Friday 23 January 2015

Nanny in a bunny suit

The Green Party have recently enjoyed a marked rise in the opinion polls, and this week released a policy statement, which is well summarised here. Many might see their economic policies as occupying the middle ground between utopia and insanity, but at the same time would imagine them to be quite fun, in a waccy-baccy, rough cider, dreadlock, dog-on-a-string kind of way.

But, if you read more closely, they outdo the other major parties in their desire for nannying and social control. They say “Higher taxes will be brought in on alcohol and tobacco, and a complete alcohol advertising ban imposed.” They would also seek to encourage a “transition from diets dominated by meat”. It seems that they have a real problem with any commercial organisation profiting from people enjoying themselves.

One commentator has described their ideology as “Communism designed by middle-class women”. Nobody should imagine that voting Green will lead to a kinder, gentler, more tolerant society – indeed the opposite would be far more likely. Less free and less prosperous. Although no doubt many middle-aged beardies with a love of twiggy bitter will do so all the same.

56 comments:

  1. "Well summarised"? By the Torygraph? Please.

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  2. Can I not say "well summarised" by an article I broadly agree with?

    And are any of the statements I quoted untrue?

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  3. Grog taxes would not be relevant though Mudge in the environmentally friendly society the Greens would give us.

    We would not buy commercial grog. It would be like the Good Life, that 70's telly show that's repeated all the time where we start off fancying Felicity Kendall and thinking she could do better than him, but eventually realize that the posh bird next door isn't as prim as she makes out and is probably complete filth after a couple of sherries.

    We would all be necking pea pod wine we have made ourselves in the kitchen. Sure, it'll be rough stuff but no worse than some of the micro brewed filth that passes for "craft" in these middle class multi beer gaffs that win beard awards.

    Rather than environmentally damaging commercial retail hospitality we'd all have to go round each others houses to neck each others pea pod grog.

    Vintage pea pod burgundy, sprout claret or a dandelion chardonnay, Mudge old bean? Help yourself to a millet & quinoa nibble.


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  4. Or maybe I'd just brew my own Spesh and sit there shouting at the telly at all the "educational" programmes the Greens have insisted on being shown instead of Midsomer Murders.

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  5. You've read the Green Party's Policies? All of them? So as to be sure they're "well summarised"? Doffs hat.

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  6. So are all my statements untrue, then? Maybe you can provide a link to the Green Party policy document saying they will reduce alcohol and tobacco taxation and encourage meat production.

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  7. No, but they don't promise to raise taxes either. Of course.

    "DU402 The effect on consumption of taxation on the sale of tobacco and alcohol would be subject to continued review and, where appropriate, these legal drugs would be taxed at a higher rate than at present. [...]"
    (My emph.)

    Seriously Mudgie, I reckon they're almost as unelectable as the kippers. But at least their policy is easy to find.

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  8. Who needs to do that? I once pretended to give a toss about the environment. Years ago, when I was at university. I was trying to tap this lass that cared about that sort of bollocks. It's nowt but bike riding, disapproving of cars, eating vegetarian crap, wearing brown with tatty knitwear or ponchos, handing out leaflets and taking her to a pub with a feminist poetry recital on that consists of an angry american woman shouting into a microphone whilst you sit in a turtle neck sweater and clap when other people do. And Bob's your cross dressing aunty. Why read a manifesto? It's easy enough to condense as "hippy bollocks"

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  9. Ah, well that's it, innit. Daffy old hippies when the tories weren't scared - insane al-qaeda loving stalinists now.

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  10. Ooh, certainly seem to have rattled your cage there Stringers.

    Sounds like you have a touch of sympathy with a party that wants to lay us wide open to Al-Qaeda.

    And it's Miliband who's really scared of the Greens - I can't imagine Cameron or Farage having many sleepless nights.

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  11. a party that wants to lay us wide open to Al-Qaeda.

    What was that about "blatant trolling" not being welcome?

    The picture actually shows a statement from the Communist Party* attacking the Greens, which I should think they were quite pleased with. It certainly doesn't indicate that there's anything 'Communist' about the Greens' own policies, as indeed there isn't.

    *Well, a Communist Party, but let's not split hairs.

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  12. Incidentally, Roy Jenkins described the 1974 Prevention of Terrorism Act as containing three measures of substance and one that was just for show. The one that was for show was the ban on membership of proscribed organisations - the measure that the Greens now want to repeal.

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  13. So if the Greens are really Communists, does that mean UKIP are really fascists?

