THE Green Party is is celebrating election to Westminster – our new MP, Caroline Lucas, is a great woman, a highly-respected politician and will inject some down-to-earth, common sense that is so badly needed in UK politics.

 In the Forest of Dean constituency, we campaigned on a raft of local ideas.  The one thing about the Green Party is that we are absolutely brimming with ideas – and have the people to support and implement them if we were to be elected.

Apologies to all those people, whom we didn't get to see, but here are the bones of our local platform:

•The Green New Deal – insulating all our Forest homes

•Fighting against development on prime agricultural land

•Expanding the Dilke

•An inventive transport system

•Merging 1st Rifles into our communities

•Severn lagoons

•Increasing the numbers working in local food production and distribution

•Reforging the Forest as a leader in the Greening Economy

•Enhancing the engineering statues of our schools and colleges

And many thanks to all those who did vote for us – who were brave enough to stand up and say, 'the Greens may not win this time, but their common-sense message of economic restraint, environ-

mental protection and social equality is what we want now'.

James Greenwood, West Glos Green Party.