One in 10 British workers is working fewer hours than they'd like to. Forced casualisation is a reality for millions. The 'underemployment rate' for 16-24-year-olds is 30%. Retail workers are being offered 12-hour weeks, at a level that puts them below the national insurance payment threshold.

Wednesday's Queen's Speech was both a disgrace and disappointment - a failure on both the grounds of what it contained, and what it didn't. What it did contain was a disgraceful pandering to the Ukip vote, in its financially toothless, but socially damaging, provisions on immigration.

The growth wasn't as spectacular as a certain other party outside the "Biggest Three", which you might have seen mentioned once or twice on television or heard about on radio, but it reflects the next step in the Green Party's development.

I have found in many places traditional voters of different stripes, Labour and particularly Tory, who might not agree with every Green Party policy, but who will be voting Green on Thursday because they value their local Green Party's hard work and community knowledge, and have found their county or unitary council unresponsive, undemocratic, untransparent - and they want shed some Green light on its workings.

The attraction of this political party for women is simple. Green Party benefits include practical things as a national rape crisis hotline, options for job-share, equal pay, maternity care, childcare and maternity/paternity leave, supporting breastfeeding, support for domestic abuse and violence.

All too often I'm told that now's not the time to raise environmental issues. Of course it is tough for voters not sure where tomorrow's lunch money or next week's rent is coming from to think beyond those pressing personal problems, but the fact is there are many immediate environmental issues that demand our attention now.

Against all of the rules of accounting George Osborne managed to bring his borrowing estimates down only by adding in£3.5bn of money from the 4G phone spectrum auction that hasn't actually happened yet and won't anyway be concluded until 2013.

There's an even bigger concern behind the latest row. Whatever happened to David 'Hug a Husky' Cameron? Has he been replaced by a 'Frack the Countryside' lookalike?

The march, which takes place on 20 October, has been organised by the trades union movement and will see thousands of members of the public, union members, political organisations and campaign groups show their opposition to the Coalition's heartless, failed, false economies.

For political parties, the arrival of a new leader is often a catalyst for change. Aside from election defeats, a change of leadership has often been shown to spark a period of internal discussion and -ultimately- change of direction. It is for these reasons that a change in the leadership of the Green Party -which has passed from the popular and well-known Caroline Lucas to the almost unknown Natalie Bennett is worth a closer look.

As I write it is about eight hours since I was elected as the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales. It has been, happily, a whirl. An ITN interview, two BBC television slots, the BBC World at One, Sky TV, Australian radio, chats with a string of national newspaper journalists ... And there is bound to have been something I missed out on that list.

Natalie Bennett was elected the new leader of the Green Party in England and Wales in a ballot of party members on Monday. The 46-year-old chair of...