So the results are in.
To those of you who voted for me, my heartfelt thanks.
I'm very glad I stood. It was a great experience, especially chatting to people on the doorsteps, and I'm pleased those of you who wanted to vote Green had the chance to do so.
This isn't the end for the Huntingdonshire Green Party; It is just the start. It is clear now there is a Green vote in the area, with hundreds of people also voting for our candidates in the disrict council elections for Huntingdon East and West. That vote can only grow - especially if we get the reform to our voting system we so badly need and the idea that a vote can somehow be 'wasted' is finally consigned to history.
What's more, Caroline Lucas' win in Brighton means there is now a Green voice in Parliament - proof that it can be done.
So if you want to get involved and help us build a strong Green voice in Huntingdonshire, please get in touch at huntsgreenparty@googlemail.com
Thanks again.
Sunday 9 May 2010
Wednesday 5 May 2010
And so the end is near
Tomorrow is decision day. I have been knocking on doors whenever I've had the chance and a great many people still appear to be undecided. Maybe you are too?
To get a look at what I and other candidates think about a selection of local and national issues, click over to the website of They Work For You and punch in your postcode. The absence of some of the candidates is almost as enlightening as the answers of those that replied...
In a last ditch bid for votes, I am also going to post up the address I gave at the start of one of the hustings in Huntingdon. It does a fairly decent job of summing up what I'm about.
Before you read that though, I'll leave you with a link to the Green Party's Policy Matchmaker to see how our policies match up with what you'd like to see happen.
Whoever you vote for tomorrow, make it a vote you believe in....
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is John Clare and I am the Green party candidate for Huntingdon. I live locally with my wife and young son and I share the everyday stresses and frustrations familiar to anyone who juggles work and family.
I’ve now decided to add to all that by standing for Parliament.
Why?
There are a few reasons but they boil down to a sense that we are being taken for granted, that things are badly wrong and that our politics and politicians - the old way of doing business - cannot put things right.
You don’t need me to tell you we face a crisis - in this country and beyond. In fact, I think we face three, linked crisis.
One - the economic crisis: Unemployment, looming cuts to our public services, the uncertainty, stress and the worry it brings people.
Two – the social crisis: The gulf that has opened between rich and poor, young and old, the growing fear and distrust we have of each other in an increasingly unequal and unfair society.
Three – the environmental crisis: In the last 200 years some 500 species have become extinct in England. We have lost many of the wild places where those plants and animals lived and where we looked to for relief from the pressures of life, for a connection to the natural world.
And now climate change – man-made climate change – threatens even further damage to our environment. I say our environment because ultimately we need the natural world for our own survival.
Our children and grandchildren face a future which is impoverished – in every sense of the word.
I said these crises were linked. So too are the solutions. By building a fairer society, by building a greener economy based on creating jobs and on public service, we can also start to heal the environmental hurts that threaten us.
Those figures on extinction come from a report by Natural England. I want to quote their chief executive. She said: “We all lose when biodiversity declines. Every species has a role, and like rivets in an aeroplane, the overall structure of our environment is weakened each time a single species is lost.”
Society is like that too. We are the rivets: us; our heath service; our local businesses, schools and shops and the public transport that links them. When these things start to give – when services are cut, when schools are underfunded, when local shops give way to out of town superstores linked by fast roads which slice through towns and villages, when boredom and crime and fear fill the gaps, then the structure of our society is weakened and we are all the losers.
This is the legacy of the way the old parties have governed.
The ‘Great Car Economy,’ hailed by the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher has bent our society out of shape. Services are spread out and distant; local businesses go to the wall; all of us are more and more isolated from each other.
At the same time, both Conservative and Labour governments have built us an economy built on the shifting sands of the City – on speculation and debt. The few – the very few – have become wealthy at a huge price to the rest of us and to our environment.
Their solutions are either to roll back the state, slash services and let the Devil take the hindmost or to further increase consumption and debt and waste.
Enough!
A crisis can also be an opportunity and here and now we have the opportunity to take a new way – a Green way.
