Help - tempted to vote Tory, against my long held values! Convince me otherwise!

I honestly feel like I'm living on another planet to the OP. How could anyone possibly consider the Bedroom Tax to be a good thing? What newspapers are you reading? Where are you getting your information from? I don't think that particular policy has had a single positive write up that I know of...

OP, you need to learn by doing. Get yourself out of your bubble and go down to your local homeless shelter or foodbank. Talk to people about how they got there and then see if you can join up the dots. Is there a connection between their poverty and the tories? Is there a causal relationship. We can't do your thinking for you, and thinking will only get you so far - you need to actually experience the harsh realities of being poor or disabled or abused under a neo liberal government.

Then go and vote the way your conscience dictates, assuming you have one.

I mention Sox because that is the specific example of over-regulation you quoted from Osbourne. As I said earlier, we do not know what would have happened under a Conservative government, but the crash was not inevitable, was not global, and, as admitted by Milliband, the Labour government's fault.

Trouble is that whoever gets in the middle will get squeezed as usual.

In terms of the NHS our personal experience is that it is now easier for us to get a GP appointment then under labour. It was labour who closed and mothballed our local A&E. I have spent a few years as a SAHM during which time a had a part time job under a zero hour contract teaching swimming and it was great whilst it lasted. My kids are now old enough for me to go back to full time work which I have now done but the zero hours contract enabled me to work when it suited our family circumstances at the time. I think that sometimes life is what you make of it. Of course it would be great if there was no need for food banks and if there was unlimited money for the NHS but as I family where both parents work I'm worried of tax increases under labour. I remember Labour telling us there would be no tax increase only for them to raise national insurance instead. Also I can not take Ed Milliband seriously.

Hanna It expresses concern that the BoE was not the banking regulator so could not act in time, or prevent banks taking excessive risks.
Thus, when Northern Rock needed money, the FSA, the regulator could do nothing. It was the regulatory tri-partate system which caused the panic, and this was opposed by the Conservatives.
Other regulation, such as SoX, is excessive and unnecessary. The banks did not have too little regulation, just not enough of the right regulation.

apple c.60% of NHS money goes to private companies who make a profit.

I love how cdtaylornats equates nurses , doctors and underpaid NHS workers who are part of a union ( who might have some minimal ability to stick up for their working rights) with Capitalist medical healthcare companies designed to make profit out of the NHS, but then if your a Tory all part of the old boys network I guess so perfectly understandable....

Ageed - Sarbanes-Oxley was a v expensive unnecessary piece of legislation that had nothing to do with the financial crisis, and made no difference in the US, so burdensome and complex.
Just because you believe some regulation is unnecessary, you do not believe all is unnecessary. As quoted above, they wanted to strengthen bank liquidy regulation, which was the cause of the crisis.

Osborne also said:
I fear that much of this regulation has been burdensome, complex and makes cross-border market penetration more difficult. This is exactly the wrong direction in which Europe should be heading and it threatens the global competitiveness of the City of London.

Major companies can pack up and move anywhere in the world if faced with damaging regulations. We have already seen it happen in the United States, with the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations that were hastily introduced after the Enron scandal and which have led to international companies delisting and moving elsewhere.

London has benefited enormously from America's short-sightedness and it would be foolish of us to make the same mistake.

He did discuss over-regulation in certain areas. His specific in that speech was European regulation, specifically the 'Markets in financial instruments directive' not related to the crash.
this (left wing) site quotes a 2007 report by the Conservative party. The full report is here, but I quote:

We are concerned about the division of responsibility between the FSA and the Bank over banking and market regulation. Fortunately, conditions in the last decade have been benign internationally, with no serious threats to banking liquidity. We think it would be safer if the Bank of England had responsibility for solvency regulation of UK-based banks, as well as having an overall duty to keep the system solvent. Otherwise, there could be dangerous delays if a banking crisis did hit, with information having to be exchanged between the two regulators; and there might be gaps in each regulator’s view of the banking sector at a crucial time, when early regulatory action might have spared a worse problem.

60% in 1970, to 30% in 1990 and back to 60% in 2010 does not look 'reasonably stable' to me

carol, here you go: leftfootforward.org/2012/06/george-osborne-barclays-libor-scandal/

Interestingly (or not!) this graph shows national debt as % GDP as reasonably stable from early 70s to late 80s through both Labour and Conservative administrations. It dips in the early 90s but then goes back up again before Labour comes to power in 97 - it drifts down again after that for several years. It obviously goes back up after 2007 (although not to an excessive amount surprisingly, still fairly in line with previous levels of national debt) but has since almost doubled under the Coalition.

Hanna And debt was much lower in the late 80's, early 90's, before the recession then. You cannot cherry-pick data from any period, just over the course of the government, alongside any impact inherited. So the Labour Govt inherited a good economy with borrowing coming down, they left with the largest deficit in history - pretty much the same as in 1976-79.

allthepretty do you have a link to that quote?

I think you will find most of those companies employ people who are members of unions who support labour.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nhs-sell-out-tories-sign-largest-5323402

Over half the companies who have won NHS contracts have 'close links' with the Tories, I think that's called corruption

If the NHS is your primary concern for now then vote labour but expect a great NHS for the short term because labour will run out of money again. If you vote Tory expect a slightly more limited NHS but you will have it for a long time.

If privatisation is your worry then vote Tory, labour is at least as much into privatisation and if you look at the socialist state of Scotland under the SNP then they've done even worse.

Personnaly I don't care if the surgeon I get is employed by a company and just paid for by the NHS. My GP, my optician and my dentist are employed by companies and that works okay.

Well, how about sketching out the changes the Tories have made in the last five years to ensure the banking crisis couldn't happen again....?

Osborne criticised the Labour administration for being too tough with banking regulations.

Boulevard we will never know. However, the tripartate system was set up by Brown as a change from the past, which had been successful. I belive the Conservatives would not have changed it, and one group on watch would have been better.
this report into the RBS collapse shows a complete failure in the FSA, a body set up by Brown.

caroldecker are you seriously going to look me in the metaphorical eye and claim the Conservatives would have regulated the banks any better than Labour did?

The banks would not have needed bailing out if they had been properly regulated. They failed due to a reliance on wholesale funding rather than Tier 1 capital and over-lending on property. Also, contrary to Brown's claims, it was not a global problem, just the US and UK (with a bit in Spain, Iceland and Ireland).
not sure what you mean about the debt as a proportion of income. This graph shows it at 50% in 1997 and c65% in 2010, which is bigger not smaller. Brown's borrowing did not fund infrastructure but current spending.
third graph shows the big gaps between income and spending and they occur in the 2 periods of Labour government over the last 40 years.

not sure what international standards are worse then the UK crash, maybe you would like to elucidate?

Strong economy in 2010 - are you on meth?
The Labour party borrowed £162m in that year alone and planned to continue to do so. Brown's borrowing is so outrageous in that it was unnecessary, and his failure to regulate the banks was criminal.