The Party Manifestos 2015: The Green Party.

Politics As I type this, the Green Party launch is live on television. Has this happened before? Across all the news channels? That's the Green surge. In some polls they're neck and neck with the Lib Dems, which some would suggest says more about the Lib Dems than the Green.  But having these policies in the public realm, being discussed in the mainstream is a good thing, even if most of them have little chance to be put into practice. It causes people to question the other politics with which they're being presented.

They've also produced a BSL version:



Now on to the policies. The pdf of the Manifesto doesn't have a search function and also won't copy/paste the text which is why this is all going to look a bit ropey.

The BBC



Vague and deliberately so. The Greens' media spokesman made a poor showing on The Media Show the other week were he seemed to suggest that The Greens would abolish the licence fee which they view as a poll tax for something in the region of central taxation so that richer people would pay more than poor people though as I think presenter Steve Hewlett noted if its being funded directly by the government that suggests the potential for more interference not less.  As a side note, I'd also point out that if rich people are paying more towards the BBC, there's more likely to be an objection by them to the BBC making the kinds of the programmes they're less interested in.  The licence fee creates a level playing field in those terms.  Hewlett also noted that their indication that "no individual or company owns more than 20% of the media market" is a bit vague too in that it does actually say how that would be measured.  The spokesman couldn't explain that either. [Updated later: The Guardian has a clearer description of their proposal. Still doesn't make any kind of sense.]

Global Emissions



Which is what climate change policies from all parties should look like. But here's my favourite part of the manifesto. They actually bother to explain the science:



Amazing.

Libraries



No problems here.  My entire sector's been fucked since 2010 if not earlier.  The only problem I'd see is organisations being convinced to start paying people for work again now that they're used to utilising volunteer and intern labour.  As the architect Frank Geary once said when asked why his practice was so small, it was because he would rather pay people because free labour becomes an addition (I'm paraphrasing from this).

Film Industry



Nothing specific though the above is interesting. It's an initiative to make sure that people working the creative industries aren't taken advantage of and that is important in relation to film where there are loads of low budget productions that exist because of the good will of participants.

Gender Equality



There are pages and pages and not just here - as with the environment, equality is threaded through all of their policies.  So it's easier just to highlight the section of the contents page. Oddly some of it isn't quite as on point as the Labour manifesto. They say they'll promote equal pay but don't go as far as to shame companies into it or some other approach. What's perhaps most interesting is its placement in the manifesto right after environmental policies and above the NHS. They pretty much understand that if you sort out the environment and the inequalities in society everything else becomes much, much easier.

Here's a direct link to a pdf of the whole manifesto (they didn't produce a printed version because it wouldn't be environmentally conscious).

https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto.pdf

I'm voting for them.