Greens seek to pedal way to election success

Thursday, 7 April 2005 12:00 AM

The Green Party today kicked off its election campaign with a rally that saw activists mounting bicycles in an attempt to highlight the party's "radical" alternative to the mainstream political parties.

Green Principal Speaker and Brighton Pavilion candidate Keith Taylor said the decision of all three major party leaders to hire airplanes or helicopters to take their campaign around the country showed they were "missing the point" when it came to environmental issues.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy's airplane will dump 100 tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere during the election campaign, according to Green calculations.

Mr Taylor accused the established political parties of being "defective and neglectful" and failing to provide leadership on a range of environmental issues.

"They are not even flagging up climate change as an issue - it's not even on their radar," he said.

In contrast, the Greens would be standing on a platform of social, environmental and economic justice, providing an alternative to the "pollution and privatisation" offered by the mainstream parties.

"We're unashamedly putting peace, the planet and people at the heart of our campaign."

Over a million people had voted Green in last year's European elections, and a Green voice in Parliament was "never more necessary", he added.

"Those people voted for us because they had seen for themselves ... the difference that Green voices make in the decision-making chambers."

Jenny Jones, a Green Party member of the Greater London Assembly, said the Greens' policies on public services would be a key strength of their election campaign.

It was "very easy" to say that Green policies would cost large amounts of money, she admitted, but the party was convinced people were prepared to pay a bit more to help the environment.

Challenged about the effect such policies would have on car manufacturing plants such as Rover's embattled Longbridge factory, she said the Greens wanted them to move to more environmentally friendly technologies such as hydrogen fuel cells.

Car companies had had "a lot of opportunities" to make that switch but had failed to do so.

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