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STROUD GREEN'S EARLY CHOICE OF CANDIDATE FOR NEXT GENERAL ELECTION |
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8th February 2006
 At the Green party's AGM this evening at Star Anise cafe in Stroud, Martin Whiteside, a Stroud District councillor, was confirmed as the Greens' parliamentary candidate following a vote amongst all party members. Martin Whiteside's hugely successful campaign at the last general election increased Green votes by 59% and gained over 5% of the vote to keep the Green's deposit for the first time in Stroud.
Cllr. John Marjoram, who announced the result said: "This early choice of Martin as our candidate will allow him to meet more of the electorate, share more about what the Green party stands for and show why a Green vote is essential if we are to tackle the world's problems."
Martin Whiteside is a Stroud District councillor and works as a professional adviser to international aid and environmental organisations like Christian Aid, Oxfam, and WWF. He also does programme evaluation for the British Government Department for International Development: in the last year this has taken him several times to different parts of Africa, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan.
At the AGM Martin Whiteside, in his acceptance speech, talked about his overseas work. He said: "2005 was the year in which poverty was supposed to become history! Tony Blair and the other leaders of the richest countries promised the poor majority world much, but in the end were not prepared to deliver. They failed the poor around the world. Instead they ended up piling more money into their self-created mess in Iraq and the ´War on Terror´."
Martin Whiteside added: "It is within the power of the rich countries to ensure that a child does not die every three seconds from hunger and preventable disease, it is within our power to create sustainable economies that do not destroy the natural resources of the world. We have the technical capacity - what is missing is the political will to do it. Unless we create this will, children will continue to die and the earth will continue to be raped. It is to create this political will that I am a member of the Green Party and am proud to have been elected again to be the Parliamentary candidate for Stroud." |
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