Green Party Promotional Material - Local Elections 2010

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Permalink Reply by Anne Gray on April 5, 2010 at 22:28

A GREEN VISION FOR HARINGEY

What would successful Green candidates do for Haringey in 2010-2014 ?

Regardless of who wins the Parliamentary election , central government will probably impose 15% to 20% cuts in all local authority services other than education, just to keep public borrowing down.

Greens would seek to maintain key front-line services, especially those for children and the elderly. Our priorities would be:-

 preserving jobs and salaries of front line staff, rather than managers.
 reducing energy costs in Council buildings, saving the climate and saving money for more important things.
 prevention of social problems, especially crime and accidents – our approach to the cost of this should be ‘a stitch in time saves nine’, actively involving residents and voluntary groups
 measures to reduce waste of public money.
 opposing privatisation and outsourcing, because shareholders come between the taxpayers’ pound and the service they get.

To preserve services, some charges could go up – like parking for non-residents (unless providing a service, like carers or builders). Greens would raise charges for business refuse where businesses do not comply with a ‘good practice’ code on recycling and minimising packaging. We would impose more and heavier fines for rubbish dumping, on a ‘ticket’ basis. Greens would take action against empty buildings – they are wasted and don’t pay rates.

Here are our key proposals for five key areas: health and care, housing, employment,education and crime:-

Health and care
 No privatization of GP or other services. Greens together with Respect are the only parties that have stood up against privatization of GP surgeries and against polyclinics which are designed to assist privatization.
 Keep the A and E department at the Whittington Hospital
 Restore and expand health education and preventive services of all kinds; from foot care for the elderly to help with stopping smoking and avoiding alcohol and drug abuse
 Keep Sure Start, and health visitors to all newborn babies
 Cut social work bureaucracy, help social workers focus on families
 A social enterprise to provide social care on a non-profit basis

Housing
 Work to scrap the ALMO and bring Council housing back ‘in house’ with a real voice for tenants in how housing is run
 Warm, energy efficient homes; a mass insulation programme
 Build more Council housing and bring empty homes (Council and private) back into use

Employment
 Create jobs through a mass home insulation campaign, and through encouraging local renewable energy generation and local food production
 In Council services, we want to save energy to save money to save jobs
 All Council services and contractors to pay a London ‘living wage’ of £7.60 per hour. High management salaries should be capped to save money for the lower paid.
 Support 'Buy Local' campaigns and measures to preserve small local shops.

Education
 Get Haringey schools up to £1000 more per pupil per year by persuading central government to give them the ‘inner London’ funding level which they deserve
 Good state-run local schools for all, no to ‘academies’ controlled by private companies
 Oppose the Private Finance Initiative which lets private companies make money out of our children’s education – find better ways of financing new school buildings

Crime
Greens would tackle the causes of crime by:-

 improving youth services to prevent boredom
 more preventive work with youth at risk of offending
 attacking alcohol abuse and drug abuse, which fuel crime
 better staffing of stations
 bringing back park-keepers
 making streets more pedestrian – friendly – more people walking means more people to look out for each other

For more detail on other areas in which you may be interested, please e-mail Anne Gray (PPC for Tottenham) on amg65amg@googlemail.com

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Permalink Reply by John D on April 6, 2010 at 13:04

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Permalink Reply by Mike Shaughnessy on April 25, 2010 at 19:40

For Haringey wide Green Party news our blog is here http://haringeygreens.blogspot.com/

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