Not the pursuit of profit above all else, not the loss of community and service and of our natural life support systems.
Instead, investment in training and in jobs that will give us back an economy built on real things, on jobs and a decent wage. Jobs in industries and services that will help us move to a greener, low carbon society.
Instead, more schools and more teachers, streets and towns where people come before cars and where local business can thrive and where we can get to know each other again in a way that seems lost. Life on a more human scale.
That’s the Green way. That’s why I’m standing here as the Green Party candidate and that is why I hope you will vote for me.
Thank you.
To get a look at what I and other candidates think about a selection of local and national issues, click over to the website of They Work For You and punch in your postcode. The absence of some of the candidates is almost as enlightening as the answers of those that replied...
In a last ditch bid for votes, I am also going to post up the address I gave at the start of one of the hustings in Huntingdon. It does a fairly decent job of summing up what I'm about.
Before you read that though, I'll leave you with a link to the Green Party's Policy Matchmaker to see how our policies match up with what you'd like to see happen.
Whoever you vote for tomorrow, make it a vote you believe in....
Good evening ladies and gentlemen. My name is John Clare and I am the Green party candidate for Huntingdon. I live locally with my wife and young son and I share the everyday stresses and frustrations familiar to anyone who juggles work and family.
I’ve now decided to add to all that by standing for Parliament.
Why?
There are a few reasons but they boil down to a sense that we are being taken for granted, that things are badly wrong and that our politics and politicians - the old way of doing business - cannot put things right.
You don’t need me to tell you we face a crisis - in this country and beyond. In fact, I think we face three, linked crisis.
One - the economic crisis: Unemployment, looming cuts to our public services, the uncertainty, stress and the worry it brings people.
Two – the social crisis: The gulf that has opened between rich and poor, young and old, the growing fear and distrust we have of each other in an increasingly unequal and unfair society.
Three – the environmental crisis: In the last 200 years some 500 species have become extinct in England. We have lost many of the wild places where those plants and animals lived and where we looked to for relief from the pressures of life, for a connection to the natural world.
And now climate change – man-made climate change – threatens even further damage to our environment. I say our environment because ultimately we need the natural world for our own survival.
Our children and grandchildren face a future which is impoverished – in every sense of the word.
I said these crises were linked. So too are the solutions. By building a fairer society, by building a greener economy based on creating jobs and on public service, we can also start to heal the environmental hurts that threaten us.
Those figures on extinction come from a report by Natural England. I want to quote their chief executive. She said: “We all lose when biodiversity declines. Every species has a role, and like rivets in an aeroplane, the overall structure of our environment is weakened each time a single species is lost.”
Society is like that too. We are the rivets: us; our heath service; our local businesses, schools and shops and the public transport that links them. When these things start to give – when services are cut, when schools are underfunded, when local shops give way to out of town superstores linked by fast roads which slice through towns and villages, when boredom and crime and fear fill the gaps, then the structure of our society is weakened and we are all the losers.
This is the legacy of the way the old parties have governed.
The ‘Great Car Economy,’ hailed by the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher has bent our society out of shape. Services are spread out and distant; local businesses go to the wall; all of us are more and more isolated from each other.
At the same time, both Conservative and Labour governments have built us an economy built on the shifting sands of the City – on speculation and debt. The few – the very few – have become wealthy at a huge price to the rest of us and to our environment.
Their solutions are either to roll back the state, slash services and let the Devil take the hindmost or to further increase consumption and debt and waste.
Enough!
A crisis can also be an opportunity and here and now we have the opportunity to take a new way – a Green way.
Not the pursuit of profit above all else, not the loss of community and service and of our natural life support systems.
Instead, investment in training and in jobs that will give us back an economy built on real things, on jobs and a decent wage. Jobs in industries and services that will help us move to a greener, low carbon society.
Instead, more schools and more teachers, streets and towns where people come before cars and where local business can thrive and where we can get to know each other again in a way that seems lost. Life on a more human scale.
That’s the Green way. That’s why I’m standing here as the Green Party candidate and that is why I hope you will vote for me.
