crime. Give criminals a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them. Give raped women a bunch of money and generally be nicer to them.

Government expenditure to be well north of 900 billion squids by 2020.

purch

Sounds all good to me :eek:

Generali

purch wrote: »

Sounds all good to me :eek:

Basically it's a manifesto for everyone except middle-aged white men, rich foreign people and organ grinders.

purch

You have to ask, quite why they need to include so many "off the wall" policies.

They are already significantly "Left" of most other parties, and you would expect them to include a raft of Green policies, but they seem determined to take everything to an extreme which makes it laughable.

Increase Minimum Wage............good policy, but not to the extreme they say.
Improve Public Transport...........ditto
NHS..........................................ditto
etc. etc. etc.

One must assume that they know they are unlikely to get many, if any seats so they have just given up trying to be electable.

Green parties in other EU states don't feel the need to be quite so lunatic.

Generali

purch wrote: »

You have to ask, quite why they need to include so many "off the wall" policies.

<SNIP>

One must assume that they know they are unlikely to get many, if any seats so they have just given up trying to be electable.

Green parties in other EU states don't feel the need to be quite so lunatic.

Isn't the problem in part at least that they don't have a leadership structure? IIRC, pretty much everything is up for a vote and as a result the manifesto ends up looking like the comment pages from The Grauniad.

I have never seen a party with so many policies. I reckon it would take them until 2100 to get them all through Parliament.

It is refreshing to see a wholly costed manifesto. I wonder how realistic the costs are.

chewmylegoff

So they're planning to run a deficit of about 60% of GDP by the end of the parliament. They shouldn't have bothered costing everything over a five year term as the country will be bankrupt after about 6 months and we'd all be living in mud huts again.

N1AK

purch wrote: »

You have to ask, quite why they need to include so many "off the wall" policies.

Increase Minimum Wage............good policy, but not to the extreme they say.
Improve Public Transport...........ditto
NHS..........................................ditto
etc. etc. etc.

Green parties in other EU states don't feel the need to be quite so lunatic.

It depends on how you view it. Most people aren't going to read through a full manifesto, or even hear of the craziest policies which likely appeal to certain demographics.

Their policies actually seem to be getting less crazy, but that says more about how completely nuts they were before.

Additionally, what you say is a crazy policy might not be universally held as such. For example, you think £10 nmw by 2020 is too much and I don't. I think funnelling more money into public transport in the way the greens propose is a bad idea.

bugslet

I needed a laugh.

40% of women on boards - heck Bugs Trucks is 100% women on the board ( me).

Couldn't see how horrid they were going to be to trucks, but the board thing may not make up for single handed climate destruction/giving all children asthma/mowing down cyclists......

Generali

N1AK wrote: »

It depends on how you view it. Most people aren't going to read through a full manifesto, or even hear of the craziest policies which likely appeal to certain demographics.

Their policies actually seem to be getting less crazy, but that says more about how completely nuts they were before.

Additionally, what you say is a crazy policy might not be universally held as such. For example, you think £10 nmw by 2020 is too much and I don't. I think funnelling more money into public transport in the way the greens propose is a bad idea.

Turning off most of the power stations within a decade:eek:

Generali

bugslet wrote: »

I needed a laugh.

40% of women on boards - heck Bugs Trucks is 100% women on the board ( me).

Couldn't see how horrid they were going to be to trucks, but the board thing may not make up for single handed climate destruction/giving all children asthma/mowing down cyclists......

Trucks were in the 'encourage' list for the most part. The Greens seem to be quite big on encouraging stuff.

purch

They seem to think they can solve the Israel/Palestine situation quite easily.

Just sit down, talk it through, respect each others opinions and hey presto.

Nobel Peace Prizes all round