Bristol Greens: Government needs sense of proportion over cuts
Written by Bill Heaney Saturday, 23 October 2010
"The government needs to get a sense of proportion over these cuts," said Charlie Bolton, former Green Party councillor for Southville and candidate for Bristol South in May's general election. "They are unnecessary and immoral."
Charlie's condemnation was echoed by fellow party members Gus Hoyt and Katie Buse, both prospective city councillors in the May 2011 local elections.
"Now is the time we need to be investing in communities, not forcing people further into poverty," said Gus, Green Party candidate for Ashley ward, which includes some of the poorest parts of the country.
"The Green Party has a complete solution to lift Britain out of recession that does not require this unwarranted assault on the poorest in society."
Easton candidate Katie said she was very concerned that people in her area would be hit very hard by the cuts, as bodies like the Institute for Financial Studies have predicted.
"There has been a very good turnout for today's demonstration in the pouring rain, which shows there are a lot of people who think this is very important, and it is good to see so many of them being very vocal about it."
Some 4,000 people took part in the march from Castle Park to College Green, where they heard speeches from several union leaders, including the RMT, PCS, Unison, NUS and CWU.
Southville Cllr Tess Green welcomed the high turnout, but blamed the police for provoking trouble.
"It was peaceful until the police turned up," she said, calling the rough handling of at least one demonstrator as a "complete overreaction".
"We have a right to demonstrate and they should be protecting that right," Tess said.
The Green Party has reacted angrily to Chancellor George Osborne's announcement earlier in the week of massive cuts to the public sector, including some 100,000 council jobs according to the Local Government Association.
The coalition's cuts are a "reckless gamble with the future of this country", Green Party leader Caroline Lucas said on last Thursday's BBC Question Time.
"We do need to get the deficit down, but there is every risk that if we try to do that through throwing more and more people out of work, we will simply lose their tax revenues, we will have to pay out their redundancies, we will have to pay out benefits, and actually that's going to make matters worse, that is more likely to tip us into that double-dip recession," she said.
The Green Party would invest instead in green jobs, making homes more energy efficient and switching more of Britain's electricity production to sustainable sources like wind, wave, tide and solar energy.