Thank you.
Sunday 2 May 2010
District election
Just thought I'd take a moment to say that anyone living in Huntingdon may also have the chance to vote Green in the District Council elections, which take place at the same time as the General Election.
Karen How and Jeff Knott are standing in the Huntingdon West and East wards. Both would be excellent councillors and share the Green Party's belief in strong communities and good local services as the building blocks of a fairer and more sustainable society.
Please do consider giving them your support on Thursday.
Karen How and Jeff Knott are standing in the Huntingdon West and East wards. Both would be excellent councillors and share the Green Party's belief in strong communities and good local services as the building blocks of a fairer and more sustainable society.
Please do consider giving them your support on Thursday.
Saturday 1 May 2010
Questions, questions
The community website 'Huntingdon People' have been busy interviewing the General Election candidates. You can read the results of my interview and comment if you like.
Thursday's hustings at the Methodist Church in Huntingdon was good. A much more thoughtful affair than the previous week's with much more time to answer questions which ranged from religion and volunteering through free trade and the arms trade to climate change and nuclear weapons. If you were there, thanks for coming along.
We're into the home straight now so not much time left to get the message out there but I'll be doing my best to knock on as many doors as I can in the few days remaining.
Thursday's hustings at the Methodist Church in Huntingdon was good. A much more thoughtful affair than the previous week's with much more time to answer questions which ranged from religion and volunteering through free trade and the arms trade to climate change and nuclear weapons. If you were there, thanks for coming along.
We're into the home straight now so not much time left to get the message out there but I'll be doing my best to knock on as many doors as I can in the few days remaining.
Tuesday 27 April 2010
Greens poll strongly in Cambs
Good news from nearby Cambridge where the Cambridge News puts Green candidate Tony Juniper out in front. Read the report here. Good luck Tony!
The same report also says the Green Party is polling strongly across all the consituencies covered by the Cambridge News, which includes.... Huntingdon. Don't believe them when they tell you there's no point voting Green.
The same report also says the Green Party is polling strongly across all the consituencies covered by the Cambridge News, which includes.... Huntingdon. Don't believe them when they tell you there's no point voting Green.
Monday 26 April 2010
Watch again
So, the hustings are done, bring on the next hustings.
Here is a link to a report and some video of the Hunts Post hustings last Thursday (apologies for the late posting).
I don't know how hard it looks from where you're sitting or from the back of the hall but let me tell you, it is pretty nerve racking up there. It is also much harder than you might think to spell out the essential differences between your policies and those of the other candidates when you have just one minute to answer the questions!
Still, I hope I managed to get some points across, and it was good practice for this Thursday when I get to do it all again, with a second hustings at Huntingdon Methodist Church. It all kicks off at 7.30pm and again, it would be great if you were able to come down and hear what we all have to say in person.
Here is a link to a report and some video of the Hunts Post hustings last Thursday (apologies for the late posting).
I don't know how hard it looks from where you're sitting or from the back of the hall but let me tell you, it is pretty nerve racking up there. It is also much harder than you might think to spell out the essential differences between your policies and those of the other candidates when you have just one minute to answer the questions!
Still, I hope I managed to get some points across, and it was good practice for this Thursday when I get to do it all again, with a second hustings at Huntingdon Methodist Church. It all kicks off at 7.30pm and again, it would be great if you were able to come down and hear what we all have to say in person.
Monday 19 April 2010
Hustings latest
Good news! The Hunts Post have relented and have agreed that I and the other candidates excluded from their hustings can now take part.
So, if you want to see me on stage with Mr Djanogly MP and the five others vying for your vote then come on down to the Commemoration Hall in Huntingdon at 7.30pm on Thursday.
Places are limited by the size of the hall but it would be good to have as full a house as possible.
So, if you want to see me on stage with Mr Djanogly MP and the five others vying for your vote then come on down to the Commemoration Hall in Huntingdon at 7.30pm on Thursday.
Places are limited by the size of the hall but it would be good to have as full a house as possible.
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