Why are the Greens so political ?

The Green Party like to make out that they stand aside from mainstream politics and they are not professional politicians. They want to be seen as something different and stand out for that. Yet whenever they get involved in anything non political they seem to want to politicise it.

Take a planning meeting, held in public in North Walsham a few months ago. This non political public meeting was chaired by the local County Councillor, local representatives turned up to hear what was being said along with more than 200 people. They all accepted it was a local issue and nothing at all to do with Party politics. So which Green Euro candidate chimed up from the back of the hall to speak announcing "I am from the Green Party". Instantly the chairman intervenes to make clear that it was not a political meeting. Then in solidarity with the chairman some of the public started booing the Green. An opportunity to speak wasted, a chance to prove that party politics could be ignored was lost.

Then yesterday in Taverham we had our annual fete. The Tories were in attendance, but as I saw, not wearing rosettes and generally speaking, chatting and joining in with the fete's activities. Well done to them. It's never nice for those who organise events to suddenly have them hijacked by party hacks. But not everyone went down so well. Who turned up in his Green rosette playing the role of the party candidate ? The good people of Taverham were not so impressed with a certain failed Euro candidate. Still, at least some people in Taverham have heard of him now, after all, we have still yet to see a leaflet from them.