Wakefield Green Party

The local elections this year have an added item for people to vote on :Do they want a system of elected mayors for Wakefield? is what they will be asked in a referendum. At this stage this is just about the principle and the system, there are no candidates.

So, where does the Green Party stand on this issue? The simple answer is: we oppose it. And why is that,you may ask? As our policy statement makes clear.( PA 356):-

“The Green Party believes that local authorities run by single party cabinets, or by directly-elected mayors.are not in the best interests of local democracy. They take decision making powers away from councils as a whole and place them in the hands of a few individuals, leading to the disenfranchisement of those councillors who are not in the ruling party and the citizens they represent. We would, therefore, reintroduce the committee system across local government at all levels, which provides for direct member involvement in decision making.”

We also believe that a mayoral contest reduces politics to a “celebrity” competition where issues and policies are seen to be of secondary importance.(You have only to look at the London system to see how that works, with the media reducing everything to a choice between “Boris” and “Ken”.)

If central government wanted local authorities to work more efficiently and effectively, then giving greater powers to councils would be a better way to bring that about. Revenue raising via the council tax is totally inadequate,and leaves councils still seeking well over half its funding from central government, with all the strings attached. How can this be called “accountability”? The ability to raise and spend their own monies is one of the main demands of the devolved parliament/assembly in Scotland and Wales, and rightly so.

The Green Party would seek to empower local councils with the right to raise their own revenues proportionately and effectively.This is true democracy.

Celebrity mayors can represent no- one but themselves,and be unremoveable from office for four years at a time.

So we would urge people to think hard about this,and just vote “No” to elected mayors.

Contact: The Chairman,Wakefield Green Party,

& nbsp; ; Brian Else. at 147,Thornes Lane, Thornes, Wakefield. WF2 7RW

Untitled Document

The Letters Editor,
Wakefield Express,
Southgate,
Wakefield. 17th January 2011

Dear Editor,
Ed.Balls,local MP and shadow chancellor, says in a recent interview that “It is now inevitable that public sector pay restraint will have to continue” He accepts the flawed logic and the outcomes of the Coalition government’s programme of cuts and austerity,and follows the false premise that job cuts and low pay will somehow rescue capitalism and make the bankers and financiers safe again. Even the various ratings agencies, those watchdogs of financial soundness, have issued a warning that unalloyed austerity is self-defeating, and will cause the economy to shrink, not grow.
With the three major (“grey”) parties following this disastrous economic course,is there any hope for an alternative theory of how an economy should work? The Green Party went into the General Election in 2010 with the policies of the Green New Deal, which is an alternative to the failed economics of vulture capitalism. Money invested in jobs and infrastructure,in renewable technologies, sustainable local economies,taxation which is fair and progressive, supportive systems of benefits for the poor, and much more, all form part of this “new deal”.
Gordon Brown’s “rescue” of the big banks was the wrong response to a failed system of financing. Down- sizing and remutualisation would have been the correct way to go. Cutting the jobs and wages of the service sector and local government merely penalises the low-waged and the very poor, whilst leaving financiers and bankers free to enjoy their gross bonuses. Most of their money will be salted away abroad,or fed into another property frenzy.
For too long this country has suffered a low-wage economy,with too liitle raised in fair taxation,and has made matters worse with wage-freezes and pension closures, yet the money is really there all the time. The national deficit is not insurmountable, and could be solved by a re-balancing of the economy, not a reduction in spending power. The Bank of England clearly thinks that inventing money ( via “quantative easing”, or QE) is acceptable in order to stuff the banks full of money, but won’t consider priming the jobs market with green QE via a Green Investment Bank.
It could all be different if only people looked to a clear alternative economic programme than that propounded by the likes of Labour’s shadow chancellor, and the Green Party offers just that.

Yours sincerely, Brian Else. (Chairman, Wakefield Green Party).

As from: 147, Thornes Lane, Thornes, Wakefield. WF2 7RW
(tel 01924362950 ) uk