The Rise of The Green Party

[Henkeman]

I don’t know the stats re working from home

Re car pooling. Incentives, 50% off road tax for all car poolers

There is every chance I am talking rubbish as I’m thinking of these as I’m typing but my general point is that if the Greens are to be a force in Parliament they need to think a little radically but also give the people an incentive I.e cash in their pockets

Oh I'm not going to leap on you for idly speculating.

I suppose what they need to be able to do is demonstrate it makes things better, not worse. No one is going to rack up the votes by telling everyone how they're going to make their lives harder. That would entail some compromises though...

 

[DrBlueBob]

A lot of the environmental concerns they voiced many years ago are becoming main stream now. Not popular policies but need to be addressed.

There is every chance I am talking rubbish as I’m thinking of these as I’m typing but my general point is that if the Greens are to be a force in Parliament they need to think a little radically but also give the people an incentive I.e cash in their pockets

I think that as a lobbying movement the groundswell of popular opinion has moved towards their ideaology. There are far more people who feel they have a duty of care towards the environment these days. This is a good thing IMO.

 

[Ban-jani]

The world would be a better place if they were in charge

 

[Henkeman]

I think that as a lobbying movement the groundswell of popular opinion has moved towards their ideaology. There are far more people who feel they have a duty of care towards the environment these days. This is a good thing IMO.

Interesting point. I'd agree, there's far greater awareness of it now. Perhaps you could argue that soft influence has been effective, though whether it comes from their political movement or elsewhere is an open question.

 

[DrBlueBob]

Interesting point. I'd agree, there's far greater awareness of it now. Perhaps you could argue that soft influence has been effective, though whether it comes from their political movement or elsewhere is an open question.

An open question or possibly a moot one if "the message" gets out there.

 

[MillionMilesAway]

I don’t know the stats re working from home

Re car pooling. Incentives, 50% off road tax for all car poolers

There is every chance I am talking rubbish as I’m thinking of these as I’m typing but my general point is that if the Greens are to be a force in Parliament they need to think a little radically but also give the people an incentive I.e cash in their pockets

You're right, but any good ideas get copied by the big parties (even if they then treat it like Cameron did and abandon it). It's as difficult as coming up with "why vote Labour in Surrey" - it just looks like a vote that won't make a difference to anything.

Essentially, under FPTP, I can't see them being much more than a pressure group.

 

[BobKowalski]

Is the latter not increasing substantially already? For the former, I'm not sure how you can do that practically without being fundamentally illiberal.

The liberal paradox. In practice all public health or public safety laws are invariably illiberal in that they limit your freedom on what you can or cannot do. We endlessly complain about them and we endlessly scream ‘something must be done’ when preventable tragedy strikes.

It’s like the war on regulation and red tape. We are all for it until our foot drops off because we took some poorly tested meds or the air we breathe is killing us.

It’s all about striking a balance I guess.

 

[Henkeman]

The liberal paradox. In practice all public health or public safety laws are invariably illiberal in that they limit your freedom on what you can or cannot do. We endlessly complain about them and we endlessly scream ‘something must be done’ when preventable tragedy strikes.

It’s like the war on regulation and red tape. We are all for it until our foot drops off because we took some poorly tested meds or the air we breathe is killing us.

It’s all about striking a balance I guess.

It's only tangentially related, but you reminded me of how our perception of risk is thoroughly skewed between what we feel acceptable for us and what we consider the wider matter. Take train deaths, and the amount of money it would take to get the very low numbers down to zero - it's simply not worth it, yet no one would ever put that argument forward. And in our every day lives we take risks all the time - crossing the road between vehicles for example - and we think absolutely nothing of it. We do this cost-benefit analysis in our heads constantly without remotely being aware we do it, even at the most basic level. And I suppose, all the stuff you've posted above is in some ways the same decision-making process writ large.

 

[BobKowalski]

It's only tangentially related, but you reminded me of how our perception of risk is thoroughly skewed between what we feel acceptable for us and what we consider the wider matter. Take train deaths, and the amount of money it would take to get the very low numbers down to zero - it's simply not worth it, yet no one would ever put that argument forward. And in our every day lives we take risks all the time - crossing the road between vehicles for example - and we think absolutely nothing of it. We do this cost-benefit analysis in our heads constantly without remotely being aware we do it, even at the most basic level. And I suppose, all the stuff you've posted above is in some ways the same decision-making process writ large.

Yes it is. There is a level of acceptable risk that we all take but our threshold for acceptable risk gets lower. As a kid I rode a bike without a helmet. As a young adult I drove a car without a seatbelt. Today we wouldn’t dream of doing those things. Not just because the law mandates we must but because we believe it’s in our interests to do so. We police ourselves in effect.

 

[Chippy_boy]

I'm a member of the Green Party.

Here's their political programme.

https://www.greenparty.org.uk/political-programme.html

The Green Party in this country has the age old problem of;

1) FPTP rather then PR electoral system

2) Dominance of the 2 major political parties

3) Greens are not populist and therefore would not get the coverage that UKIP got

4) Have less regard for charismatic, strong leaders and more concern for grass roots, consensus led politics which does not make for cheap soundbites and great photos

5) Don't pretend to have easy answers to difficult problems.

6) Trying to knit nuclear power stations using kittens is never going to work