Democracy, Equality, Sustainability

The UK, Europe, and the world is in a major economic, political and ecological crisis.

Free market capitalism is failing.

The people reject austerity.

There is an alternative to austerity:

Democracy means that the will of the people is the ultimate authority.
    We reject Plutocracy, Oligarchy, Technocracy and Fascism.
    Democracy recognises the social aspect of humanity
    Democracy encompasses fair electoral systems and elections.
    Democracy requires a free, pluralistic and balanced press and media.
    Democracy entails high regard for human rights by all states.
    Democracy implies maximum level of individual freedom, freedom of speech, and fair libel laws
     
Equality means a tendency towards greater equality in economic and social matters.

    We reject free market fundamentalist capitalism because it increases the rich-poor gap, and this divergence leads to all manner of social problems.
    We require equality within nations, between nations and between generations.
    Equality requires Tax Justice:
        Closure of tax loopholes
        Corporate Tax Transparency
        Financial Transaction Tax
        Closure of Tax Havens worldwide
Equality requires that the privilege of creating money should be shared more evenly between the private and public sector.

Sustainability means the ability of the current generation to meet its needs without impairing the ability of succeeding generations to meet their needs.
We reject the notion that sustainability must be put on hold until the recession is over. On the contrary, we know that ecological healing will also cause economic healing.

The current ecological crisis is severe, and requires such a vast amount of work to remedy the situation that unemployment must fall to minimum levels in the future.

Sustainability requires an expanded Green New Deal, (GND+), which does everything suggested in the GND, but with an added ingredient. GND+ will use that element of Citizen's Income that allows benefits to follow the citizen into work. The Green Wage Subsidy will enable people to take up work in the green sector of the economy.  It converts unemployment benefits from being a dead dole into a vibrant stimulus for the green sector, so that the recovery will green the economy at the same time.

[update 14 Aug 2012]
Under this simple three point banner, we can build up a co-operative programme of policies that are inclusive and positive. We need to put co-operation and tolerance right at the front, so that greens, labour, lib dems, and even some tories can subscribe to the programme. More to the point, the majority of people who are alienated from party politics can be included. Dogma and doctrine go on the back burner.

Web technology means that we can build up the programme on a linked, wiki-discussion basis, so that the details can be argued out in the background, and the agreed points be put in the foreground.