Thursday, June 07, 2007

Transport Will Be Green

The Green Party has been given the leadership of the powerful transport committee after a reshuffle of the Scottish Parliament's structure. There are 15 committees five being led by the SNP, five by Labour, two by the Tories, two by the Liberal Democrats and one by the Green Party.

These committees scrutinise legislation and hold the government to account. It is impossible for the SNP to have a majority on most of the committees and therefore the system could be used by opposition parties to push through their own legislation or publish critical reports on the government.

The transport, infrastructure and climate change will be led by Patrick Harvie, the Green MSP. As a fierce critic of new road-building projects and an advocate of public transport. "Members of the committees must strive to work constructively, putting the interests of the country, and, in this case, the planet, before short-term political objectives."

It’s barely credible that the Greens get control of something that they are at odds with just about everybody on. In the election they picked up slightly over 82,000 list votes, 4% of the votes cast and they are going to be in a position of such power. PR in action but not very sensibly!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think the SNP want to build up the Greens, as a non-unionist alternative to the Lib-dems.

Unfortunately the Greens have bloody awful policies.