Review of the Scottish Green Party Manifesto
for the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary election
The Scottish Green Party have published their manifesto for the 2021 Scottish Parliamentary election. Here's the cover:
First impressions
My first impression was it looks dull and boring. The main colour is green which is fair enough given they're the Green party but the pages contain far too little of any other colours, and the font is both too small and unpleasant to read.
Here is a screenshot of part of this manifesto, as it appears on my pdf viewer at the size it appears at using "fit page":
The font is too small and thin. Even if you make it bigger the characters still look thin and ugly. The graphic design doesn't make me want to read it. The manifesto does contain several photographs but instead of them being their natural colours they've altered the colour balance so they're a sickly green colour, as in this example of a Lothian Bus (note that Lothian Buses use a red and white colour scheme):
The Greens have done much better in the past. Here for example is a sample of their manifesto for the 2019 general election:
This is much better. The shade of green is more pleasing on the eye (to my eye at least) and the fonts are pleasant and nice to read. Partly this is because they are bigger, but even if you adjusted them so they're both the same size, these are still prettier and easier-to-read fonts than the 2021 manifesto. And they even use colours other than green!
OK, I'm not a big fan of the dot pattern in the background, the yellow stars could have been implemented better, and the placement of the page number (“14”) isn't perfect, but overall this is a good effort. I guess a different person did the graphic design in 2021.
Some people might think I'm being unnecessarily harsh on commenting on the graphic design but I think it's important. They presumably wrote the thing because they want people to read it, and ugly hard-to-read design doesn't do that. I've seen much better efforts in manifestos in the past, both from the Greens and other parties.
OK, so what about the contents?
Now I've finished slagging off what it looks like, what about the contents? What policies caught my eye? Here's a few...
Residential property tax
SCRAP COUNCIL TAX
The council tax is regressive and woefully outdated, and it leaves councils struggling to pay for essential services. We will seek to replace it with a new residential property tax that is related to actual value rather than outdated valuations. Under our proposals most households would pay less while the wealthiest will pay a bit more.
The Greens omit to say how this will be assessed. One way its to get people to self-value their property, with the proviso that they must sell it at their valuation if someone wants to buy it at that price. This would guarantee that every property is valued at a price the owners think is fair.
15-minute walk neighbourhoods
Make 15-minute neighbourhoods a key principle in Scotland’s Planning Policy Framework. Our vision is for everyone in towns and cities to be able to get what they need within a 15-minute walk.
Nice idea.
Local government
This:
Introduce a 20mph default speed limit in built-up areas, saving lives and making cycling and walking safer and more attractive.
And this:
Close the loopholes in the pavement parking ban.
But also this:
Deliver empowered, genuinely local councils. We will reverse the 50-year decline in the status of local government by backing widespread decentralisation of powers to local government and addressing the massive disparity between Scotland and other European countries, with Scottish councils ten times bigger than the European average.
Either speed limits and pavement parking are to be decided locally, or centrally. You can't have both. I think these issues should be decided locally, so each town / city / local authority can choose what suits itself. Politicians often say "more localism", but in the next breath have central government telling local government what to do.
Oppose Ministerial vetoes over local decisions. Local councils are best placed to determine what’s needed in their areas, but across a huge range of policies, the Scottish Government has legislated to give Ministers a veto. We will always presume that such provisions should be removed from laws unless it can be demonstrated they are absolutely necessary and proportionate.
There should be no Ministerial veto at all. If there is a veto at the Holyrood level, it should depend on a 2/3rds parliamentary supermajority. (It needs to be a supermajority, because if a simple majority can over-ride local communities' wishes, there is no local democracy, just a national democracy.)
Promote more diverse local representation. Women, people of colour, disabled people, trans people, and others with protected characteristics remain under-represented in local government.
I note that the Greens don't seem to care that people from a working-class background are under-represented in local government. I expect this is because most Green party members come from the professional and managerial classes.
Better terms for artists
Push for a fairer deal on streaming so that musicians and writers receive a greater share of the royalties from their music than record labels, streaming platforms and big tech companies.
This is a good idea, but the Greens don't say how they are going to implement it. Is it even doable at all while Scotland is part of the UK?
