Fareham Green Party

The Struggle of Young Voter Registration

May 19, 2017 — Leave a comment

I’d thought I’d take some time to comment about my experiences of trying to raise awareness amongst older-residents in the areas of our area. It occurred to me that I’m talking to a completely different world view with an obvious generational divide between us. Here I am, 22 years old, standing in front of groups of people who have possibly been retired for some time. When I start talking about ensuring the rights to democracy and encouraging the youth in the community to register to vote, I feel like I’m hitting a brick wall.

  1. If you know of young people who can vote – send them here (register to vote – deadline is Monday – May 22nd)
  2. If you are part of a community organisation or group – let people know you are voting and explain why. Regardless of your political views or your age. It’s a privilege you’ve had, let’s pass it on to the next generation.
  3. Take action now, if you’re a parent and you want a better future for your children. If you are a lecturer at a college or university, if you run a youth group or organisation – send an email, a text, slide into their DMs, just take action.

Fareham can’t afford to have our future without a voice on June 8th.

After all we have to live with it longer.

Brighton Life

November 1, 2015 — Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve updated my blog and there’s a good reason for that! I’ve since moved to Brighton and have been settling in very well within my course and have been keeping links with groups and residents in Fareham. In order to accommodate this move, I’ve had to resign my position as Chair of the Warsash Residents’ Association and have had to reduce my involvement from a physical basis to a virtual one, although if Fareham needs me – I will be there.

My move does not mean that I have stopped caring about the important issues that effect my home. I will still be able to campaign via social media as I have done since 2013 and I will make appearances should residents request it. I will be returning on the 18th to attend the Warsash Residents’ Association’s AGM to see who is my successor.

I will be returning to Fareham and I will stand again, however my campaign will be much more limited till at least I finish my course – so to the Tories I say, don’t get too comfortable! The experience I will gain from the Brighton and Hove Green Party will be beneficial to the people of Fareham. If we pull together, we can see better public transport links, proactive consultation on planning applications. We don’t want another Welborne, what we do want is better democracy in Fareham.

So this won’t be a long post, but just to let you know that I am still around (in a way) and still have the energy to campaign on the issues that affect our lives.

Thanks for reading,

Miles

Fareham’s Green Surge

May 9, 2015 — Leave a comment

I’d like to start by thanking every one of you who voted for me and The Green Party. I’d like to also thank the support I have received over this campaign from family, friends, supporters and people within our community. The Greens are a growing force in Fareham. The Green Party has been building on successive local elections to effectively tripling our votes in the general election. Let me give you some perspective:

In 2010 – we received 790 votes. In the early hours of Friday, 8th May 2015 – we received 2129. This is a clear sign that people, now more than ever, are going Green. This has laid out a huge foundation for our future campaigns and we are determined to build on this.

As I said at the count, Suella – I wish you well, I hope we will hear from you over your next term. However, this election isn’t the end of our efforts. This isn’t the last you have heard from me or The Green Party, we are here to stay. This is a new era of Fareham’s history.

I urge you reading this, if you have considered joining Green in the past. Do it now. If you have ever considered donating to your local Green Party to help with the production of newsletters, leaflets, badges, banners. Do it now. Because the Green Party will be fighting in next year’s local elections and we will be fighting hard. You have the chance to be part of the team that stands up for Fareham and provides our town with a future we can all be proud of.

Keep voting Green, Fareham deserves better, and so do you.

Thanks for reading.

Miles

Let’s do it.

February 13, 2015 — 2 Comments

At the end of my last lesson today we were having a discussion about politics in this country and what my thoughts were – something I’m very grateful for. The typical defeatist arguments were there “How can you do everything you’ve said you want to do?” but for me the one question stuck in my mind was “Why local buses? Why local issues? There are more important issues in the world”. I was a bit offended and disturbed by the narrow-mindedness of such a question.

Let’s put this into perspective, I’ll use my bog standard local issue of buses:

  • Frequent buses on the road that fit in with people’s lives (like the ones we see in Southampton) would lead to less cars on the road.
  • Less cars on the road mean less Co2 emissions, meaning we would be doing our part on a small, but important, scale to reduce climate change.
  • People who financially cannot afford or physically use a car have a cheaper alternative than if they called for a taxi.

There are many more knock-on effects from just this one, apparently small, important issue. I find it incredibly worrying that people who are of my generation have this defeatist, individualistic mentality. A friend of mine, much more “radical” than I, said that me and her wanted the same things – but we had different ideas about how to achieve it. What I believe in is local democracy, I believe that power should be decentralised to the lowest possible level. I believe that local communities should have the power to decide what is best for them in everything. Including their health, education and other public services (notice the word PUBLIC there). I believe that things like transport, the NHS, energy, The Post Office should be nationalised AND decentralised for the reasons why I have already mentioned. I believe that buying local should be a much more desirable option than importing millions of tonnes worth of food, which we end up wasting enough anyway. I believe businesses like Amazon, HSBC should be made to pay the right amount of tax (by the way it has been estimated that tax avoidance costs the UK £80bn or so a year).

