De werkvloer, a MKB workgroup of GL

Yesterday morning was busy with GL meetings at the landelijke bureau. Bas Roufs and I talked first with Marloes Morhuis and then with Gerrit Pas. The issue at hand was the starting of a new landelijke workgroup, De Werkvloer. We are convinced that GL can and should be more involved in economical discussions. The MKB sector is a natural starting point for Groenlinks. Small and Medium Companies belong to that old and battered slogan, small is beautiful. We think that even if old and battered, we still have a lot to do with it. “De Werkvloer” then, aims to be a workgroup to deepen the economics of Groenlinks regarding small and medium companies… among other things.

Our meetings showed up one of the faces of GL that make me still excited about being a member. Marloes is an employee of the party for workgroups support, and Gerrit is a senior employee at the scientific bureau. Bas arranged the meetings a while ago. Our conversations could have hardly been nicer. We got advice about the next steps to formalize our initiative, and far more important than that, we just feel that our party welcome initiatives from the members.

I am quite convinced that if all the initiatives that I have heard in the past two years would have the same encouragement that we got, we would be in a far better party. How good an initiative is, does not matter that much. Indeed, along the past interviews and other exchanges before, we were warned about plenty of points that could go wrong with our workgroup. Much more important, a political party should be a bridge in between people and government. Then, when persons approach one party with ideas and time to invest, the party cannot but help and support (considering that the proposal at hand is minimally acceptable). I have seen too little support in the past for other initiatives, far more brilliant that ours. And I wonder why is not always that people with ideas and time are better received inside our party. Yesterday, then, was a very nice day. Now we have the months to come to show that besides the ideas and the time, we do have something to deliver.

And that is why we are Groenlinks members, toch?