Housing
Require all new homes to meet passivhaus or other net-zero standards
Yes, of course!
Here the Greens identify a problem...:
Too many tenants pay extortionate amounts to live in damp, cold, and overcrowded homes. Landlords currently receive substantial support but lack accountability to their tenants. We will legislate to transform the private rented sector, providing greater security for tenants, regulating rents and improving standards.
...but come up with the wrong solution:
We will: Establish a Private Rented Sector Regulator to oversee the sector, investigate tenants’ complaints and recommend future reforms.
A better solution is a right to affordable housing for all, where everyone can go to their local authority who would be required to let them an affordable house (with the local authority building new houses where necessary to meet demand). Then a crap landlord would simply find they don't have any customers!
(For similar reasons, a UBI is a better way to stop bad employers than lots of bureaucratic regulations. When people have the right to walk away, that automatically limits how badly they can be treated.)
Education
Expand continuous assessment of coursework and reduce the role of exams
This was tried in England and led to more cheating, as was obvious it would. The Greens don't say how they would prevent cheating. Maybe they don't care. More likely they simply don't realise that people respond to incentives and if you make it both easy and worthwhile to cheat, then people will do so.
Raising the school starting age to seven will bring Scotland in line with countries like Finland, where
attainment and wellbeing are higher. A play-based Kindergarten stage will prioritise physical activity, outdoor experiences, and building social skills
The kids would probably be happier running around than being bored in a stuffy classroom, too.
Rejoin Erasmus+. We will negotiate directly with the European Commission to secure the greatest possible level of participation in the Erasmus+ scheme. In the event that the UK Government obstructs efforts to participate, we would challenge their right to do so through the courts.
Good idea.
Remove Chinese regime influence from classrooms. The Confucius Programme is a propaganda tool of a state responsible for widespread and grievous human rights abuse. We will terminate ‘Confucius Classroom’ partnerships with Scottish schools, end cooperation with the programme by public bodies including colleges and initiate a review of the programme’s impact on academic freedom in the university sector.
Yes, and furthermore China undoubtedly uses Chinese students in the UK to spy on other Chinese students (to keep them in line) and on the wider UK population. This should be resisted.
Racism
there is much work we have not yet done to examine the extent of racism and white supremacy in Scotland
There is no "white supremacy" in Scotland, it's all a myth cooked up by the woke. If Scotland really was a "white supremacist" society then we'd see regular pogroms and lynchings against non-whites. We certainly wouldn't see what is actually the case: net immigration of non-white people into Scotland. People move here because it's a welcoming and friendly society with a thriving economy. People do not tend to move somewhere that's hostile towards them, because people are not stupid.
While there is of course racism in Scotland — there is bigotry and prejudice in all societies — it should not be overstated. At the last Scottish parliamenteray election in 2016, one openly racist party stood, the National Front. They got 617 votes, which is 0.027% of the total. There are not many racists, and they are almost universally despised.
Justice
ABOLISH THE ‘NOT PROVEN’ VERDICT
Scotland is one of the few jurisdictions in the world with a three-verdict system in criminal trials, i.e. guilty, not guilty and not proven. In practice there is no legal difference between a not guilty and not proven verdict and this raises the question of the merits of retaining both verdicts.
Better would be to abolish the Guilty and Not Guilty verdicts, so the only verdicts would be Proven and Not Proven. The question the jury has to answer is not "did the defendant do it?" but "has the prosecution proven the accusations against the defendant?".
Costings
These policies don't appear to be costed anywhere. If they are costed anywhere I couldn't find it in the document, and the design is sufficiently hideous that I'm not going to go through it all again.
Conclusion
I'm going to score them in 3 areas, the first 2 positive, and the last negative. These are:
Design and layout: whether the document is pleasing to look at
Policies I like: these are policies that I think should be implemented, especially for one's I hadn't thought of.
Unclear policies: policies where I'm not sure how they would implement them, especially if I don't think they're sure either.
I've decided not to score the parties on policies I dislike, as then the scores would be a lot more negative, and I think there is too much negativity in politics already.
The Scottish Green Party score:
Design and layout: 3/10
Policies I like: 6/10
Unclear policies: 3/10
Overall score: 3+6-3 = 6.