Do They Mean Us?

It's hard to recognise the Green Party from what the other parties say about us. It's almost as though people make things up. Here are some examples:

Today 

https://twitter.com/sunny_hundal/status/511981924106383360

From @sunny_hundal: "The Green Party has abandoned its key principle in support of Scotland's YES campaign http://t.co/DRhJ5JYApP"

"...one of three key principles of the Green Party is:

A real change: from subsidies to fracking and dependence on fossil fuels to a sustainable world we can pass on to our children.

So why are the Green Party supporting an outcome that makes a nation even more dependent on exploiting its oil and gas resources?"

Because this is an election about reducing power from Westminster and into local democracy. Not about Greens supporting SNP against Tories, Labour ukip and LD. Greens would tax oil companies not subsidise them, use the revenue to invest in renewables and jobs. 

More examples. From May 2013 local election LD leaflet claimed Greens had given up when 2 days later we won! http://twitter.com/PurpleGreenRob/status/329635248910524416/photo/1 

This is a sort of trap the LD have used on me.  When asked what chance you have of winning, if your honest and have little chance they say you've given up. If you say, as the LD do, winning here, you look ridiculous. I prefer to be realistic but the choice is up to the voters. 

https://twitter.com/mrgreengus/status/329675066843475970 

On the claim that the Greens had given up

@purplegreenrob said 

"This is a complete lie and we refute it completely. @BristolLibDems - apologise NOW. @BristolAnna can win tomorrow."

pic.twitter.com/Qls0Eqtp3L

5:35pm - 1 May 13

Most Greens boycotted 2012 PCC election  as waste of time, a distraction from more serious problems such as cuts. I blogged about the candidates and got this comment from a LD blogger: 

"In contrast Adrian Windisch gets sanctimonious and over-emotional in his frustrated told-you-so rant from the sidelines, despite or possibly because of his party's refusal to invest in this democratic exercise. You can't complain about democracy if you don't participate in it!"

http://bythemuddybanksofthethames.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/round-up-pcc-elections-not-hp.html?showComment=1355843549626&m=1. According to him your not allowed to comment if you don't take part. Do journalists have to stand now? Ridiculous.  

Far worse was in Kent, a Green PCC candidate who did stand was photoshopped with Nazi symbols. 

http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/9987919.Kent_PCC_candidate__horrified__at_being_labelled_Nazi/

Far right English Democrat Party 

 compared party members to communist “mass murderers”.

He said: “The two greatest murderers in human history are Mao Tse-tung and Joseph Stalin, with Mao Tse-tung probably having killed up to 95 million people.

“And both of those in many respects (had) got policies that were not wholly dissimilar to some of the Green policies.”

“They are rather inclined to come out with talk about a greater European homeland and things like that which are vaguely reminiscent of that era.

His party spokesman said:

“What Steve Uncles has done is over the top but at the same time it’s not without a kernel of truth.

“I’m certainly not going to discipline him about it if that’s what you are asking. He is a grown man.

“One of the things we know about Hitler was that he was an anti-hunting vegetarian.” This chap really is confused, Hitler was anti communist. 

A Green Party spokeswoman said: “The photograph posted is inaccurate and an offence to the Green Party, to Mr Jeffery and to the democratic process.

“The English Democrats not only defended Mr Uncles’ inexplicable and despicable actions, but attempted to justify them.

“This ‘defence’ is risible at best. The Green Party is not a communist party.

“We trust Mr Uncles is preparing a full and unreserved apology to the people of Kent, and the UK as a whole, for pretending to know and care about England."

What They Say About Me

On twitter recently:

Eric Joyce Labour MP tweeted this:

@ericjoyce: Sir James Savile surely now one of dear departed Roy Castle's 'Recordbreakers'. Only I don't think Roy would've done the song for him."

I responded :@AdrianWindisch: "@ericjoyce poor choice of words, voters may remember it and punish you"

His answer:

"@ericjoyce: @AdrianWindisch What? U in a gimp suit in ur garage as u wrote this? Again?"

So I tweeted:

"@AdrianWindisch: @ericjoyce high quality argumet from the man who did this http://t.co/dV7bVVu5 "

The link says ..."The Falkirk MP headbutted Conservative MP for Pudsey Stuart Andrew during a brawl. 

He also hit Tory councillors Luke Mackenzie and Ben Maney, and Labour whip Phil Wilson, MP for Sedgefield."  

Quality. 

In Reading I often get this sort of thing from LD Gareth Epps:

Gareth Epps29 May 2011 22:11

Quote from you Adrian:-

"In 2008, I think it was, the then opposition Tory and LD (pre coalition) combined to put in their choice of Mayor and outvoted Lab. So making the mayor political. They hope people will have forgotten this. Hypocrites."

On my claim that the selection of Mayor had been political  in the past 

http://greenreading.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/rock-and-hard-place.html?m=1 

"Absolute garbage. In 2008 it was taken as the opposition's 'turn' to have the Mayor, after a run of four Labour incumbents (Stainthorp, Chaudri, Tickner and Maskell). 

Labour were openly admitting in discussions that they had very few in their Group who wanted to do it, and so put forward Debbie Edwards who at that stage had only been a councillor for two years. They had an ideological opposition to Fred Pugh ever becoming Mayor, in just the sort of manner of personal vendetta that is typical of Reading Labour. But Labour openly admitted that they would back any other Conservative candidate for Mayor other than Fred Pugh.

