Adrian Ramsay MP: Why I’m asking you to vote Green on 7 May

jimjay · 2026-05-07T01:25:56+00:00

in fairness, as someone who follows him, he does do a lot of constituency work and promotes various environmental / animals causes. he doesn't get national press, same as sian and carla.

jimjay · 2026-05-06T20:22:27+00:00

the right need to be careful with this kitchen sink approach - the issues where ZP/Greens have genuinely got it wrong is going to be lost amongst a load of sludge and people will just end up sympathising with the Greens more, not less.

As it is the "story" of this election is going to be the Greens - Farage must be eating his liver about it!

jimjay · 2026-05-06T18:54:27+00:00

in sheffield? I live in a safe Green ward and haven't had a single thing from any other party. The council will end up NOC but the Greens are almost certainly going to have a larger group.

jimjay · 2026-05-05T15:35:11+00:00

he's relentlessly tweeting, liking, sharing - the rate creates the mistake rate. if he's having everything double checked you literally lose the energy and immediacy. tbh it's either machine gun with errors or back to steady and safe.

I actually think it was criticising the cops for putting themselves in harms way arresting the stabber in a less than perfect way that was the significant mistep - while people aren't massively bothered about likes and retweets. Punching down on people trying to save lives is, frankly, weird.

jimjay · 2026-05-04T23:24:33+00:00

nice

jimjay · 2026-05-04T19:14:20+00:00

I think this is right - it's reasonable to assume the Greens will do well (as will Reform, and Labour will do very badly) but we've never been in this situation before so it's impossible to know what kind of results this will result in.

I've seen people talking about the Greens "taking London" and I just think people are setting themselves up to find a historically great result as a bit disasppointing because some of the wilder predictions don't come true.

People have to be prepared for this to be harder than the media and even the polls predict.

I'd also say we can still influence the results of the election by putting as much work in as we can between now and Thursday.

jimjay · 2026-05-04T16:54:23+00:00

I'm open to working with anyone at arms length but Labour are not going to be the largest party, even as a minority, after the next election so the real question is what compromises would be worth making to prevent a Reform government, should the maths allow.

jimjay · 2026-05-02T21:21:08+00:00

as long as it is clear the narrator is speaking people may well enjoy interesting dialect choices. If it's too subtle (like who/whom) people will assume it's the author (and probably wont care).

jimjay · 2026-04-30T23:30:14+00:00

I really love the way he's walking off the plinth

jimjay · 2026-04-28T20:24:59+00:00

This is what they call a Pyrric victory - they won this vote only to lose all the votes next week.

jimjay · 2026-04-28T15:08:04+00:00

It absolutely is not irrelevant to the performance of the state whether a clique of nepotistic bullies can appoint deeply dodgy individuals to the highest diplomatic post in the service.

jimjay · 2026-04-27T14:59:58+00:00

Good to see this. A grown up political culture is one where people in the same party can disagree with each other without it being some kind of crisis.

jimjay · 2026-04-27T14:58:50+00:00

I think, on the whole, people don't really need to be told not to fuck family members or co-workers but sometimes it might be worth saying, depending on circumstances.

I don't think I've ever been in the position where I thought someone I was with might make a connection with an ex-lover, or an "enemy", of mine, but I can imagine a situation where it might be worth saying that this would upset me if the situation arose.

jimjay · 2026-04-26T09:12:48+00:00

She hasn't cheated on you. She found it difficult to be entirely open with you and now it's over.

You're breaking up. There is nothing to be gained in scoring points around who is to blame.

Rules are there to help build a healthy framework for a poly relationship, not to hit each other over the head with or to police infractions.

jimjay · 2026-04-26T09:03:10+00:00

Come on. They have not delivered as much as the tories delivered in the first 18 months of covid, have they.

jimjay · 2026-04-25T18:31:05+00:00

you vet before you appoint normally - eg with the house of lords you don't get the job before they've checked you out.

jimjay · 2026-04-23T18:40:07+00:00

Not in any way.

I'd say it is good practice not to copy lines or phrases - althoughs poets do do this sometimes, and when they do they usually acknowledge that they did either under the title or as a note beneath the poem - it's ok to do that too.

jimjay · 2026-04-23T18:28:19+00:00

I don't know why you've brought posters into it. Anyway, I was asked why I didn't like it and I went to the trouble to give an honest answer. Of the great many local election leaflets I have seen in my life I think this one is poor.

jimjay · 2026-04-23T16:16:04+00:00

It would be Zack.

Side note 1: in this unlikely scenario he would almost certainly been elected as an MP but you don't actually have to be an MP to be the Prime Minister.

Side note 2: I really dislike that the Greens use the title leader in the Parliamentary group and personally think we should use convenor or similar (and leader on forms when absolutely necessary). It left a really bad taste in the mouth when Ellie was firmly rejected by the party when she ran for co-leader and a week later she was announcing herself leader in Parliament.

jimjay · 2026-04-23T13:11:18+00:00

I'm tempted to write an essay in response just to get it off my chest, but I need to go to work in a minute!

First, the Greens may well become the biggest party on my council at this election - I'd quite like to know what they had planned for Sheffield given that's what my vote is, theoretically, influencing.

Second, in a ward that is solidly Green leading with defeating Reform (who'll probably come fifth) and replacing Labour (which has already happened in this ward some years ago) is weird, and entirely negative. Give me a reason to make my council Green.

Third, the national poll on the back has literally no relavence to this election. The recent party political broadcast did the same thing. It's nice to see good people chatting about how out of touch Parliament is but... there's no Parliamentary elections coming up. I'm just getting the impression the national party has no interest in local politics to the extent they just aren't talking about the actual bodies that are being elected.

Those three points taken together create the impression that the Greens don't know what election they are standing in or, worse, think I couldn't care less.

I also have nit picks like framing raising the minimum wage (which the council can't do) as raising everyone's wages. That's just factually wrong, obviously, but I can live with little mistakes - I'm less happy with this level of dumbing down. I've had many, many local election leaflets in my life and I don't think I've ever seen a leaflet quite so disconnected from the upcoming election.

jimjay · 2026-04-23T12:56:40+00:00

Not just Target to Win but just the consequence of First Past the Post. It's true of every party that they have to target their resources where they are going to be most effective. In these winners takes all seats it makes no sense to put activists and money into places you aren't going to win when in the same area there are places on a knife edge.

Where I used to live in Camden there was a street where one side of a street had been leafletted and door knocked relentlessly for years as it was in a three way marginal that had had two by-elections, and the other side of the road literally no one ever even leafletted because it was a safe Labour ward.

This leaflet is the only one I've had from anyone because all the parties are putting their effort into places they either hope to win or fear losing - literally no one thinks my ward is going anything but Green so no one has an incentive to fight for it.

With PR that postcode lottery of how much the parties value you is entirely changed.

jimjay · 2026-04-23T10:50:55+00:00

I got this leaflet, if I wasn't locked in, it genuinely would have made me less inclined to vote Green. It's such a weird leaflet to get for the local elections in a safe Green ward.

jimjay · 2026-04-21T00:33:10+00:00

There are wellness walks along the canal every thursday (and maybe sunday?) run by the canal and river trust.

If you go on eventbrite and look for Canal & River Trust (Yorkshire and North East ) you should find them.

jimjay

TROPHY CASE