Anders Hanson

When you’re involved in politics in Sheffield you quickly get used to Greens behaving oddly. But you have to wonder why they bother being politics at all when they vote against the very measures they keep talking about, as they did in last week’s budget meeting in Sheffield City Council.

The Liberal Democrats in Sheffield proposed:

• An extra £1.4 million for kerbside recycling of glass or tin.
• £115,000 to provide green waste sacks (currently £1 each) for free.
• £500,000 to help regenerate local shopping areas to make communities more sustainable and to help local businesses.
• £287,000 to provide a ‘green pot’ for local community groups to bid for funding to carry out community environmental projects.
• Scrapping the use of bottled water in the council in favour of tap water.
• … and much more

But instead the Greens voted against this and just backed Labour who were offering far less for the environment, and who in the last year have voted to shut down a successful community school and who opposed Lib Dem attempts to introduce tough targets for the council on carbon emissions.

As one person put it to me, “it seems as though the Green Party is more committed to the Labour Party than to the environment.”