The Liberal Democrat Group discussed this at length, talked to Fred to get his side of the story, and almost all of us voted (on a free vote as I remember) to back Fred for Deputy, as all councillors were in agreement that it was the tories' turn.

So, Adrian, you are talking absolute garbage; the 2008 Deputy Mayor vote was not political, but was about Labour's personal vendetta against one individual. Don't make wild statements, as you are prone to do, on things you know absolutely nothing about."

Says Gareth making my point for me while saying I was asking garbage. Needless to say I don't think much of Gareth, but he seems to think he is going to be an MP one day. 

http://greenreading.blogspot.com/2010/01/lib-dem-parliamentary-candidate-resigns.html

On the 2010  General Election Gareth said 'The fact is that anyone our LD members select to fight Reading West will have much firmer green credentials than Lab and the Tories could muster between them and the credibility lacked by the maverick Green candidate there.' 

This was completely unprovoked incidentally. Being called a Maverick could be a compliment, suggesting I have no credibility isn't. I have yet to respond in kind, but naturally my respect for him is not very high."

Labour. When we started campaigning the local Labour Party tried everything to stop us. They claimed we had links with terrorists ( animal rights extremists). We don't. When that didn't work the next year they said we had links to the BNP! Also didn't work as they lost the next 4 elections in Park Ward to us. 

One year a lab Cllr blog  had a picture of me alongside a picture of a banana. Not sure what that was about, it didn't work, vote went up and the website was later deleted. Still a banana is a better comparison than terrorists, the BNP, Nazis, Communists etc. 

Another year Lab Cllr Tony Jones’s website (www.cllrtonyjones.com/battle.html)He called me ‘Windy’, then he lists every election result I’ve had. He accuses me of standing in different wards in different years, calling me a ‘wandering wannabe’. He quotes me as saying ‘others’ are “incompetent, soggy, and grey”, I dont recall calling anyone soggy, but it the cap fits.. 

I think he put words from different letters I've written together. I had said they were incompetent managers when Council Leader D. Sutton said he was living in interesting times, as he seemed to be making a mess of the council policies to deliberately make things more interesting. I said they were grey in relation to the Green Party, as the big three parties seem to lack clear green water by comparison.

Cllr Jones doesn’t mention that since last year the number of people voting in Battle declined from 31% to 28% yet my number of votes and share of the vote went up from 13.0% to 13.4%, from 241 to 253 votes. The Labour vote in Battle fell from 990 to 971, and across Reading they lost 7 Cllrs. We did even better in Park ward. We are gaining momentum. 

Meanwhile their PPC 

A Dodds (Labour Reading East candidate) lost in Billericay in 2005 (1) and Oxfordshire in 2001 (2), does that make her a ‘wandering wannabe’ also? Several Labour Cllrs have stood in other wards in other years, Cllr Jones displays his double standards. 

Looking back on this from 2010 is interesting, the LD promises on tuition fees etc. from ex LD Cllr Swaine http://waswasere.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/bouncing-of-walls.html?m=1 

http://greenreading.blogspot.co.uk/2010/01/lib-dem-parliamentary-candidate-resigns.html?m=1

When I sympathised with a gaff by a Labour candidate, I was attacked. "Adrian Windisch, as the Green Party candidate, can't help himself from wallowing empathetically in the pain of his competitor and compares it to other gaffes - including one of his own, where he failed to remember what Reading's renowned '3B's' are.' (Bulbs, Beer and Biscuits for anyone interested.) In a radio interview beer had slipped my mind, it can happen to anyone. Hardly a big mistake though. 

Usually the LD attacks on the Greens do not quote what we say, but make up policies that we don't have. Ex Cllr Glenn Goodall claims as 'FACT' that the LD is the only party wanting to scrap tuition fees, despite evidence to the contrary. He said 'This even led to some scandalous remarks from the Greenie-meanies suggesting it was a forgone conclusion that the policy would be jettisoned. Also, they stated their (authoritarian) party would be the only choice for liberal-students… ' They have abandoned their opposition to tuition fees for the next term, so actually we are the only choice now. 

He is convinced we are authoritarian, that we would 'FORCE people not to have kids, not to drive, not to eat meat, not to have any tech and basically live the way YOU want them too. That is the very definition of an authoritarian party… So in fact the Green Party is the same as Labour and the Tories - “Do what we say, or else!”' 

Its funny how some people attack others by saying what they themselves are like. He is quite wrong about Green Party Policy, there is nothing on forcing people not to have more children/not eat meat etc. While the LD in power behave just like Tory and Lab. None are very authoritarian though, I think he made that bit up. Reducing meat would cut carbon emissions but its voluntary. 

I've always enjoyed reading ex MP Jane Griffiths but when she gets onto Green Party she looses the plot. She claims some east European Greens were linked to Nazis so therefore we are also. "In Latvia they were overtly racist in government, promoting the expulsion of all Jews from Latvia." If true this would make them the opposite of every Green Party I have heard of, and they should be removed from any link to the rest of us. I've searched for this but cant find anything, so is probably fiction. 

It's strange as we have more policy available to view than any other party. Documents dating back decades in the way to a fairer and sustainable society. But they rarely attack us on what we actually stand for. Rather they make up what they think voters will fear, which strangely reflects on what they themselves are like.