Stabbed in the back by the Green Party

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:04 pm

The local environmental group that I help run recently organised a conference, Towards a Zero Carbon West Berkshire, to try to get our local government policy on the road to 2050 as most forms of government in the UK largely ignore the issue of the climate Change Act and its requirements while plans are being laid for development which will last well past 2050.

We sent out invites to all political parties, environmental groups, schools and the general public stressing that, because of the seriousness and urgency of the matter, we wished to depoliticise the issues and develop policies which all parties could support. West Berkshire Council has a history of advanced legislation in new housing regulation so we thought that we would be knocking at an open door.

All went well at the conference and there were promising noises coming from the councillors present so we collated and circulated the policies presented for further comment from attendees. A while later there appeared on the West Berkshire Council website a petition calling on the council to institute a Zero Carbon policy by 2030 written by the local Green Party parliamentary candidate. I doubt that he had heard of the concept of Zero Carbon Britain before our conference.

He is willing to scupper a local environmental initiate in order to further his own political career! I would have expected something different from the Green Party not just the same career politicians looking to feather their own nests.

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:23 pm

I don't quite understand. Are you saying he scuppered it by calling for it in a party political way? Or by writing his own version?

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:27 pm

RevdTess wrote:....he scuppered it by calling for it in a party political way?...

Yes, Tess. He gave a resume of the main points gleaned from the conference as if is was all his own work with no mention of the conference.

RevdTess · Post by **RevdTess** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 2:35 pm

Maybe it's because I'm used to (as a green supporter) being on the protest-wing of politics, but if any other party had proposed a carbon free policy I'd have been overjoyed to support it. I don't really care who gets credit.

BritDownUnder · Post by **BritDownUnder** » Thu Dec 13, 2018 8:17 pm

Doesn't sound like backstabbing to me. Stealing of ideas perhaps for personal advancement. Happens a lot in industry.
I remember at school in Nottingham in about 1987 listening to a lecture by a Communist Party Councillor (one of the few elected Communist officials in the UK) - John Peck I think he was called. After the fall of the Berlin Wall I was reading the paper and noticed that he had become a Green Party Councillor. I think the party did not matter as much to him as the politics and the personal position.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » Fri Dec 14, 2018 1:38 pm

RevdTess wrote:Maybe it's because I'm used to (as a green supporter) being on the protest-wing of politics, but if any other party had proposed a carbon free policy I'd have been overjoyed to support it. I don't really care who gets credit.

It wasn't even another party making the proposal it was an environmental group. The fact that all the other parties seemed to be going along with it might have p....d him off, I suppose.

BDU, I am inclined to agree with your last sentence.