RISE - The "Scottish Syriza"

[Wee Willie]

Robin Harper votes NO

 

also pro-monarchy and a soft-c one nation tory.

 

such people exist in the Green party. He may be awfully polite and nice, and have an interesting range of multi coloured angora scarves, but he's still right wing.

 

not really my fault if you know nothing about the past of some Greens or the history of the party. The party these days is much more left leaning than it was in earlier times and there is some residual internal tension between left and right.

Well that's them of my list.

I'll just vote SNP, SNP

[Ivo den Bieman]

well that's daft- not voting Green because of Robin Harper is like not voting SNP because of Gordon Wilson or Willie Wolfe.

 

He's in the Greens' past and has been for nearly a decade.

[AMMjag]

That's because you are thick as shite. Nothing personal, but really you are - truly - thick as shite, & out of your depth. Again.

The Green Party started off as the rather right wing "People" back in 1972 founded by former Coventry Tories whose primary concern was there being too many proles breeding & using up "their" planetary resources. Most of its early recruits were of the survivalist or "England's green and pleasant land" variety - their drift to the left was a gradual process.

This really shouldn't come as a surprise. The environmental movement had its roots in conservatism & the right, the left meanwhile viewed it with suspicion as the landed classes looking for new excuses to prevent their large estates being broken up by a future socialist government.

Long before the Green Party came along, the early National Front partially bankrolled the Hunt Saboteurs Association - indeed, their magazine "Howl" was originally edited by NF student leader David McCalden (a rather vicious anti-Semite as well as a militant vegan).

The original environmentalist scourge of landowners & the National Trust, & Right To Roam campaigner Rodney Legg, had been a famous member of the League of Empire Loyalists (which started the NF), as had Nettie Bonnar, the Chief Administrative Officer of the government Nature Conservancy Council by the 1980s. The former secretary of the LEL - the appropriately named Leslie Green (who stood for the LEL in Parliamentary elections as a thinly disguised Independent Loyalist) - was in her twilight years to become involved not merely in the more loony parts of the eco-movement, but as the Legalise Cannabis Alliance candidate for North East Scotland in 2001 at the ripe old age of 75 - and counted as one of her closest friends the Scottish Green Party's most famous wacky baccy exponent Linda Hendry.

And then there's the likes of Richard Lawson, Troy Southgate, Phil Andrews, etc. whose dabblings with environmentalism (as both the far-left & far-right both did during the 1980s/90s in their desperate attempts to stay afloat) ended up pulling them away from Nazi nutters - whoops sorry, "Patriots" - virtually altogether.

Stick to badly trolling SPL threads with the usual suspects - leave the more complex topics to the grown ups, kthxbai.

Absolutely no chance am I sifting through all that to try and find something that isn't fucking mental.

[Wee Willie]

well that's daft- not voting Green because of Robin Harper is like not voting SNP because of Gordon Wilson or Willie Wolfe.

 

He's in the Greens' past and has been for nearly a decade.

I'm only joking but I'll still vote SNP, SNP

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Absolutely no chance am I sifting through all that to try and find something that isn't fucking mental.

He's actually right about the Greens - they is still an element of the barking mad Malthusians about them.

[AMMjag]

He's actually right about the Greens - they is still an element of the barking mad Malthusians about them.

Can you just point me towards the presence of any radical, right wing elements in the Scottish Greens today? Because that was my point of contention that appears to have wooshed spectacularly over your head.

[Ad Lib]

Robin Harper votes NO

 

also pro-monarchy and a soft-c one nation tory.

 

such people exist in the Green party. He may be awfully polite and nice, and have an interesting range of multi coloured angora scarves, but he's still right wing.

 

not really my fault if you know nothing about the past of some Greens or the history of the party. The party these days is much more left leaning than it was in earlier times and there is some residual internal tension between left and right.

Okay, so there's one stance you've put out that's even arguably inherently at tension with being left-wing. Being in favour of the monarchy doesn't make you some rabid right-winger though. By that measure every political party with representation in Holyrood is "right wing" except for the Greens!

[WaffenThinMint]

He's actually right about the Greens - they is still an element of the barking mad Malthusians about them.

Can you just point me towards the presence of any radical, right wing elements in the Scottish Greens today? Because that was my point of contention that appears to have wooshed spectacularly over your head.

No Firhill Road you blabbering shitgibbon, it wasn't your "point of contention" at all.

It was, and I quote:

 

But the Greens as a place for the radical right? Bat-shit mental stuff that could only come from WTM.

Which was in response to:

 

The future for anyone in the radical left or right in Britain once they've come to their senses is the Greens - but all too often people who get involved in the lunatic fringes are either burned out from politics for good or are there for life, intoxicated by the endless petty dramas & intrigues which go on, like being part of their own little psycho soap opera.

My point was in reference to Britain as a whole - borne up by the past history of the environmental movement in this country long preceding the stumbles towards the Green Parties within the UK of today, which have involved both the left & right as the green movement is - & will remain so - a broad church of sometimes conflicting ideals (same as Scottish nationalism for that matter, but I digress).

Having made a fool of yourself once more by getting involved in a topic well outside of your highly limited depth of knowledge & experience for the sake of a quick troll, instead of having the grace to accept your folly, you have compounded it by weakly trying to blame everyone else for "misinterpreting" your term of reference - tragic behaviour bordering on Seamus or Paulo levels.

[NotThePars]

Shitgibbon is a crap twee insult. Just call him a c**t WTM.

[airdrieman]

Attended a hustings event at Strathclyde where Cat Boyd was one of the speakers. I don't know what any of their policies apart from a vague notion of "taxing the rich". 

 

It's a shame because I could get behind a radical left wing party (and a few of their candidates, like James McEnaney are decent, intelligent people) but this mob isn't it. 

