David Cameron's conference speech - live stream from 11.15am today

But this speech was to the Conservative Party Conference, Bridget and threesocks. Quite literally, preaching to the converted. He already has these peoples votes.
Could it be, that rather than a cynical plot, he was just demonstrating that these experiences are part of the man he is? Oh no, of course not, because he and his wife are tory scum, out to kill disabled people.
Sheesh! but the Tories are the inhuman ones!

threesocksmorgan Yes he did. Makes me very, very uncomfortable when it's a speech like this which is vital for votes. It just seems like exploiting the child's memory. And SamCam cried. It all feels like a cynical attempt to win the female vote so as well as being exploitative of the child it's deeply patronising.

I refer mainly to the Tory party which has the power, and uses it, to destroy people's lives.

However, if a disabled person wants to enable cuts which kill other disabled people, then he or she is also 'scum'. I have no problem with that.

Why can't you just posit your case without insults, you would emerge all the more credible for it?

I can do both, and it's perfectly reasonable to be angry at a group of people who are destroying lives.

And who decides when "sometimes" is ttosca ?
Who gets to decide that it's fine to label all Tories scum, but God forbid you mistakenly use the wrong term to refer to a disabled person?
Why can't you just posit your case without insults, you would emerge all the more credible for it?

Boboli-

1. Sometimes is right to call a spade a spade. I have no trouble calling a party 'scum' when they attack the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, causing them misery and death. Yes, death. The attacks on disabled people by this government is killing them. Sometimes there are worse things in life than being rude - killing disabled people is one of them.

1. You miss the point. I couldn't give a crap what Tory toffs got up to except insofar as they make policies which destroy people's lives. The Tory party receives 50% of its funding from the City of London, and 1/4 of of Tory's are rentiers. You'd have to be naive in the extreme to think that these factors don't shape Tory policies. Yes, it's very much about class warfare - and the Tory's are waging it. That's the reality of politics.

If you criticised the Labour party for being influenced by unions, you'd also be right. That's the way politics works. Under Capitalism, the nation is divided by class. Either you support policies which make the richest 5% wealthier and make it easier for them to extract more money from the rest of us, or you support the 95% who have to earn a wage to survive and make a living. I know whose side I'm on.

did he really use his child agaiN?
what a vile man

Are we talking about the unemployed people made redundant by public sector cuts? The ones who were being paid by the state from the tax receipts raised by the private sector anyway?

Thatcher and Major, that would be the Conservative government that took over after the Callaghan years. Yes, I remember those too. Callaghan's Labour government induced such rampant inflation that it had to grovel to the IMF for money and then allowed the unions to hold the country to ransom over the winter of discontent.
Thatcher's Conservative government then had to sort out the godawful mess the previous Labour government had left behind. Bit of a pattern emerging here.

Good speech but despite the fact I tend to lean towards the Tories this speech has not done enough to dispel the spectre of George Osborne's speech earlier this week. After that speech which went much too far in saying that ALL the responsibility of reducing the deficit must fall on the shoulders of the poor Cameron could not really have said anything which would repair the damage.

Didn't like the dead baby being wheeled out and the story about his Dad's disability. It seemed extremely exploitative to me.

If they'd stuck to the Labour spending plans rather than the tory ones they wouldn't be having to borrow at the rate they are now. All those unemployed people cost the state an awful lot of money you know.

I watched it having followed the speeches made by his colleagues earlier in the week, wondering if he would prove himself to be any more human than some of them, or any more likeable than I have ever found him in the past. I was disappointed.

Maybe if I was a true blue Tory I would have been able to pick out parts of the speech I agreed with. As it is I remember what life was like under Thatcher and Major, hoped thios lot would be better and have been disappointed.

Yes, they do, don't they.

I think we did, but everyone comes to these things with some kind of opinion already.

Petite I don't think we watched the same speech.

slug When the money's already been borrowed and spent by the previous government, the incoming government still have to service that debt. As you surely must know, borrowed money = interest payments added onto the original debt, therefore borrowing goes up.
Anybody with an ounce of brain realizes this and therefore understands that this increase in borrowing is unavoidable and not down to reckless spending in an attempt to buy votes a la Blair/Brown

It was a lecture, not a speech. He was patronising and didn't come across at all as a nice person. He appeared hectoring, smug and dismissive of ordinary people. Admittedly I wasn't a fan before the speech of him or any of his colleagues. I can't get my head round the way they despise the poor and people who claim benefits. They seem to have bought into and be encouraging the myth that people want to just live off benefits and not work. It plays to the daily mail and express audience and is horribly simplistic.

And the arguments that Labour caused the recession are getting boring. Had the Tories been in power the banks would have had as much if not more freedom to gamble away their clients' money. Wanting to privatise even more public services when the ones which have already been privatised aren't working out is just stubborn and illogical.

They appear to be helping each other out, and forgetting about the rest of us, and nothing he said today changed my mind on that.

cakeandcustard i felt like that lisnening to harriet harperson, i feel like it when we are lectured by Yvette bums mouth cooper. Its what Labour do best, patronising, nannying and lecturing like we are all slightly incapable.

Eh?? I made no comment about borrowing Fishwife.

But since you brought it up...

I watched a bit and then gave up, I got fed up of being talked to like I was a slightly backward child.

One of the themes was 'hard work', that the Tories are the party of 'hard work'. What does that say? That the millions of Labour voters aren't hard workers. 'Hard work' will get us out of this was one message. But nothing about what got us into this? People were working hard, before the bankers ruined the economy, when Gordon Gekko gamblers gambled with teh public's savings while regulators looked on with 'light touch regulation'. The gamblers made 'easy' money off teh hard work of the public and then when it all crashed, they held out their hands and got bailed out with the fruits of the public's hard work. At least Miliband wanted a full enquiry into the banking crisis and asked questions about what got us where we are today.

All the hard work under the sun won't be able to put Humpty back together again unless we sort out the rate rigging in the financial system.

I don't think Gove's speech was broadcast Claig. I've been watching the conference broadcasts (including labour's, God help me) daily. I would have liked to have seen it too.

I was delighted (although despair at its necessity) at Cameron's words of one syllable explanation to Miliband, regarding the ridiculous notion that the government was handing cheques to the rich.

To go off on a small tangent, I'm sorry but I hate that

1. every time there's a political debate on here, you can bet that some immediately launch into personal (in my view often offensive) attacks and name calling of the politicians instead of debating the issues.
2. it seems widely accepted that inverse snobbery is ok. How much control do individuals from wealthier backgrounds have over where they were educated and brought up anyway? It's pure discrimination to dismiss someone who isn't like you surely!?

On both points, what message does this send? That

1. to get your point across, verbally attack the individual making it
2. don't aim too high as you won't be considered one of 'us'. As someone said on the Ed Milliband thread, then the lowest common denominator is what you end up with.

I missed Gove's speech. I suspect that that was a cracker, shame that I missed it.

No, it was not good enough. The speechwriter wanted us to believe that Labour is holding us back, stopping us from aspiring and that all they wanted to do was borrow. It won't wash. We know Labour are progressive and get some things wrong, but they aren't out to stop us doing well. Some people will prefer borrow, borrow, borrow in order to invest, invest, invest in public facilities, rather than lend, lend, lend to banks in order to invest in their profitability.