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  14. Professor Pie-Tin23 January 2015 at 18:30

    @StringersBeer

    " I reckon they're almost as unelectable as the kippers ."

    Were you in a drunken stupour during last year's European elections and two by-election victories for UKIP ?

    The Green's economic policy is almost as dimwitted as Sinn Féin's here in Ireloand whose grasp of economics only really extends to knocking off the Northern Bank for their pensions.

    But I agree with Mudgie.The Green's are all about taxing pleasure and most of my vices are expensive enough already.

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  15. You must at least wonder why the torygraph is attacking the GP now. Drugs! Brothels! Al-Qaeda! Taxes! I mean, come on, man, it's like little england bingo.

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  16. Replies
    1. By a discredited documentary maker, whose best arguments about global warming have been scientifically discredited. A man who tries to make horse shit the responsibility if bulls whilst blaming grass.

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  17. No way! Nazi-Communists are the worst sort!

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  18. Communism is the only way we'll dig ourselves out of this horrendous capitalist mess. Bring it on I say.

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  19. Well, maybe Hitler was a greeny when he ran Germany, but he gave all that up when he retired to Argentina because he had to disguise the fact he was Hitler.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2545770/New-book-claims-THIS-picture-proves-Hitler-escaped-Berlin-bunker-died-South-America-1984-aged-95.html

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  20. Of course, because Communism has been sooooo successful every time it's been tried.

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    Replies
    1. And yet capitalism is still behaving in exactly the way Marx envisioned, boom then busy with the cycles of boom and boost coming more frequently. Have you read the Economist recently and the general consensus of the world's best economists. Capitalism doesn't work.

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  21. Oh dear, it looks like the kipper brigade have been rattled. Worried that their fringe vote might be cancelled out at the other end? I can't see any other reason to suddenly start having a go at them.

    The Greens are no more or less credible than any other party. Well, more credible than some actually IMO but, honestly, UKIP supporters knocking their policies is pure comedy gold.

    And what's all this nonsense about communists? But even if they were-which they are not-is that word supposed to send a shiver down our spines? What is this; the 1950s? I'll get my trench coat.

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  22. I can't see an increase in Green support having any impact on the UKIP vote - it's Ed who needs to be worried.

    The Greens' anti lifestyle freedom policies deserve to be exposed, as many imagine they stand for the opposite.

    And Communism, although now expunged from Europe, remains a profoundly evil and totalitarian ideology.

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  23. Too right I'm worried. The Nazi-Communist-Al-Qaeda lovers voted in an MP only 60 miles away from me.

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  24. I suspect we're missing something subtler here. It's the tories' coalition partners who are most threatened by the greenies. This might be significant in Labour/Lib Dem marginals, and might explain why the tory press is churning out this kind of propaganda. Votes for the greens (if they're coming from former LDs more than Labour voters - and there's evidence that this is the case) hit with a double whammy - boosting Lab and undercutting the strength of a future LD-Con coalition.

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  25. I'm not dead as my forthcoming film "Iron Sky 2" will reveal. I am still a supporter of Green policy and welcome the weakening of the decadent powers. Less for my flying saucers to overcome.

    Stringers "Green" brewery is safe, and I will be placing an order to keep morale high among my proud warriors of the Fourth Reich!

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  26. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  27. Scrapping the monarchy and a wealth tax on assets over £3 million? That sound good to me. Thanks for making me have a look at their very sensible policies. They may get my vote after all!

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  28. Apparently Natalie Bennett was ripped a new one by Andrew Neil on the BBC Sunday Politics this morning.

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  29. Apparently, you now wish to comment on a television programme you haven't seen, along with churning out your binary thinking ukip agenda under the guise of free thinking.

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  30. "ripped a new one"? You are so down with the kidz. "Apparently" you could watch it here (for the next month): http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b04y8xtp/sunday-politics-london-25012015 (starts around 11:40)

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  31. England for the English too. Oh no, that's racist!

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, you can be arrested and sent to prison for being English. reference Stewart Lee

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  32. Capitalism may have its faults, but it's delivered unprecedented levels of human prosperity and well-being.

    Whereas Communism has been an abject failure wherever it's been tried.

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    1. I think pol pot may have had the right idea, people need to lose freedom to become free.

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  33. >Whereas Communism has been an abject failure wherever it's been tried.

    Communism has only being given an extended trial in places where failure is inevitable.. The modern capitalist Russia, for example, is as inefficient and corruption ridden as was former communist USSR.

