G'dday What to say about the greens, Firstly I've got a lot of sympathy with what Russell has to say about the greens. Firstly, my experience of them has been that they rorted the alliance deliberately and after they left, despite the amiable divorce line run at the time, basically went about the place telling everyone who would listen that the alliance was doomed, how clever they'd been in fucking them over and how the electorate would abandon such dinosaurs in favour of the wonders of new age greendom. Secondly the greens have virtually nothing in common with one another other than a vague commitment to saving the planet and a few very specific contingent issues - i.e. no logging of native timber on the west coast. This has meant that outside of these issues the views held by persons claiming green membership have ranged across the whole political spectrum, indeed small fragments of the green party can be found affiliated with most parties particularly ACT where 'market greens' find a nice friendly home. Thirdly the greens are mainly an upper/middle middle class party with little affinity or concern with the working class or indeed the traditional lower middle classes ( small capitalists & shop keepers) or farmers - my view is that they are a 'classic' party of the new middle class. Lastly I think that the likes of Nandor Tanczos are at best amusing diversions but in general are little more than repackaged mouth pieces for the comfortable classes with absolutely no interest in radical social transformation or even major redistributions of wealth within the capitalist system. cheers
Bill