Liberal Democrats In Coventry

In the 2008 local elections, the Greens were head-to-head against the Liberal Democrats in 13 wards. The Lib Dems won Upper Stoke. In Earlsdon, we have finished 3rd for three straight years, each time beating the Lib Dems into fourth.

In Cheylesmore, Longford, Lower Stoke, Radford, Sherbourne, Wainbody, Westwood and Whoberley, the Greens came within 150 votes of the Lib Dems.

Let's look at some of the differences between the Lib Dems and the Greens:

- Microsoft is one of the sponsors (see page 8) of the Lib Dem autumn conference this year; the Greens support open source software to help reduce the "digital divide" in society.

- The Liberal Democrats have 8 MPs (out of 63) who are women. Of the 19 different people who ran for the Lib Dems in Coventry in 2007 and 2008, only 6 were women. In contrast, half of our slate in Coventry, in both 2007 and 2008, have been women. The Greens have our new national leader, Caroline Lucas, and we ran Sian Berry as our candidate for London Mayor.

- The Greens favour bringing the train network back into public ownership; the Lib Dems have a "vision of the railways to 2050" that includes keeping the railways private

- The Greens have prominent out politicians, such as Darren Johnson (London Assembly), Patrick Harvie (MSP) or Peter Tatchell (PPC for Oxford East); the Lib Dems have gay/lesbian friendly policies, but you have to wonder about them internally, when there are these firestorms around Simon Hughes coming out as bisexual, and only one MP (Stephen Williams) who is out.

- The Lib Dems are having the same money problems (inadmissable donations) as Labour; in Q2 of 2008, the Lib Dems had 5 donors who gave more than £30 000 each, whilst total donations in the quarter to the Greens was £9300. The Green Party is more independent and can stand up for you without worrying about our corporate funders.

- The Liberal Democrats are in favour of retaining Trident. The Green Party rejects any reliance on nuclear weapons. We will decommission our own nuclear weapons. We will insist on the removal of US nuclear bases. We will have no further research into nuclear weapons. The export of nuclear technology will be stopped. We're pretty clear on nuclear.

If you like what you've been reading, take a close look at our other policies, and see if you agree with them too.