E-mail to the Green Party

Dear madam/sir,

Thank you for all of your recent correspondence concerning the lapsing of my Green Party Membership. Please accept my apologies for the delay in responding.

I have a great affinity with the principles, and the majority of policies of the Green Party; more so than with any of the other political groups. This extends not only to your stance on environmental issues, but to the wider issues such as benefits, education, and foreign policy. In any future elections, I am most likely to vote for a Green candidate.

However, I no longer feel it appropriate for me directly support the Party with either a financial contribution, or by being a full member. I have two reasons for this.

I strongly believe that the best way for a party such as the Green Party to be successful, it should base its policies and campaigning on as firm as base as possible. Having been brought up and educated with a strong scientific basis, and having observed the increasingly populist form that recent politics has taken, it seems that a truly benevolent government should be focusing on what works, what can be shown to work, and to what can rationally be expected to work.

Whilst a large proportion of formal Green Party policy has been formed in this way, I am increasingly concerned by the behaviour of senior Party members who are abandoning these principles and resorting to positions that seem more interested in manipulating irrational fears than in the realities of a given situation.

As a brief example, there was some brief concern over the potential dangers of wireless computer communications. These concerns have very little basis either in observable effect, or in the theories that underlie our current understanding of the physical world. There are certain parts of the media, and opportunistic politicians, who I had no surprise in seeing jump on this and create irrational fears and ban everything headlines. I did not expect this behaviour from senior members of a party that I had joined at least partly on the basis of its rationality.

I fully accept the right of any individual member to hold some particular views that do not agree entirely with the policy of their party. There are of course one or two points in which I disagree with Green Party manifestos. However, there is also an added responsibility upon senior party members, particularly those who are frequently providing a voice for the party in public fora, to be consistent with party policy, and where they are known to disagree, to at least be sure that their disagreement in based on a tenable position.

On a second, more practical note, I have been astounded by the amount of information I have received from the Green Party during my year as a member. Communication is a very important part of any political movement, but the volume of paper that I have received, frequently with separate mailings from different sources containing exactly the same information has almost disgusted me.

In addition, none of this sources seem to offer alternative methods of communication, most notably in my mind an e-mail or internet based method of delivery that would reduce the amount of physical resources used.

I repeat that I will continue to vote for the Green Party at every opportunity. I will continue to support the aims of the Party where I can, both in practical acts, and in communicating with friends, relatives, and in dealing with important issues. However, I cannot consider offering financial support, or continuing my formal relationship with the Party given my concerns raised above.

Yours sincerely,




LSNDuck

Confusion

There are times when I miss my pre-medication days. My feelings were much more clear cut then; if I was angry-depressed, I knew it, if I was apathetic, I knew it (and didn't care).

At the moment, now I am on fluoxetine (which reminds me, must go and takes today's), everything is confusing. My mood is much more balanced and positive. I still have the occasional melancholic period, but I can't remember having an angry or dark mood since changing drugs. I don't tend to feel apathetic any more, but I still think it a great deal.

In one of my previous posts, I described a sense of blocking. Looking back at that post, my mood did seem to be low at the time, but it wasn't too bad. Over the last couple of days, that sense, and my thoughts have been very much against me. Yet my mood has been relatively good.

My mind is still running in the old grooves of self-criticism. I am not capable of doing my job, there is no point in my being there, I have no purpose or use. But my mood isn't there. I am certainly not at the top of my game, but I am not in the depths that I have suffered before. At the same time I know that all of feelings and emotions are there. I can feel them sitting and grinning at me.

This causes a great deal of confusion. My mind can't deal with doing things, going to work, trampolining, or whatever it is. I feel OK; not great, but OK. I can sense darker things there. Then the feedback starts up, I feel fine, so what do I think I am playing at? Guilt now adds into the self-deprecation cycle, but my mood stays reasonable.

Grr at my head.

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Footnote: For various reasons I went to a different pharmacy for my last prescription. Their fluoxetine is from a different manufacturer from my usual. The capsule coating tastes foul. Ugh.