A LIGHTER SHADE OF GREEN

I live to fight another day, after having attended the Monbiot rally at Friends House. I did not get lynched, only ignored and collared by one angry member of the Green Party UK.

Was it something I said? Or the fact that I wrote on their solicitation forms: "PRINTED ON ENVIRONMENTALLY DESTRUCTIVE WOOD PULP PAPER. HELP DESTROY THE RAIN FORESTS AND SUPPORT US NOW"?

They were not pleased. One member then proceeded to discusss global warming with me and things got hot. I mentioned Cynthia McKinney and her visit to the UK Greens in September, and he suggested she was unable to answer questions. When I questioned the angry member as to which questions, he was then unable to answer, and it turned out he was not even at the event. He was not alone in that his inability to answer questions. The panelists were not only unable to do so, but also rather angry an my inconvenient truths. When asked about Piers Corbyn, Phil just asserted that Piers was a nutter. "Conspicuously absent from your speeches was any mention of him or others who have real science about climate change," I told them.

While facts were few and far between, emotions ran high. One teary-eyed blonde from down under went on about how terrible climate change was, and how great it was to break the law in London to get her point across. For all her emotional speeches and illegal actions, she did not want to know about hemp and gave me a cold look when I gave her some hemp paper; as did another speaker.

The main speaker was George Monbiot, the smartest of the lot - he sat nearest the exit and when anyone like myself approached after the talk he managed to get away faster than a snake in the grass. This left a volunteer to field my questions about why they only discussed biofuel as one product rather than intelligenlty talking about biodiesel and bioethanol as two very distinct items; which confused the mean green assistant further and I was sure they were just about to call security.

The overall impression of it was that it was a Holy Roller revival meeting. They talk up the emotions and then pass the plate. In this case the plate was in the form of direct debit forms printed on - environmentally destructive wood pulp paper. And were any of them wearing hemp? No way - they all had on environmentally destructive cotton. They want to preach, but they don't want to practice.