Hear? Read maybe? If we You hear a lot on this blog – not least generic whinging from middle-class Tories pretending to be “Leninists” like yourself.

surely the point is, that you’d expect a bit more from Greens?

Expect what? Them to run extensive background checks on everyone who joins the party? I’d love for you to advocate that Brett, and stand by the courage of your convictions, you know?

And when you say its not surprising there were Tories in there, I’m afraid it doens’t come across like that. There’s already a bunch of nutjob libertarians here who spend all their time wanking off to comparing Greens to Hitler. It seems you’re just trying to keep asserting that link. It rather sounds something out of the Samizdata blog.

And secondly, how about actually attacking the Tories once in a while? Are are you going to do that only once the progressive left in Britain has been completely decimated over in-fighting and finger-pointing? I mean…. I must be living in a parallel universe where the left is full of great ideas, lots of energy and doing positive activism. Its not like the Tories are re-surgent with 20 point leads. Who ever thinks these guys are going to come into power eh?

1) Who is to validate the accuracy of the “list?” Lots of people are getting pilloried for being on it, but how is there any confirmation of the veracity of the list in question?

2) Have the British polity studied Senator McCarthy and his famous lists used to get “bad people?” Turns out most of them were completely contrived, and the political climate he created for years was one of the most toxic in US history. Why are the British now emulating that environment?

http://www.greens.org/iowa/positions.htm

And the words that Boogski “quoted” were nowhere to be found! I wonder where he got them from?

“The Green party “10 key values” could do with a Fisking. Right out of the gate we get this nonsense:

Every human being deserves a say in the decisions that affect his or her life and should not be subject to the will of another.

Got that, folks? No laws. No nothing. Words fail me.”

Their enviromental positions, especially, are all apocalyptic in tone and remind one of those end-of-days evangelicals scouring the horizon for the arrival of the rapture.

So is it any surprise that some should end up in the ranks of the BNP?

“Election candidate says his name on BNP list was ‘joke’

“A former council election candidate for the Green Party has denied supporting the BNP despite his name appearing on the leaked membership list. Nicholas Stone, who stood for the Green Party in Telegraph Hill ward in Lewisham in the 2006 council elections, said he had suspicions about how his name got on to the list.

“He said: “There were plenty of BNP sympathisers where I once worked and they could have put me on the mailing list as a joke. I am not a member of the BNP nor am I a sympathiser of their policies. I still support the Green Party and although my membership has lapsed I may well rejoin the party in the future.”"

So Brett, you can rest easy – you didn’t vote for a Nazi.

ps Joe: what does progressive mean to me is quite a big question to be honest. I’m not sure I have a pithy response to it… my quick and clumsy reply would be that I think the Greens are positioned to the left of Labour but that as a pluralist party with a number of competing versions of what it is to be “a Green” that set of politics is not always/often framed within the orthodox confines of left or socialist ideology – so I used a looser term.

I hope that helps clarify what I was driving at in this context and I understand why the term progressive can be a difficult one to unpick as everyone wants to lay claim to it these days.

http://www.bristolgreenparty.org.uk/nr/081126suspension.

http://www.greenparty.org.uk/news/2008-11-21-jean.html

If they weren’t then there would really be something worth shouting about. A lot of people on the BNP list have turned out not to have ever been members (including an 80 year old Jewish near neighbour of mine)