I've been suspicious for a while now of how the Green party views economics – feeling that the faithful thinks that economic concepts can be rewritten to suit themselves – they are not alone there, of course. However, I have always assumed – naively, it turns out – that greens would have solidarity with the world's poor and dispossessed. Not so, if an interview with the party's leader is anything to go by. She – Natalie Bennett – is quoted in the latest Economist as saying that to be poor in India wasn’t so bad as to be on benefits in Britain "because at least everyone else there is poor too”.
Words almost failed me, and so I went to their website where I was astounded by the parochial, little Englander mentality on display; sustainability really does seem to begin and end at the channel. It appears that the party is in with a shout of winning a seat in Bristol at the general election, for the area which contains Stokes Croft – a rather self-righteously, right-on bit of Bristol I've written about before.
Responses
Wish I could say this surprised me. It does not. One of the key findings in my ethnographic dissertation work was that sustainability (education) was being used as a form of elite social/political/economic positioning.
Oh come on - an unreferenced supposed quote from a poorly written attack article, then "parochial, little Englander mentality on display" on our Web site, yet you give no links, no evidence, of this supposed smoking gun?
Of course we have solidarity with the world's poor and dispossessed. Why don't you ask us about it? I'm your PPC for Bath, and you can ask me anything you like and hear real answers first hand.