Anders Hanson

I’ve heard some strange campaign techniques in my time, such as the person who in a discussion on how the candidate could raise his profile responded with the words “He could always wear a hat…or a brooch”. But the email I received today from Stephen Hitchens, the Fulwood Ward Green Party candidate, was perhaps one of the strangest.

The email came with the subject line “Vote for Me”, which will be a challenge as I don’t even live in the ward in which he is standing. It was also sent to around two hundred different email addresses, all of which were visible to each recipient, and which seemed to include Sheffield City Council’s Streetforce Department, the Royal Academy and the Co-operative Bank. It then just had the words, “check out your local candidate” with a link to his profile on the Sheffield Green Party website and signed off by “Stephen” with two kisses. Now we may have met once when he called at the office in which I work, but I didn’t think we had got that familiar!

Well after such an enticing introduction, (although sending his email to the person running the Lib Dem campaign in the ward in which he is standing does seem odd), I did of course have to go and look at his profile. It makes interesting reading and it confirms my view that no one who is even vaguely liberal or moderately affluent should be voting Green. If Stephen Hitchens is representative of the Greens then Liberal Democrats everywhere should be challenging the party with the same passion that they take on Labour or the Conservatives, as they are certainly not liberal.

For example. Although I am very pro council-run community-based schools, people do have the right to send their children to a private school if they wish. From the language he uses though, Stephen Hitchens clearly has a major prejudice where private schools are concerned:

The constant stream of 4×4 cars, during term times, to the independent schools in Broomhill, near the area, needs addressing.

It’s almost as if the only cars that are a problem are the 4×4s that belong to parents of the children who go to private schools.

Like many people I would love to see the disparities in wealth reduced across Sheffield, the country and the world. But I don’t tend to see that the way of dealing with this is to tell those people who live in the richest areas that they have too much money:

the other great issue facing the Nether Green/Fulwood area is its great surplus income disparity compared with the rest of the City…Recently the electoral ward of Hallam has been quoted as one of the wealthiest areas of the UK. This is unsustainable.

So basically it just confirms my view that underneath the facade the Greens simply oppose anyone who is affluent, (rather than trying to raise the incomes of the poorest and give everyone the same quality of opportunities), they want to reduce people’s quality of life, (rather than using new technology to make sure that we can all improve our quality of life whilst still being as carbon neutral as possible), and they believe that the only way to make the world more environmentally friendly is to use a big stick and tell people exactly how they should live their lives or else. They’re old-style communists but with a smile.

…and the photo? Oh yes, this was the attachment that came with the email from Stephen Hitchens. How this was expected to make me view the party as a bunch of sane people capable of running a city is beyond me. I think Stephen Hitchens is the one on the right, and the others may also be Green candidates. But the green dinosaur in the middle seemed somewhat appropriate considering the political views that he seems to hold.