There are difficult cultural issues embedded within your example. Afro-Carribean people have an acknowledged gap in mental health services and there is a history of oppressive diagnosis. However, Afro-Caribbean women in the UK have pre-term birth rates of 15-18% which is more than double the rate of the white European women. Taking resources away from premature babies might very well look like taking away resources from a demographic that already has some difficulties with health services.

You might think that it is appropriate to have a policy drawn-up by members who see what they perceive to be an injustice or imbalance and set out to right it – fair enough. However, there are times when policies that are written like that will look like it. Hopelessly naive and lacking in any knowledge beyond the superficial. There will be times when even naive, good-hearted pieces will look refreshing and novel. People have to know what it is that they don’t know – which is a difficult task. When other people give them an inkling as to what they don’t know and the scale of it, then it is time to accept that, and not become defensive.

There must be a term for trying desperately to get back on topic but being continuously dragged back into trivial nonsense.

In psychology, it is projection or false victimhood (particularly give the name of your blog – I doubt the proud tradition would feel gilded by your performance here). It is a shame that you went so off-track in your responses that you felt driven to issue such irrelevancies. It is even more of a shame that you haven’t learned from what might be a valuable experience if you were open to it.

So how accountable should politicians be to their constituents rather than to experts?

Well, judging by your earlier remarks, “mauling” over a just scrutiny etc. – if may seem that you should ponder that question. Do you genuinely believe that the issues Jon wrote about shouldn’t have been discussed? He wrote about it robustly but not in any other way.

I doubt any of the other Green Party representatives/commenters would thank you for the way you have commented here. Particularly judging by the tenor and content of their comments over on Liberal Conspiracy – Is the Green Party Anti-Science.

On the expert front – one of the commenters has mentioned (perhaps jokingly) that a senior figure in The Green Party is thinking of running some parts of the science policies past Ben Goldacre and others for a ‘smell test’. Yes there can be problems with both systems but a landscape of policies can not have terrains of flakiness throughout it.

Firstly, I at no point claimed to be speaking for any political party let alone claimed to have political ambitions. Secondly, my initial comment was largely (and probably boringly) about funding and yet the following comments took the thread in a different and tedious direction. I’d love to talk about the policy but all comments about my initial post were weirdly about me and who people think I speak for/represent and now what my career plans are. I don’t see the point or relevance of making this personal, but it has been so I am responding to that. I would like to move on from random strangers speculating (or indeed asserting) my affiliations, its entirely irrelevant.

The sub-point that I was making in my initial post was that the Green Party have responded to criticism, many members posting here and elsewhere have accepted deficiency in policy so to say that I’m avoiding policy discussion is also untrue.

I am well aware of the tone of discussion on politics and science blogs and sites and I would again argue that it is not helpful or conducive to open and honest scientific or policy discourse. I think the political process should have an evidence-based approach to policy making not one based on ya-boo politics where politicians are terrified to ever admit that they are wrong for fear of being pounced on – which indeed they are. The Green Party have to some extent, by some members at least, admitted that they got it wrong and yet I think there are still criticisms being made that are over-the-top.

I still don’t understand why ensuing comments have been directed personally at me and I don’t accept that ‘that’s politics, get used to it’. It’s tedious and worthless.

The point about democratic policy making processes vs. expert/scientific opinion is an important one. This is a tension within any political party or democratic government – how far do the members/citizens have democratic control over policy and how far do experts say ‘no that’s wrong and that’s right’. This is always going to be imperfect and it is impossible to come down on one side or the other. For example, we have already as a society ‘decided’ to put more health resources into keeping premature babies alive than into mental health services. I appreciate that hugely simplified, but what I’m pointing to is that health and scientific decisions are not immune from social values or democratic will. There are certain things that there is a huge amount of scientific evidence for but no political will. So how accountable should politicians be to their constituents rather than to experts?

Gauge for yourself the type of response that your ill-founded complaints would garner.

Assuming you have political ambitions, if you are complaining about the discourse here, how ever will you cope in other fora or on the doorstep?

Nice way to avoid discussing the policies however, – maybe if you and some colleagues spent more time on content and less on process/style, then it might be genuinely constructive and you would have a collection of policies that aren’t uneven in quality or even embarrassing.

I’ve read back the above post, and to be honest I don’t think that this is overly aggressive (there’s certainly nothing personal in what I wrote). I don’t think that explaining why Green suggestions and policy are bad classes as overly aggressive (any more than justified Green criticisms of UKIP policy on climate change should count as aggressive).

The mere suggestion that I considered some of the criticism overly harsh was met with more aggression. And indeed there you go again.

I’m not making a hugely controversial point here and have stated that I agree with the criticisms being made. What confuses me is the vitriol and why you feel the need get personally aggressive. This does not foster open and sincere debate just bitching.