Monday 21 April 2014

Welsh Green Leader maybe needs to note yhr Welsh bit.

 Thw Wasting Mule has at least given  the Leader of the   "Welsh" Greens, some space to air her  Party's views and she is  refreshingly open  though of course we must take into account it's the Mule here so it may be the slant of their  Senedd Correspondent Graham Henry we might be largely saying

Ms  Bartolotti,  her guns - full throttle - on a party that does expect to be electing at least one Welsh MEP, the UK Independence Party, labelling them racist, xenophobic and a “bunch of bankers”, referring angrily to the pound sign in the party’s logo as evidence of its marriage to exploitative economics.
She said: 

They [Ukip] appeal to an older generation of people who feel that politics isn’t working along the way that they think. A lot of older people...are racist.
“They don’t mean to be, they aren’t going out of their way to be, but they are, because that whole generation is. And this is the generation that gets out and votes. So, it is a bit of an issue in that sense.”

Since  Pippa Bartolotti, is the same age as me (60) so her argument may fall somewhat flat and there may be a number of Ulip voters especially in the Euro Elections who are simply voting against the EU . There may be even  some  people who would vote for them if they didn't have a racist element .

But she may be right in that she like Plaid really do not  at least does not have to woo them even for a protest vote and that Ukip voters are lost to them.Asked how the party tackles that problem to win such voters round, Ms Bartolotti is similarly uncompromising...conceding that while Ukip voters are often “good recyclers”, otherwise there was “very little [they] can do” as a party to turn them Green.

 We can’t. There’s no need for us to,” she said. “I think it’s David Cameron’s problem, actually. Because those are his voters. They’re not our voters. There is no direct competition, only is as much as those that will go out and vote, who might feel strongly for Ukip, could tip the balance.
“If someone is out and out xenophobic, they’re not really going to have an inkling about what the Green Party is about.

Intrestingly as Graham Henry points , Ms Bartolotti and Nigel  Farage seem to take a similar view on the developing situation in Russia and the handling of the Western world of post-Soviet politics though perhaps from different directions

.Mr Farage had attracted vociferous criticism for his admission he “admired” Russian president Vladimir Putin and accused the West of having “blood on its hands” for its handling of the Ukraine crisis.


But Farage accuses Nato - which has taken in a tranche of former Soviet countries or satellites since the empire’s break-up in 1991 - of pursuing an “aggressive” and “expansionist policy”. 

Though this may well be Farage not wanting another East European country joining the EU  and horror of horrors Ukrainians coming to live and work here.

 Ms Bartolotti said 

“We have to try and see it from Russia’s point of view. As another nation state falls to the Euro, if you like, so the implications for Nato nuclear armed weapons to be pointing closer to Moscow rise.
“You can see that Putin, particularly, probably with his KGB mentality, is actually feeling quite threatened by the Ukraine turning towards Europe.
“Why it wants to turn towards Europe, I’m not absolutely sure...because we’re going to fast-track them for all the wrong reasons and it could really make Europe wobble big time.”


She is refreshingly open about drug legalisation and the  Greens’ policy on cannabis, with Ms Bartolotti renewing her call for legalisation of the drug in the past month.Indeed, she says that use of cannabis is so widespread - “there are drug dealers outside the school gates of every comprehensive school” - that the policy should be to choke off the use of cannabis as a gateway dealers use to get people on to more lucrative drugs.
And she said Colorado-style cannabis cafes - illegal in the UK - are already “all over Wales”, likening the situation to the prohibition-era United States.
“There are cannabis cafes all over Wales, there’s one in Newport actually. I think there’s one in North Wales which is the most popular of all,” she said.
“The issue here is having a good quality product and a defined licensed product. The issue is to be able to sell it openly, for boys and girls and men and women and old age pensioners...and anybody who’s somehow touched by this market, can openly go and buy what they want, pay the tax on it. Colorado made $2m (£1.2m) in tax in the first month of opening.

Well as I said refreshingly open But i do wonder as the Liberals (at least before the LibDems) used to find there may be grassroots  support for this policy but when you start making advances in the polls the leadership get cold feet.

Still its nice to see someone so open as I said .

But its intrestin there seems nowhere in this interview for Ms  Bartolotti to express her Party's views on the future of devolution.

The Scottish Greens which have to MSP's and a number of councillors there are backing a YES vote in September and if I lived in Scotland I might well vote for them rather than the SNP.

But Ms Bartolotti is the leader of the "Welsh" Greens in a Party that dubs itself the Green Party of England and Wales and any cricket fan familiar with The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) s the governing body of cricket in England and Wales. will know the Wales part does not really count.

It is possible that the Greens here are too small to be viable possibly because the sort of person who would be backing them tend to be already in Plaid. But they really need to emulate their Scottsh sister Party.

But if Ms Bartolotti really wants to take her party forward then she needs to tell us what her vision of a devolved Wales is or does it permanent lie as a second string to England?


But hen this applies to Labour,Tories and even the Fedral LibDems.

If this Blog does not appear Tomorrow it will be because I will be in Hospital undergoing surgery and I will be back in a week or so. But nothing guaranteed  that there will be a bed available so I may well be back sooner than I expected.





1 comment:

Robert Tyler said...

Pob lwc yn yr ysbyty Glyn.