On Thursday Dennis replied,
>You mention the CAP program, but I'm talking about something much
>larger: transnational democracy, regulation, trade unionism and whatnot.
>Isn't this why the British ruling class fought to keep the UK out of the
>EU for so long? And aren't environmental laws and welfare state
>regulations much tougher on the Continent than in the UK?
The four points you make are larger; I was giving an illustration on the
ways of deception. And yes, continental laws on welfare are tougher. I
seem to think it was De Gaulle who kept Britain out of the EU in the
early stages, once he died the door was open for the UK to join.
>Huh? You lost me here. What does Major's inward investment policy have
>to do with the Greens, who have fought for sustainable, autonomous forms
>of self-development? And why do you paint yourself in a box here, by
>complaining about some local organizer who won't answer a phone call?
>The European Greens have websites, mailing lists, and publications
>galore. Do a random search on any World Wide Web search engine for
>"Green Party" or "Greens", and you'll find a wealth of materials and
>info on the topic.
Well, I'm afraid I do get overexcited here, trying to condense material
into a few lines, so it might be misleading. I do in fact look at the
Green sites from time to time, I am also a card holding helper of a
non-political organisation. The Green Party is not entirely effective;
the home page contains this,
>Instead of those heady dreams we have had to face a drop in membership and a (temporary) return to the margins of Scottish political life with
approximately 2% support in elections. Membership has steadied at about
400 out of a population of just less than five million.
In the manifesto for the 1994 election, a ten page document, I agree with
every point made. To me it says all the right things. But this is the
problem, all parties have appealing manifestos. Only the Green Party
disagree with inward investment.
"Instead of paying huge incentives for foreign "inward investment", we
should develop local businesses."
The paragraph ends with a very clear statement.
"We must send a clear message to Brussels which says economics must be
redefined for sustainability. Economics must be in the service of the
people, not people in service of economics."
So what had the Party in mind when it comes to 'local business'?
"In the rural areas the cohesion fund should be directed at restoring the
productivity of rural life through community forestry and value added
rural industry which sustainably builds local economies."
Now, what I wanted to know was the method of achieving this goal. It is
easy to say the right things, another matter to have a working plan. For
instance, how can a distributive process operate when the policy of the
EU is one of concentration of wealth?
This is what has taken a while to find.
Richard K. Moore wrote on Mon 10th Nov
>I was at a talk by (now former) Minister of Agricuture (for Ireland)
>Ivan Yates where he said to a "rural development" planning group: "Big
>scale farming and forestry are coming; there's no use debating it; you
>might as well do your planning accordingly" (paraphrase).
Also, the Green rep was not the first one to avoid me. Who was it that
said there would be a struggle?
William Kirk.