Vote the conservatives out

Done and thanks.

I think the conservatives are getting our country off in the right direction- so no, ta

Mumsnet gets funnier by the day!

First we had the excitement about the Protest Against Democracy. Now a petition about a vote about an election!

You lefties need to face up to the fact that the country wants a right-leaning government, thank god.

You're as bonkers as the Greek government.

I would like to take back something I said earlier - I was typing in haste. I said, in answer to the idea that non-Tory voter should just get over it.

"If this government stood on a platform where they were open about their ideology and the real reasons behind the cuts, and people voted for that then fair enough."

Actually I don't really mean that.

I don't think our engagement with politics should begin and end on election day. It's not about whether I like their policies or not. It's much more than that - I think their actions are totally immoral.

The results of their policies damage thousands upon thousands people, people are in poverty, homeless, sick and even dying as a direct and indirect result of Tory policies. They are destroying this country, in the name of greed. It's evil IMO.

If I can see this happening and I fail to act, other than to put a tick in a box, then I am complicit. So I will take every chance to stand against them, including signing petitions wth about a zillion in one chance of working.

Although - that petition has worked to get us talking though - hasn't it?!

Also, I firmly believe that what the Tories are up to basically amounts to moving power from the government to corporations.

I think they want to take away our human rights and make it normal for people to have to work for benefits, for example.

I believe the quality of life for pretty much everyone except the super-rich will get worse under them, and that if they were honest about what they were up to they wouldn't get in.

Here are the top 10 misconceptions:

1. Teenage pregnancy: on average, we think teenage pregnancy is 25 times higher than official estimates: we think that 15% of girls under 16 get pregnant each year, when official figures suggest it is around 0.6%[

1. Crime: 58% do not believe that crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19% lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53% lower than in 1995. 51% think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.

1. Job-seekers allowance: 29% of people think we spend more on JSA than pensions, when in fact we spend 15 times more on pensions (£4.9bn vs £74.2bn).

1. Benefit fraud: people estimate that 34 times more benefit money is claimed fraudulently than official estimates: the public think that £24 out of every £100 spent on benefits is claimed fraudulently, compared with official estimates of £0.70 per £100.

1. Foreign aid: 26% of people think foreign aid is one of the top 2-3 items government spends most money on, when it actually made up 1.1% of expenditure (£7.9bn) in the 2011/12 financial year. More people select this as a top item of expenditure than pensions (which cost nearly ten times as much, £74bn) and education in the UK (£51.5bn).

1. Religion: we greatly overestimate the proportion of the population who are Muslims: on average we say 24%, compared with 5% in England and Wales. And we underestimate the proportion of Christians: we estimate 34% on average, compared with the actual proportion of 59% in England and Wales.

1. Immigration and ethnicity: the public think that 31% of the population are immigrants, when the official figures are 13%. Even estimates that attempt to account for illegal immigration suggest a figure closer to 15%. There are similar misperceptions on ethnicity: the average estimate is that Black and Asian people make up 30% of the population, when it is actually 11% (or 14% if we include mixed and other non-white ethnic groups).

1. Age: we think the population is much older than it actually is – the average estimate is that 36% of the population are 65+, when only 16% are.

1. Benefit bill: people are most likely to think that capping benefits at £26,000 per household will save most money from a list provided (33% pick this option), over twice the level that select raising the pension age to 66 for both men and women or stopping child benefit when someone in the household earns £50k+. In fact, capping household benefits is estimated to save £290m, compared with £5bn for raising the pension age and £1.7bn for stopping child benefit for wealthier households.

10. Voting: we underestimate the proportion of people who voted in the last general election – our average guess is 43%, when 65% of the electorate actually did (51% of the whole population).

Survey link here

"If it makes the bitter pill of defeat easier for you to swallow to believe that people were conned into making a choice that you dont like them so be it."

I believe that the Tories are doing what they've always done, creating a bogey-man for people to blame for society's ills, massively exaggerating existing issues, to make us all too busy pointing the finger at each other to focus too clearly on what they're doing.

The bogey-man is always a group with no voice.

In the 80s is was single mothers - everything was their fault, and the Tories stood for "family values". What a load of bollocks that was. Pretty damaging if you were a single mother or the child of a single mother at the time.

We've had illegal immigrants being the scapegoats, and by implication all immigrants. The most recent one is benefit scroungers of course, specifically including - shame on the Tories for stooping so low - the disabled.

The Tories do manipulate the voting public, of course they do. If you think they don't you have blinkers on. The vast majority of the UK press is run by Tories and presents a right wing agenda as if it were fact. This affects people's opinions. How could it not?

An Ipsos Mori poll not so long ago found that people had huge misconceptions about things like the level of benefit fraud, immigration, how much is spent on job seekers allowance. The Independent ran an article about it called British public wrong about nearly everything, survey shows !

Most of the things the public were wrong about were things the Tories have campaigned on.

Coincidence? Hardly.

In all fairness AV was crap but I knew at the time it would a) not get through b) turn into the 'public voted against PR or changing the voting system' rather than 'voting against AV'.