All in all, it’s about the people, it’s about bottom-up approaches to our problems. Democracy I believe is the way forward to achieve it, it’s not perfect at the moment – but WE CAN FIX IT, in fact I am going to argue that it is The Green Party that is giving faith to people who are fed up with the current system, giving people hope instead of fear and giving people a real alternative. What I find absolutely appalling is this insane demoralisation of young people who do not believe we can do it. Just look to Greece, Syriza has been making some wonderful progress so far since being elected not too long ago. They are showing that it’s not all doom and gloom, and so too will The Green Party.

What I am offering Fareham is an alternative, to austerity, to pessimism and to the system that divides us socially and destroys our environment. People are waking up from the complacency and defeatism that they have previously succumbed to. There is a way to change the system and it’s not out of the barrel of a gun – it’s a cross on the ballot paper.

Let’s do it! Let’s go Green for Fareham!

Thank you for reading,

miles

Miles

Parking Restrictions Eased in Lower Spinney

November 8, 2014 — Leave a comment

I’d like to commend the residents of Lower Spinney who petitioned the council to ease counter-productive parking restrictions along one side of their road. Local people worked very hard to agree to a petition with councillors and I am very glad that they called on me to help their cause.

Because of the hard work of local people and their co-operation with myself, we managed to help ease the headache across Warsash that is Yellow Lines. I’d like to thank the residents who invited to come help them by making a deputation at the Council on the 6th of November.

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Here is my speech in full:

“Yellow Lines have been used by the council as a short term solution to tackle a long term problem. Yellow lines in Warsash are just being used to kettle students away because of the failure of the Maritime Academy to provide adequate parking, there has clearly been a failure to work with them in resolving this situation. This has subsequently created a dangerous situation for children to walk to Hook.

Earlier in the year, I spoke to residents in Queens Road who said that until recently they hadn’t had to worry about their kids crossing the roads, but because of the dangerously parked cars moved their by those yellow lines – they’re worried sick and they’re organising safety groups that they didn’t think they’d ever have to organise.

Parking permits are a much more reasonable solution as a whole across Warsash in certain zones.

The consultation to this has been lazy and has been used as a show off around election times. This “Democratic” consultation has been an utter sham and is an insult to the electorate who earlier this year placed their trust in you once more to represent them.”

After other residents made their cases for and against the measure to ease the restrictions (3, including myself, for the motion and one against) – the yellow line is to be removed.

Thanks for reading.

Miles

A Rather Busy Week

October 17, 2013 — 1 Comment

Well I can safely say that this has been one of my busy weeks, on Tuesday I attended the latest of the Western Wards Community Action Team meeting, yesterday (Wednesday) I formally joined the Warsash Resident’s Association – at the meeting I bumped into one of my old Primary School Teachers, a nice surprise – and finally today I joined my teachers in their industrial action.

Last Friday I was interviewed by Ben Fishwick of The Portsmouth News featured below is the bit he wrote (I forgive him for spelling “Grindey” wrong):

ArticlePN1013

 

Indeed it circulated around quite a bit, a few residents in the Community Action Team meeting (and indeed Cllr Trevor Cartwright) mentioned it, a very pleasant experience I thought.  The next day I went to the Warsash Resident’s Association, it was a very good meeting, the local police sergeant (who is leaving soon, wish him all the best) gave his report and we were treated to a great presentation about Bees by a Local Beekeeper.

Pre-Western Wards CAT meeting, Victory Hall

Pre-Western Wards CAT meeting, Victory Hall, Warsash

Today, despite around most of the students not showing up, I went into Itchen College – beforehand I went to my local shop and purchased two packets of biscuits I shared with the teachers.  I initially had a wonder around before finding some members of staff outside, I had a very pleasant chat  with the members of staff who were taking industrial action and one of them informed me of the rally occurring in the middle of Southampton. Soon after they packed up, I immediately started to walk (from Itchen College) to Speaker’s Corner in Southampton, I soon bumped into my Tutor and the rally began.

Itchen Bridge

View from the Woolston side of the Itchen Bridge, 17/10/2013

What Recovery?

 

The Daily Echo filmed the beginning of it, and you can spot me some point in this video here.  I made a speech after the planned speakers gave their say which had a very warm reception afterwards. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to speak and also to the teachers who thanked/congratulated/supported what I said.

After the walk to Friends Meeting House and being interviewed by a very nice BBC reporter, me and my old teachers from my time at Barton Peveril soon went to The Alex pub.  We caught up but I soon had to leave, had to get the College Bus home! So it was a rather tiring power walk back to Itchen, and I’m just taking some minor time off before I finish some of my homework.

From the BBC Article

From the BBC Article (I’m on the Right)

Tiring times indeed.

Thanks for reading,

 

Miles Grindey