BOLTON Green Party would like to send seasons greeting to all your readers.

But what we would also like to see in 2015 is an end to austerity, and the beginning of hope, for ordinary Bolton people.

In 2008 when we bailed the banks out with our taxpayers' money to the tune £1.4 trillion, the Tory led coalition Government with the full support of the not to be trusted Lib-Dems, have spent the last nearly five years trying to get the so called deficit down, and have failed miserably.

We still have a deficit and guess what the amount is £1.4 trillion, no dent made there, which is proof if proof is needed that austerity is clearly not working.

All it has done is hit the poor, and most vulnerable members of our community, the hardest.

Cuts to services almost to the bone, 1,350 jobs lost and another 500 to follow with proposed cuts of £43 million, and privatisation of services in Bolton budget 2015 to 2017, two years into the next parliament, cuts that Labour have promised to carry through even if elected, next year, so it seems on cuts there is little difference between Labour, Tory, and Lib-Dem parties.

Ordinary people did not cause the deficit, the bankers did, and successive Governments, Labour and Tory, failure to regulate the banks properly, contributed to this.

What people are looking for is an alternative to the austerity obsessed parties, and the Green Party is such a party which is opposed to making ordinary people pay for something they didn't create in the first place.

The Green Party is currently rising with recent opinion polls showing support at 8% to 9 %, we have more than doubled our membership nationally since January, which now stands at 30,000, there is a Green surge happening in this country, and we are a real alternative to the Westminster elite Parties.

Alan Johnson,

Bolton Green Party