I'D AGAIN like to thank a Green Party member for replying to my recent letter. This time Pascal Desmond was good enough to write to the Citizen (letters: October 11). Unfortunately Mr Desmond decided to challenge me and my motives for writing about Green Party policies rather than tackle the issues -- a fine example of the old political trick of 'shooting the messenger'. Mr Desmond suggests that as I work for a Member of Parliament (who incidentally has no connection with Lancaster at all) and am therefore paid from the public purse that this somehow means I am being paid by the public to attack the Green Party. Let me reassure Mr Desmond and the other conspiracy theorists in the Green Party that I am writing letters in my spare time and thoroughly enjoying doing so. I am not writing as a representative of any political party, though I am a member of the Labour Party. Incidentally, I understand Mr Desmond is currently obtaining his living from the state, does that mean he is being paid by the Government to write letters about me? The Green Party has also complained that people are 'having a go' at them. Well yes I am, as I believe that their policies deserve examination and criticism. The fact that they fail to engage the issues and resort to personal attacks speaks volumes about the strength of their arguments. My own particular conversion to outright criticism of the Green Party and the wider environmental movement, stems from an incident a couple of years ago. You may remember the Brea (hope that's the right spelling) oil platform that was being decommissioned in the North Sea. The oil company wanted to take all the useful equipment off the platform and sink it. The environmental movement started a very successful campaign to stop this because it was full of oil sludge, toxic chemicals and liquids and sinking it would have been an environmental nightmare. The platform was towed around the North Sea looking for somewhere and someone to decommission it, finally coming to rest in Norway. This was a big high-profile campaign using international pressure and publicity and successfully stopped the platform being sunk. The only problem was it was based on lies. It came to light that the platform was empty and the environmental risk of sinking it was negligible. As a wreck on the sea bottom attracting marine fauna and flora and acting as an oasis there would probably have been an environmental benefit to sinking it.

Once I realised that the environmental movement was willing to lie about this, I started looking at more accepted wisdom and found that much of this was garbage as well. The received wisdom, for example, is that the deforestation of the planet is carrying on apace and accelerating. The fact is that more of the planet is covered by forest than 50 years ago (source: Food & Agricultural Organisation of the UN Production yearbooks). This is just one example of my wider argument with the Green Party. A large number of the issues and problems that exercise the environmental movement are actually getting better, not worse. This does not mean that any of us should be complacent about environmental issues, because huge problems still exist. I do believe that these issues are too important to be left to organisations like the Green Party who are zealots and fanatics and prepared to tell lies about the real state of the world.

Tell lies in politics and sooner or later they will come back to haunt you.

Richard Newman-Thompson

Oh if only your last line were true I'd die happy- Ed