Four Steps for Fairness Worth Fighting For

Er.

The Green Party slogan for the General Election is "Fairness is worth Fighting For".

The LibDem slogan is "Four Steps to a Fairer Britain".

Labour has A Future Fair for All.

Of the main parties, only the Cameroons do not mention fairness, relying on a vacuous "Vote for Change". (= NBG; Not Brown (Gordon)

I hope the BNP doesn't come out with "Fighting for a Fair Haired Fair Skinned Britain". That would make it really confusing.

As (Ex-) Green Party Parliamentary Candidate for Weston-super-Mare, it is my duty to try to make some kind of distinction between our positions.

The Green approach to "fairness" (we prefer the word "equity", except it would put people off) is that it includes our full agenda:

1. Fair distribution of wealth within a nation, because that is associated with a healthier, happier people.
   
   

   To achieve this, we need
   

   • a better electoral system, where more varieties of opinion are represented
   • redistributive taxation
   • a radically revised financial system, with new money created by the Bank of England as well as by the private banks
     

2. Fairer distribution of wealth between nations.
   
   

   To achieve this, we need
   

   • to abolish the debt burden on heavily indebted poor countries
   • to solarise the world economy so that hot poor countries become energy rich
   • to tackle dictatorships which cause poverty, oppression and war for their people, through the Index of Human Rights
   • to get the UN to set up an agency to negotiate separatist movements (1/3 of current wars are based on separatism; Angola separatists attacked the Togo football team yesterday)
     

3. Fairer distribution between present and future generations
   
   
   • -which brings in our whole sustainability agenda - climate change, reforestation, peace not militarism, economics based on ecology, respect for biodiversity and all the rest
     
     So that's what is implicit in the Green view of fairness (though I should point out that one or two points are not yet official Green Party policy).
     

What is the LibDem take on fairness?
I have highlighted the bits of Nick Clegg's Four Steps that catch my interest:

1. Tax Reform: stop up the loopholes that the rich use, and give £700 to everyone else. OK.
   
2. Reduce Class Sizes in schools. Cool.
   
3. Spread the profits of the City of London, out to the country generally. Have community banks (good classic Green policy), invest in infrastructure and green technology, invest in reliable public transport, (I think)
   
4. Political Reform - openness, transparency, 150 less MPs, local communities to control police and NHS (classic green policy), powers of recall.

So there we have it. Much overlap, as you would expect. So who do you vote for? Neither Party will form the next Government, so you are only voting for the principle in either case.

My case is that the Green philosophy, founded on the understanding of ecology, is more inclusive and sound than Liberal Democracy, which, like individualism and socialism is founded on the absurd notion that man is a self-existent being.

PS And another thing: Dave's slogan "We can't go on like this" would do for the Green Party too.
PPS Labour do not yet have a slogan afaik. May I suggest, free of charge, a simple

"Plod on",

or possibly,

"If you think we are bad, look at the Tories?"