frogblog

Londoners are currently out and about, electing a new Mayor, or maybe re-electing it’s current one. And it seems like all the parties have chosen true characters to represent them.

My favourite is Sian Berry.
The Independent describes her thus:

Lovely Sian, once described as “environmental Viagra”. Committed Sian, who set up the Alliance Against Urban 4×4s, publicising the cause with spoof parking tickets and fancy-dress protests. Sensible Sian, who went to Pate’s grammar school in Cheltenham (where both her parents taught) and has an engineering degree from Oxford. Clean-slate Sian, who claims to have had no political affiliation before joining the Green Party six years ago, aged 27. Is she too good to be true?

Sian’s platform of social justice and fairness will no doubt rile many regular frogblog commenters, but her approach towards campaigning for a cleaner, friendlier, fairer London, is pure Green:

The aides are busy working out where they think Berry should sit in the huge ‘ tumult of the Methodist hall, when they realise she has already sat down. She’s quick like that. Practical. Not the kind of politician whose secretary is their personal sat-nav. Not a man, in other words…

[Then] she’s off to hit the streets. “I love flyering. I just look people in the eye, smile and they take my leaflet.” Of course they do. There she goes in her eco-boots, to be worn till they fall apart like the last ones.

And, in a later article check out this endorsement from the Independent:

Sian Berry, for the Greens, on the other hand, has been an articulate, imaginative and effective advocate for her cause. With her programme for a greener London, with more cycle-lanes, cheaper public transport, more small shops and eco-friendly housing, she has come across as a forward-looking politician, committed to a better quality of London life. We hope she can continue to find a voice in the national debate.So consonant are her priorities with those of this paper that, if we could vote for mayor today, we would place our first-preference cross against her name. This would underscore the importance of the environment to both London and to the rest of the nation.

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