I'm at a loss - why are the LD's being punished and who is voting Tory?

Yup, the disabled and elderly who live in poverty can't get the help they are assessed as needing from social services. SS are being restricted to only those with the very highest needs. In some areas, people who need assistance to have a bath are only given that support twice a week. Can anyone who feels hard done by on more than £150k imagine what it's like to be told that you can only have a bath every three or four days?

My sister's an LD nurse and has so many clients who need far more support than they are getting. So they end up in crisis, often being admitted to hospital, which costs the state far more in the long run, as well as making their lives ruddy miserable. And often their families are stretched to breaking point trying to look after their relatives with fuck-all support. So you end up with two ill people.

Quite so, and 50% tax is only on the top slice of your income.
If you earn over £150000 a year.
Hardly a struggle on that income smallwhitecat even if managing a difficult situation and don't forget, please, that a great many people with incredibly difficult situations have to manage on a lot less and also find that the provision they need is poor or non existent.
Something that does make me LOL is that for nine of your hero Thatcher's eleven years in office the top rate was 60% and it didn't appear to make people leave the country in droves, inhibit entrepreneurs or stifle the economy.
Oh pity the poor hard done by wealthy of this country, having to give up a small fraction of their income (less than they did twenty five years ago) to help others. It's a hard knock life.

Think it's £150k. And obviously they only pay 50% on earnings above that level, up to that point they pay the same rates as everyone else. I'm sure most of them manage to employ accountants specialising in minimizing tax bills anyway and take their total remuneration in several different forms to avoid paying 50% on everything they make over that point.

Actually one of the banks bailed out by taxpayers used that money to pay one of the big accounting firms to come in and tell their investment bankers how to avoid tax on their bonuses... and of course this was one of the big four whose auditing arms had such a cosy relationship with the banks they completely failed to see the crash coming, or do a proper analysis of the risks of all those stupid products they were trading before the crash. You couldn't make it up...

SWC - Not sure what the threshold (sp?) for 50% tax is; I don't know anyone who earns enough to pay it.

My understanding is that in a slightly progressive tax system like ours, higher rates oftax reflect greater ability to pay. We're all in this together, remember?

HHLimbo - how would you summarise those who vote Labour, Lib Dem, UKiP, Green etc? Just wondered since you seem to have such a subtle handle on the precise character of millions of people.

The real tragedy is Tories who genuinely believe that people like Osborne actually care about crap like 'broken Britain' and poverty and convince themselves that, since they've got a couple of rungs up the ladder because of free education, grants, affordable housing, etc they've done it all themselves and so can everybody else so we don't need the public sector. LOL! Let me know how you get on.

P.S.

Either as clients of the state, or those servicing them. Now that's a vested interest.

LFN - They just doesn't get why people vote Tory. A hint: it isn't because they are rich.
Totally agree. It's because they are trying their best and are striving to be independent. tbh I really fear for this country, it appears there is an ever diminishing number of people propping up the fat, bloated state.

What pleases me most about Red Ed is that he seems to believe exactly what HHLimbo believes.

They just doesn't get why people vote Tory. A hint: it isn't because they are rich.

David Miliband sort-of-understood, but only at a nerdy, wonky, level. Blair understood these voters in his gut. Brown never understood, at any level. Red Ed looks like he won't either.

Those who vote Tory are rich and selfish, or/and misguided fools.

FACT.

A third of the UK votes Tory most of the time (BBC statistic) apparently. I have friends who are Tory and friends who are socialist. None are obviously more nasty than the others. They just see things differently. And the Tories aren't necessarily the 'rich' ones. Doesn't anyone else have a mixed group of friends to give them some perspective?

Anyway, agree it's because LibDems lied, but Tories always told us they were bastards who know the price of everything and the value of nothing, so we weren't disappointed. Just nauseated.

Not convinced, Giddy. have you looked at PCS stuff (they're the people who compile the govt stats) or False Economy? (sorry no links)

So, this deficit. Basically, income less than expenditure. 2 solutions : cut spending or increase income. How about actually collecting the correct amount of tax? Just a thought.

But I'm really uncomfortable with the way they are blaming Clegg. Why do we always single out individuals to carry the can? He is just the little white head on the top of the pimple.

Shirley Williams on Question Time was repeating the notion that the LibDems knew what they were doing when they went into the coalition with the Tories and were selflessly sacrificing themselves for the good of the nation - knowing that their party's popularity would suffer as a result. i think there could well be some truth in that. But could they have guessed how virulent the attacks against them would be, I wonder?

The main problem (or their main stregth, depending on your pov) seems to be that there is a north-south split in Libdem ranks, with the southerners being Torylite and the northerners being pinko social democrats.

That's the problem with these political parties, imo. The political system as it stands creates all these false divisions - I'm really not sure we're best served by our adversarial party system. The only thing that could ever bring them together in the best interests of the nation would be a war or natural disaster (or royal wedding, perhaps).

Someone come up with a better system ...

Mami, agree with you, people aren't surprised at the Tories being Tories and attacking public services and the poor and vulnerable. (Except those who fell for Cameron's 'we've changed' bollocks.) They are angry at the Lib Dems who should know better.

What merylstrop said on page 1.
The power of Clegg was massively hyped up by the media last year - couldn't understand any of it myself as he is a privileged career politician and a blatant power seeker with the least conviction of any politician since John Redwood.
Can't say I would ever vote Tory in a million years, but Cameron is at least implementing right wing policies, exactly as he said he would do, and in the manner of how every Tory government has behaved in the last 100 years.
Am surprised anyone is surprised about Clegg.
Also what Edam said.

edam - that is my understanding too.

I voted Tory because my LD controlled council is completely hopeless and is running what was a lovely city to live in into the ground. I would have voted green but wanted the best chance to harm the number of LD seats. It didn't work sadly :(

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the Lib Dem vote didn't change substantially at the last election? Wasn't there a feeling of surprise that purported Cleggmania actually didn't translate into extra votes?

The popular support the Lib Dems gained at the election was from disappointed Labour voters and the novelty value of Nick Clegg in the TV debates from the floating centre. They promised polices that seemed more leftwing than New Labour. Apart from suggesting that the deficit could be paid back by cancelling Trident, their most popular policy was on tuition fees, but they made no stand on it when the crunch came (and possibly made it more complicated). They seemed to think the public would prioritise ID cards, detention centres and AV as they do, but most people can't be arsed about issues that don't affect their everyday lives and are more concerned about taxes, schools, hospitals. If they make a stand on the NHS they may regain some support, but I think it will be too late. Cameron is going to wrong-foot them by appearing to make concessions that he would have made anyway in the fact of criticism from professionals and their own party. They're stuffed from now on, I think.