GREENS have chosen Martin Whiteside as their Parliamentary vandidate to challenge labour's David Drew at the next General Election.

His selection was announced at a specially convened meeting in and he called for a political change.

He said: "We need change before it is too late. The 'grey' parties are failing us - and failing the planet. Another future is possible. Greens have a radically different approach. I plan to get that message across to people living in the Stroud district."

Mr Whiteside lives with his wife and three children in Thrupp, near Stroud, where he is a Green Party district councillor. The first time he stood for the council he scraped in by 35 votes but was re-elected this year, getting more votes than all the other parties combined.

He works as a freelance development consultant for aid organisations, including Oxfam, Christian Aid, WWF and the British government, advising them on development programmes in many different countries.

At the meeting he spoke about the need for change and how he plans to be the country's first Green MP and shake up politics.

In his call for change he said: "Today we stand at a crossroads - we can continue with more or less the same policies all the other main parties are or we can choose to go a different way.

"We know where the former road is going - global warming, ever greater global inequality, terrorism born out of desperation. That road means more and more money spent to deal with the consequences of these policies - billions to fight terrorism, billions to mitigate the effects of storms and sea level rise caused by global warming, an ever greater 'fortress Europe and America' to keep out the environmental, economic and political refugees caused by these policies. We must break out of this negative spiral.

"We are destroying the natural world and our planet. We know it. We also know much we can do to stop it. Yet it is not happening. We are only tinkering. Voting for one of the big three grey parties hasn't worked. It can't work. It is our political and economic system that needs changing. It is responsible for much of the damage to the world."

Greens had a radically different approach.

"We are not just about the environment, we want to see 'localisation' of our economy not globalisation. This means supporting local production in Gloucestershire rather than an ever freer market with more and more imports.

"Greens also demand public services and social justice for all, with an end to privatisation and PFIs. Greens believe in real local democracy, with local people given the power and responsibility to make the decisions that affect them. The Green Party has policies that make sense in the long term - not just until the next opinion poll."

Mr Whiteside said a Green vote was not just a protest at the three big parties and the same "grey" policies they share, but a real statement about how people wanted the world to be - not only now, but for their children and grandchildren.

It was a scandal that in one half of the world people were dying from insufficient food and lack of clean water and in the other half major causes of death are over-weight and too much processed food.

He said: "As an aid worker for the last 20 years I have seen too many children die from lack of food and diarrhoea. What is scandalous is that, despite our enormous resources, it is still happening in 2003. I want to see political will to change this at the top - it is a question of justice, not charity.

"Global destruction - global warming, over-fishing, cutting the forests - we are not living sustainably. The planet has enough resources for everyone's need, but not their greed.

"We have the technology to live sustainably. What I want to see is the political will to do it before it is too late."

Many people, and particularly the young, were fed up with politics and politicians. There was a need to make politics exciting and relevant, and give people a real say in the decisions that affect them.