Featured Candidate: Lesley Grahame
4 May 2015
In the run up to the General Election we will be giving you the opportunity to get to know some of our candidates. Our key candidates and spokespeople can be found here.
The Green Party is standing candidates in over 90% of seats, meaning more people than ever before will be able to vote Green on May 7th 2015.
Our featured candidate for Norwich South: Lesley Grahame
Why are you standing for the Green Party?
Because life is precious. Politics as usual has got us into a financial and ecological hole, with spiralling inequality, escalating climate change, and a big dismantling of society.
Pressure group politics, direct action, doing my job well as a nurse are all important, but if we really want to change how the world works, we have to change the rules and that means getting big P politically active too. I am a city councillor who has been elected twice and I feel that I can take my experience to Westminister to serve Norwich South as an MP.
Only the Green Party works to life-affirming values and has the raft of policies to carry them out. That's why I am proud to stand under the Green Party banner.
What are your three top priorities if elected?
Reclaim the NHS -
After Caroline's excellent NHS re-instatement Bill I'd want to expose the effects of marketisation on public services by extending the Freedom of Information act to any company spending public money. Having has 3 children, and worked as a nurse for over 30 years and been a member of Unison member since it was formed (from a merger of NUPE, CoHSE and NALGO) I have seen what privatisation has done to the NHS.
Renationalise rail -
This would be a good start towards creating a reliable, sustainable, affordable public transport system that people want to use for regular travel. This in turn would create some of the million climate jobs needed to cut our emission by 95% in 20 years.
Fight climate change -
Use the climate expertise available locally within institutions such as the UEA and invest in jobs that allow people a share in the economy and stop climate change. In Norwich and Norfolk we can work towards a society founded on clean energy supported by world-leading renewable industries.
What made you want to get involved in politics?
Learning about the holocaust, nuclear weapons, hunger and climate change were all big factors in getting me politically active. I'd want to do something to help my local community, my city and the environment and I felt the best way I could do this was to campaign locally whilst thinking globally.
What's your favourite thing about your constituency?
It's my home: I have studied here, lived here and worked here for over 30 years. People are friendly, thoughtful and progressive. I really enjoy being able to cycle into the city along the riverside and I am lucky to have such delights as the Norwich Lanes and Market on my doorstep.
Who are your political heroes?
Rosa Parks, was a civil rights activist. As a black woman who refused to accept a lesser humanity by giving up her seat on a bus to a white, she sparked a bus boycott that led to reform of the obscene injustice of apartheid rules.
Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, The Shock Doctrine and This Changes Everything. All of them have exposed, clarified and offered alternatives to the established wisdom of 'extractivism' which allows the few to mine and trash our shared earth without any responsibility for the consequences.