Green leader Bennett sorry for 'excruciating' interview

[d000hg]

The agenda of these people is based on envy and other insecurities. If people genuinely wanted to help the poor they would do so directly or at least pressurise a mainstream political party. To be fair the reason why people will vote UKIP is because they want to pressurise govt into for example controlling immigration. The Green party is so extreme and so full of self loathing that voting for them has to do more with personal issues than any semblance of logic or practicality.

Now who's deluded? Do you even know any green supporters? I do any they are young, idealistic and passionate. They DO help the poor and don't believe the Greens would benefit them personally (not greedy). They believe the system is broken and foolishly think the Greens are able to do something about that.

[SueEllen]

I think she was wise. If she had clearly articulated Green Party policies then what she said would have been far more stupid.

Funnily enough I saw parts of 2 news reports where the news presenters actually explained the Green Party's housing policy. They then turned round and said something like "I didn't find that hard but she did for some reason".

Anyway I don't know where she is a candidate as the person who is likely to be the next elected Green MP is a youngish guy in Bristol.

[pjclarke]

Nevertheless, there were mistakes in the Bennett interview. “We have lost faith in any of the large available understandings of how structural change takes place in history,” the philosopher Roberto Unger said in a recent lecture in London, “and as a result we fall back on a bastardised conception of political realism, namely that a proposal is realistic to the extent that it approaches what already exists.” This is the whole of British politics encapsulated in two lines: unless a policy looks exactly like what the mainstream parties are suggesting; unless it can be funded by minor tootling on existing tax instruments (and even that will be called a “raid”); unless it will leave the fundamental structures totally unperturbed – then it is the most outlandish idea that anybody has ever heard.

Therefore, nobody in opposition – not Bennett, not Ed Miliband, not Nigel Farage – should ever get into a conversation about how they will fund something without first underlining that the way things exist at the moment is completely wrecked. The status quo is broken; it’s not even static, it’s constantly worsening.

In the final spending period of the Labour government, £96bn was allocated to housing benefit, £5bn to building new homes. It is a naked redistribution of taxpayers’ money to the 2% of people who are landlords. Money we could be spending on decent, environmentally friendly housing stock that everybody would want to live in is instead being funnelled directly to the richest people in society: a system steadily creating dependence, insecurity and squalor, with 21% of people now on housing benefit. How many more have to join them before the boot is on the other foot and Nick Ferrari is called upon to explain what’s so great about the system as it stands? 30%? 50%?

Bennett came unstuck with the £60,000-per-unit costing, which Ferrari leapt upon. (What would that build, a conservatory? How much is the land costing? And so on.) In fact, I would venture that the Green party leader knows a lot more than Ferrari about building new homes: Green Cities is just one eco-think-and-do tank, which has produced blueprints for food neutral, energy neutral homes, costed at 10,000 flats for £1billion (100k each rather than 60, assuming that the land was bought by compulsory purchase order).

Her mistake was to answer the question as Ferrari posed it, rather than describing the vision that she knows back to front; I can see why. We are all sick of hearing politicians simply address the question they arrived to answer. We claim to want to hear people listening, like human beings. But she needs to be able to frame the conversation around her own assumptions – that this housing would represent a radical, even beautiful new future – rather than his: that it would be a shanty town thrown up with plywood.

Zoe Williams.

[DodgyAgent]

Zoe Williams.

Oh dear! The easiest thing in the world is to say how wrong things are. The second easiest is to say you can fix them. The hardest is to actually do something that is effective. The Greens cannot even get the recycling in Brighton right so what else can we expect of them?

[DodgyAgent]

Now who's deluded? Do you even know any green supporters? I do any they are young, idealistic and passionate. They DO help the poor and don't believe the Greens would benefit them personally (not greedy). They believe the system is broken and foolishly think the Greens are able to do something about that.

We all believe the system is broken to one extent or another, they may be "young, idealistic and passionate" but this is not necessarily a good thing. Give me someone who is realistic, pragmatic and has responsibilities any day over the dreamers you are portraying.

[OnceStonedRose]

Lay off the greens.......

[GlenW]

Lay off the greens.......

... only eat meat!

[MicrosoftBob]

... only eat meat!

Or be a meta vegetarian, and live on a diet of vegetarians

[d000hg]

We all believe the system is broken to one extent or another, they may be "young, idealistic and passionate" but this is not necessarily a good thing. Give me someone who is realistic, pragmatic and has responsibilities any day over the dreamers you are portraying.

That's how the idealists end up, normally

We shouldn't squash idealism, it generally dies on its own but that force of belief to do things regardless if they're possible sometimes pays off.

[BrilloPad]

One thing the green party have got spot on. Defence policy. We only need a UK army to defend our borders. All UK troops should be bought home.