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Remember to vote or you may have rude awakening
• MPs’ expenses (or Manuregate) have caused more public indignation than any issue this 61-year-old can remember, although the money involved was peanuts compared to that wasted on invading Muslim countries which never did us any harm or on the privatisations and dodgy private finance initiative deals which are usually only reported in Private Eye magazine.
Many of the claims were indeed sordid, but discredit the MPs who made them and the party functionaries who tried to keep them secret, rather than the concept of democracy. Every party in the Commons has MPs who were “at it” and many others who were clearly not. I say that as a member of a party perhaps not involved only because it has no MPs! Although it’s also fair to say that a recent survey by Open Europe ranked the Greens’ leader, Caroline Lucas, equal top of UK MEPs doing most to champion European Parliament reforms and transparency, including full scrutiny of their expenses.
We have an election next week for the European Parliament in which there are now two Green MEPs. It is in your interest that there should be more, as emphasised in these pages earlier this month by former Labour activist Pat Edlin.
The Green Party is the only progressive English party which can win seats in the European Parliament. It is the only English party not captured by wealthy corporations. This matters. Proceedings of the European Parliament may appear boring but the Commission has a huge impact on our lives, making decisions on issues as diverse as work and employment practices, investment in our communities and countryside, and the very quality of the food we eat and the air we breathe. It has the potential to do enormous good or great damage. And all too often it uses this power to promote the neoliberal cult of privatisation, light-touch regulation, flexible labour markets and every other “mechanism” used by the rich to rob the rest of us.
Only progressive MEPs can and do challenge the Commission. And for England that means the Greens.
Remember too that for this election London is one constituency and there are parts of London in which the BNP is strong. If the turnout is as low as has been predicted, you may wake up next Friday to find yourself represented in Brussels by reactionary, right-wing parties and individuals, sneaking in through a back door of public cynicism and apathy.
Please don’t forget to vote on Thursday.
STEPHEN HORNE
Election agent, Islington Green Party
• IT'S no good various political parties (and others) just telling people not to vote for the BNP. Reasons have to be given why they shouldn’t.
The present mood of despair and anger among the population is shown in the disillusionment with a corrupt Parliament, the cynicism about billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money being used to prop up a crumbling banking system, money being wasted on keeping our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of letting the people of those countries decide their own future, and countless other things.
But voting for the BNP is not the answer. The BNP will put forward any populist promises that will gain it power. But if ever it achieves that power, people would see a very different side to it. It is a completely authoritarian political party. No dissent or opposition would be tolerated.
This is what people in Germany found out in the 1930s. The Nazi party promised much the same as the BNP is promising today, and look what the consequences were.
The election on Thursday will have far-reaching results, so stop and think hard first.
Name and address supplied
• WE can’t remember seeing any letters about the European parliamentary elections in the Tribune. Perhaps this is understandable.
The European Court of Justice has recently handed down four rulings which make it illegal to oppose contractors who refuse to employ British workers when low-paid foreign workers are available.
There is nothing that the European Parliament can do about this – or about anything else for that matter. None of the European election candidates, except for one list, will tell people this. A gravy train of £250,000 pay and expenses per MEP per annum is certainly tempting.
The exception is the No2EU – Yes to Democracy slate. No2EU is how we shall be voting on Thursday.
FLORENCE AND IVOR KENNA
Compton Street, EC1
• I’VE just got an election letter from Sarah Ludford MEP telling me the Conservatives (14 per cent) and Greens (four per cent) “Can’t Win Here” – never thought they could actually.
I remember plain old Liberal Democrat councillor Sarah Ludford, as she was then, sending me something called the Finsbury Declaration promising to run Finsbury from Finsbury Town Hall, if elected.
Later on, Sarah’s husband Steve Hitchins, Liberal Democrat Islington Council leader as he was then, flogged off Finsbury Town Hall to a dancing academy.
Now he’s with Islington NHS trying to sell off Finsbury Health Centre. I hope Lady Sarah isn’t going to sell England to Europe.
JAMES SMITH
Goswell Road, EC1
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