Record number of Greens in coming elections

I'm just back from a meeting of Stroud Green District councillors - looking at issues to raise in coming weeks and at Full Council next week. Things can get a little hectic around election time as suddenly people have to focus on their seats - infact 4 out of the 5 local Green party District councillors seats are up for grabs - all except mine - I suppose I could be the only Green by early May - but suspect we will be holding onto our seats and making gains locally.

Photo: Stroud District Green party candidates this time around (from left to right): Clare Sheridan (Stonehouse), Cllr John Marjoram (Trinity), Molly Scott Cato (Central), Clive Philips (Wotton-u-Edge), Cllr Martin Whiteside (Thrupp), Cllr Sarah Lunnon (Valley), Kate Shuckburgh in Chalford, Gwen Belcher ( Slade), Philip Blomberg (Rodborough). Not photographed: Chris Harmer (Nailsworth), Marie Gwynn (Minchinhampton) and Helen Royall (Cainscross).

In my role as the County Green party Press Officer I've been providing the papers with election statements - like here - also putting together stuff re elections - see here - but it is the first year

I've had nothing to do with the election materials - a separate committee looked at all that - it is a real challenge to get issues across in a simple way. This year in our leaflets Greens have tried to show the interconnectivity of Green policies - but poss too much text? Then again many say we are the only party to go into any proper details....

Photo: Image from leaflet and photo of Citizen article

Interestingly The Citizen covered Derek Walls' recent visit to Stroud with a couple of good photos, but others are more wary about covering it - I await with interest to see if they do - certainly if any key party figure visited from one of the other parties it would have been plastered over the paper.

This year there are a total of 1,411 Green Party candidates for the May local elections (plus eight for co-incident by-elections and two for mayoral elections). This is an absolute record.

The previous record being 1,317 in 1990. Consequently the Green Party is contesting 13.50% of the seats up for election and has candidates in 200 (63.69%) of the 314 councils with polls. There are also a fair few Parish and Town councillors, of which 32 have already been elected unopposed.