    Whilst a total command economy may not, in the short term, appear to work as well as a free market the difficulties with both systems suggest that some mixture of the two should work better than either alone. The mixed economic system practised in this country in the immediate prewar decades was such a system. It worked well though the fact that it started in such unfavourable circumstances tends to make it look less successful than it really was.

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  34. Always good to see ad hominems on here.

    And hopefully the Pol Pot comment is tongue-in-cheek, although with today's Leftists you never know...

    I have to wonder why this blog has suddenly become a focus of political debate.

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  35. Could it possibly be because you posted about politics?

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  36. I'd hardly call this stuff "political debate".

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  37. Tyson,

    "Scrapping the monarchy and a wealth tax on assets over £3 million? That sound good to me. "

    Why should someone pay a tax on their assets? If I've gone out, been successful, paid taxes on my income and bought a Rembrandt, why should I then pay taxes again on that Rembrandt?

    The greens are just ignorant people in a middle-class bubble wishing the world were a certain way rather than dealing with realities.

    They have no serious idea about where their extra spending will come from.

    Taxing the rich sounds great, but we tried this in the 1970s and the rich just move to other, lower tax countries. And the greens want all sorts of taxes - taxes on popular music performers, an NHS tax, wealth taxes,

    Having asset and gift taxes is nuts. Again, it sounds great, but that's just going to create an army of bureaucrats trying to spot parents giving cars to their kids or husbands giving jewellery to their wives. And why should they be taxed again, when they've already paid tax on income to buy those things in the first place (oh, and generally VAT when buying it as well).

    They want to remove the charity status from private schools, but there's no mention of how they're going to find the money to pay for all the people who put their kids into state schools because the fees are now too high in private schools (the charitable status is because they're providing a public good).

    They want to cut advertising on TV and newspapers, even though newspapers live on (and have always lived on) advertising.

    The idea of getting rid of a standing military is weapons-grade stupidity borne out of ignorance that should be a red flag for anyone considering voting Green not to do so. What happens if a Russian sub pops up in the North Sea threatening to level London? We won't have seen it coming because we don't have a standing navy. We can't call on our NATO allies because the Greens will get us to leave NATO. What would the greens precisely do in that situation? Or do they think that we can have hands across the world where no-one will threaten us like that?

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  38. David C Brown,

    "Communism has only being given an extended trial in places where failure is inevitable.."

    Like Germany? Failure was inevitable with Germans and on German soil, even though the rest of Germany did fabulously?

    Or Korea? What's the difference between the quality of land in North and South Korea?

    or China? Is Taiwan so different to Mainland China, Hong Kong do different to the land a few miles away?

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  39. Yeah, it's odd innit? Who's the discredited documentary maker? I got lost there. Andrew Neil?

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  40. Clarkey could not be more wrong, this is the height of political debate.

    More on the Green defense policy 'ere

    http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/green-party-defence-policy-is-to-be-really-annoying-2015012694760

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  41. fucking hell, you can tell its an election year. everyone's gone off their rocker.

    more largely inconsequential arguments about craft beer, wetherspoons and sparklers please mudgie, that's what I pay my subscription for.

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  42. *grits teeth* - I agree with py

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  43. There is a limit to how much Mudgie can bang on about smoking bans, boring beer and crappy pubs. He needs to expand into the bigger issues of the day. Like how the ongoing Euro crisis affects crappy pubs or summat.

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  44. Professor Pie-Tin27 January 2015 at 15:27

    Back to more mundane matters - just out of interest I've been keeping a record of every alcoholic drink I've had in January.

    198 units so far - that must be 99 pints.

    Should I seek help ? Or just round it up to 200/100 ?

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  45. Curmudgeon, while it is in their manifesto to slowly increase alcohol and tobacco taxes buy 50%, a total ban on alcohol advertising is not in their manifesto and seems to have been made up by the Telegraph. Here's their manifesto, and alcohol is mentioned five times, and alcohol advertising is not mentioned at all as far as I can see. I'm not supporting their policies, as they seem to be a bit fruitcake, but lets look at actual policies shall we, not pretend ones.

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  46. Martin, Cambridge27 January 2015 at 23:07

    py is my favourite too.

    By the way py, just spotted Punk IPA on keg in the Champion, one of Cambridge's proper drinkers pubs, which would be a good thing if rolled out by G King. Shame I had a lacklustre Abbot.

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  47. I think that's been on since the summer. I was in there in October and had a pint then.

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  48. Here's an article with a different take on the Green Party

    http://www.monbiot.com/2015/01/28/the-lamps-are-coming-on-all-over-europe/

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  49. Don't be silly. They're not Communist at all.

    Wish they were!

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