Dear editor,
In your article [from the Local Democracy Service] of 15 August 2023 titled “Conservative candidate gives views on opponent’s Greenpeace past”, Mr Akinbusoye made numerous comments that need to be challenged.
Read: Conservative candidate gives views on opponent’s Greenpeace past
Mr Akinbusoye referred to the “Greenpeace group” and the “disruption” from their “antics”… as if one of the oldest and largest global environmental NGOs, is some form of illiterate mob.
He goes on to reinforce this view by referring to a past activist as an “eco-fanatic”. An ad hominem attack upon a political appointment unworthy of a potential parliamentarian, and of a Police and Crime Commissioner.
Mr Akinbusoye’s words remind me of my own time in Greenpeace in the 1990s, when as a non-violent campaign group, we found ourselves considered “terrorists” by the government of John Major and the police of the day.
Beware… we might terrorise you with our peaceful demeanour.
I’d point out to Mr Akinbusoye that every single aspect of his own party’s environmental policy of 2023, from renewables development to a push for Net Zero, is an issue Greenpeace activists like myself demanded 30 years ago.
You are where you are Mr Akinbusoye, because we were where we were…. 30 years ago.
Rather than being eco-fanatics, we were visionaries calling for policy changes against a deaf, dumb and blind political establishment determined to maintain the status quo.
I’d also point out to Mr Akinbusoye, that it was Margaret Thatcher that placed climate change upon the global stage, in her speech to the UN General Assembly of November 8th, 1989.
“…we have all recently become aware of another insidious danger.
It is the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to earth itself.”
Does Mr Akinbusoye consider Mrs Thatcher an eco-fanatic? Or is such insult reserved only for his Labour and Lib Dem peers, when Mr Akinbusoye perceives an opportunity to politically damage an opponent?
Mr Akinbusoye’s views upon the environment, and the issues of drugs in our society, are regressive, dysfunctional nonsense.
I live in a drug-riddled area of Bedford, with dealers, users and prostitutes frequenting the streets. Rarely do I see the police.
On Mr Akinbusoye’s visit during his campaign for office, I offered to help him. I was left shocked that he went nowhere, wasn’t interested in the problems and experience I had to share, then headed off into the town centre to pose for the cameras.
I’m not surprised nothing in the area has changed under his tenure.
With regard to the legalization of cannabis, any argument against such a move cannot be supported by the evidence from the US and other nations.
It is the policy of prohibition that Mr Akinbusoye promotes, the antiquated, rehashed (excuse the pun) and failed “war on drugs”, that has over its 50 years done nothing but enrich and empower the organised crime gangs Mr Akinbusoye claims, miserably, to be tackling.
Al Capone existed because prohibition existed. No prohibition. No Capone.
That is why, Mr Akinbusoye Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, former Director General of MI5, came out in support of decriminalization in 2011. And she knows a thing or two about criminal gangs. Just saying.
Joanne Gullon
Alexander Road
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