[invergowrie arab]

RISE have repeatedly said they don't show up in polls as they haven't launched their campaign and manifesto yet. They are leaving it awffy late in the day.

Fair enough other parties haven't yet either but people tend to have heard of the SNP and know about them, their need isn't so urgent.

[dorlomin]

That's because you are thick as shite. Nothing personal, but really you are - truly - thick as shite, & out of your depth. Again.

 

The Green Party started off as the rather right wing "People" back in 1972 founded by former Coventry Tories whose primary concern was there being too many proles breeding & using up "their" planetary resources. Most of its early recruits were of the survivalist or "England's green and pleasant land" variety - their drift to the left was a gradual process.

 

This really shouldn't come as a surprise. The environmental movement had its roots in conservatism & the right, the left meanwhile viewed it with suspicion as the landed classes looking for new excuses to prevent their large estates being broken up by a future socialist government.

James Lovelock is close friends with Lord Lawson of Balby, The Ecologist magazine was founded by James Goldsmiths older brother. Nazism in all its confused and mixed up goryness had what some would consider ecology ( parts of Blut und Boden) as part of it myriad of ideas. Going deeper back, the ethno-nationalist right stems from the Romantic movement that has pastoralism, Arcadian idyll,  noble savage ideas deep in its DNA. 

 

Green today is seen as a synonym for hippy leftism, and there is zero doubt that folk like the road protesters in the 90s and the majority who turn up to modern climate marches are that way inclined. But there is no doubt they spent much of their existence as an outlet for people who had active disdain for class struggle and seen working class people as a big part of the problem. 

[Peppino Impastato]

Attended a hustings event at Strathclyde where Cat Boyd was one of the speakers. I don't know what any of their policies apart from a vague notion of "taxing the rich". 

 

It's a shame because I could get behind a radical left wing party (and a few of their candidates, like James McEnaney are decent, intelligent people) but this mob isn't it.

I'd like to get behind cat boyd personally

[Broomhill Ultra]

Is this why Patrick Harvie is a skinhead?

[Ad Lib]

I see the Scottish Information Commissioner is refusing to meet a Freedom of Information request by one of the RISE candidates, citing purdah as the defence as the publication of the information might damage the government.

The last time I checked the purpose of a Freedom of Information Act is to help citizens, political parties and the media to hold the Government to account. I don't remember the UK Information Commissioner delaying FOI responses last March-May to avoid it embarrassing the Coalition Govenment, or anything like this happening during the referendum purdah period.

More to the point, the purpose of purdah is to stop governments from using public resources to influence the result of plebiscites. It's not to protect governments from scrutiny.

More power to RISE's elbow on this, I say.

Edited March 27, 2016 by Ad Lib

[Peppino Impastato]

I see the Scottish Information Commissioner is refusing to meet a Freedom of Information request by one of the RISE candidates, citing purdah as the defence as the publication of the information might damage the government.

The last time I checked the purpose of a Freedom of Information Act is to help citizens, political parties and the media to hold the Government to account. I don't remember the UK Information Commissioner delaying FOI responses last March-May to avoid it embarrassing the Coalition Govenment, or anything like this happening during the referendum purdah period.

More to the point, the purpose of purdah is to stop governments from using public resources to influence the result of plebiscites. It's not to protect governments from scrutiny.

More power to RISE's elbow on this, I say.

I do remember a slight breach of purdah from 3 days before the referendum actually now you mention it.

[Ad Lib]

I do remember a slight breach of purdah from 3 days before the referendum actually now you mention it.

Yawn.

There was no breach of purdah. Political parties and their leaders are free to promise that their parties will do things in Parliament at any time.

Purdah restricts government departments and prevents Ministers from making announcements relating to the government. It doesn't stop the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and Former Prime Minister from promising to hold a Commission on further powers.

[lichtgilphead]

I do remember a slight breach of purdah from 3 days before the referendum actually now you mention it.

 

My god! You still have the effrontery to argue with Libby after his promise to have you kicked off the site...

 

I hope he PM's you to STRONGLY ADVISE you exactly why you are wrong!

[Peppino Impastato]

Yawn.

There was no breach of purdah. Political parties and their leaders are free to promise that their parties will do things in Parliament at any time.

Purdah restricts government departments and prevents Ministers from making announcements relating to the government. It doesn't stop the Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and Former Prime Minister from promising to hold a Commission on further powers.

Ooh not even a little bit wrong fibbers a bigbit. The only way the ggovernment and entirety of better together were able to claim purdah wasn't broken was tomclaim they were acting in their roles as party leadersnot as ministers, as purdah explicitly prevents the pm aand deputy pm etc from doing so.

You also give an inaccurate description of purdah which in factchanges for mmostelections as Iis appropriate.

Edited March 28, 2016 by Peppino Impastato

[Ad Lib]

Ooh not even a little bit wrong fibbers a bigbit. The only way the ggovernment and entirety of better together were able to claim purdah wasn't broken was tomclaim they were acting in their roles as party leadersnot as ministers, as purdah explicitly prevents the pm aand deputy pm etc from doing so.

You also give an inaccurate description of purdah which in factchanges for mmostelections as Iis appropriate.

You seem to be a bit slow. My post literally says what you say in the second sentence. It wasn't a Minister of the Crown (who is a legal person forming part of the government and legally accountable as such) that made the promises of further powers. It was the leaders of the respective parties, two of whom co-incidentally and in other capacities happened also to be Ministers of the Crown.

The distinction of what "hat" you are wearing is important when it comes to politicians. See also why many mishaps, improprieties or wrongs have, in the past, been grounds for a Minister to resign but not grounds for the same person losing their seat as an MP.