Green Democracy

It's funny, I thought as I was brushing my teeth, how little changes through one's life. It is as if your past returns to haunt you with ironic echoes.
When I was in primary school, at the tender age of seven I was placed in a team as were all the arriving pupils. There was a choice of Red, Blue, Yellow and Green teams, or Houses as they were known. The Red team was very popular, but did not excel in quite as many fields as the Blues, who seemed to dominate everything as if by royal decree. Then there was the Yellow team, which while quite clever lacked leadership and commitment to the greater glory of the House; and they just didn't do very well. Then there was the Green team, who seemed always to come last. They failed at everything. If there was a three-legged race they would grow an extra leg and get disqualified, or trip over it. If it was a question of achievement through class work the dunces of the Greens could never cut the mustard. While the Yellows were seen as Also-Rans, the Greens were seen as Never-Rans.
I was placed in the Greens.
In the last year at primary school I managed to come top of the class one week, after working my way up by sheer hard work, and I had also become Green Vice Captain and a Prefect. After years of failing at sports and lazy scholastic mediocrity I had groped my way to the top of the top class in the school. Sitting in my place of pride in the number one desk at the back of the class I put my hand up to answer a question the teacher had asked: what is the name of the mark that goes before an 's' to show a missing letter, an abbreviation as in "it's". I knew the answer was "An apostrophe" but for some reason my brain locked up and my mouth fumbled, saying "A comma in the air." With a withering look, a sneer and a scornful echo of my words, she finished my career of excellence as she turned away to someone who knew the correct answer, and a hot flush of shame suffused my whole being. I realised in that moment that there was no point in a Green trying to rock the established order of things. I decided to take it easy and loaf along in the middle ground where I could comfortably get through life at school without the strain of trying to be top.
Jumping forward a half century, the Greens are still at the bottom, although everyone knows in their hearts that they are right. The Reds (or New Labour as they are now called) are in control at the moment, but the Blues (or Conservatives as they call themselves) are jostling to regain control. The Yellows (or Liberal Democrats) still lack leadership and still are unable to decide which side of the fence they are going to land on. Like the others main parties they are neither Liberal or Democratic! None of them seem to realise (for instance) that the planned expansion of air traffic will negate every other measure on the domestic front to curb emission of CO2 and other climate changing pollutants. It is an uncomfortable truth, I am afraid. We will all be suffering deprivation at home in order to permit more jaunts abroad and inward migration, without affecting the increase in our emissions.
So, as I said, nothing seems to change. Nuclear energy is now linked to renewables in the Doublespeak of our Orwellian Government and is again the flavour of the day for both the main parties, while the Yellows aren't quite sure. And everyone has forgotten Chernobyl.