True Colours (Eyes Right‪)‬

THE GREEN PARTY HAVE ELECTED themselves a new Co-Leader, this month as I write. She's a lawyer by training, a former Maori activist, and one-time candidate, for first the McGillicuddy Serious Party, and then the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party; so one more Silly Party shouldn't make much difference. And with a background like that, her enviro-credentials are obviously impeccable. The environmentalists will be pleased; after all, the Green Party is an environmental Party, isn't it? So they claim, and many people appear to believe it. The reality, as this writer sees it, is that the Green Party is actually a socialist Party, and an extreme hard-left Red socialist Party, at that. The Green label gives them an air of respectability, and a secure electoral foundation amongst the young and idealistic of heart, but it doesn't truly reflect the philosophies or motivations of the Parliamentary wing of this ostensibly eco-minded organisation. Politics is like that, as is much of life. Quite often the contents of what you think you're buying turn out to be markedly different from the picture on the tin. Indeed, as one commentator remarked, near the beginning of the US-led invasion of Iraq (Episode Two), you know the world is a crazy place when the best golfer is a black man, the best rapper is a white man, the Germans don't want to go to war, and the French are accusing the Americans of being arrogant.