I don't think labour or the tories are interested in changing it because it would change the political landscape and not necessarily to their advantage.

Yet another example of how our political system is about getting voted in and being in power rather than representing the people.

I don't think not liking the result is a good enough reason to keep an unfair voting system.

Labour campaigned pretty solidly against AV. I realise that AV isn't PR, but it would have put the issue of electoral reform on the table and broken the assumption that it's FPTP or nothing. Labour was under the (incorrect) impression that they were on course to win the next election and that AV would dilute their crushing majority come 2015. In this, as in so many things, the Miliband regime was utterly deluded.

There are many different forms of PR and only some can we accurately use previous election results to get a potential outcome.

However, if the people vote for a conservative/Ukip coalition then that's what we should have. I wouldn't like it but that's what democracy is. It would be up to everyone else to make sure they voted next time and put their car forward better.

I don't think not liking the result is a good enough reason to keep an unfair voting system.

...And there are some people who care equally deeply about the future of this country and want it ruled by Sharia Law or UKIP or SNP etc .

The thing with proportional representation, is that it would have seen a conservative-UKIP coalition in the recent election.

Does anyone on here want that?

"If you don't like it why don't you emigrate"
Believe it or not, there are some people who care about the future of this country. You know, the one where we were born raised and are half fond of.

angela Merkel.
Or Francoise Hollande.

Seriously.

Vote the conservatives out, and vote who in???

If the OP is so unhappy about life under the Tories why don't you try emigrating...it'd be easier than trying to over turn the election result, and replace with what exactly? I don't know what the OP is thinking there....you think it is impossible for the country to descend into lawlessness in a power vacuum/chaos? And you think that would be a better scenario or outcome than the current state of affairs?

I don't think there is any point to such a petition. It's not going to happen and just sounds bizarre. You'd be far better putting your efforts into a more proportional voting system. There are plenty of alternatives.

Fwiw the tories don't have a mandate from the people. They have a mandate because of a voting system. So has pretty much every other government we've ever had. It needs to change. Government needs to reflect the people not the ability to get voted in.

Sorry to bust your Tory agenda.

I'll be sure to make your points at the Labour constituency meeting on Friday. We were wondering how to win the next election, and thanks to you we'll now have a winning strategy.

Everything I said is technically true, though. And you know it. Sorry to bust your Tory agenda.

The USA managed to come out of the crash and associated recession without Austerity.

Do you have a political understanding of what you write, or are you just cut and pasting talking points?

The USA couldn't cut its NHS, because it doesn't have one (even less so in 2008/9, pre ACA). It couldn't cut its out of work benefits for single people, because it doesn't have them. It couldn't cut housing benefit, because it doesn't have it (there are exceptions in a few states, but there is nothing at a federal level). It couldn't cut child benefit, tax credits, you name it. The US does not have a welfare state in any recognisable form, has very few in-work benefits, and out-of-work benefits are at a level and a form (Food Stamps, for example) which would make the fantasies of the unelectable Tory hard right look like the work of Tony Benn.

Talking about "Austerity" in the context of US governments is crazy stuff, because they have always had a society which makes even ours today look like a welfare paradise.

The very notion of Austerity is another con.

It benefits those with capital (property owners, employers etc) by making the rest of us have-not's more vulnerable, desperate and therefore cheaper and more exploitable.

The USA managed to come out of the crash and associated recession without Austerity.

The UK and Europe still has not recovered. Even Jean-Claude Juncker and the European Commission acknowledge that austerity is no longer the best policy for Europe. However, the Tories are keen to promote the notion because most of them are buy-to-let landlords with inherited wealth and shares in whatever private companies.

So yes, to say that this program of Austerity and how Labour caused the recession by spending is a con-artisit's PR exercise, is a massive understatement.

cambridgeglobalist.org/2015/03/12/the-politics-of-the-politics-of-european-austerity/

But Booting out Cameron is NOT an invitation to bring in Labour!

I voted Tory I don't think I was conned into doing so

The argument from the headbangers is that you only think you weren't conned into it, but you were really: they know your mind better than you. It even has a word in what headbangers grandly call "theory" (ie, lengthy fourth-rate essays written by third-rate academics at second-rate institutions): "false consciousness".

I voted Tory I don't think I was conned into doing so, but thanks for your concern

If it makes the bitter pill of defeat easier for you to swallow to believe that people were conned into making a choice that you dont like them so be it. However I think you will be disappointed.

the public has been manipulated and misled into voting Tory.

Ah, democracy is OK so long as the result is the one you want, otherwise it's evidence that everyone apart from you is an idiot. Presumably you avoided this manipulation because you're cleverer and clearer-eyed than the others?

My Labour ward meeting last week was full of this sort of nonsense. We lost because our policies were rejected by the electorate, and because we failed to communicate a central message. The electorate are never wrong. It is our job in the Labour Party to do better next time. Trot headbangers complaining that the electorate can't be trusted to vote the right way don't help anyone I mean you, Corbyn.

"Get over it"

See this dorsn't apply if you think - as many if us do - that the public has been manipulated and misled into voting Tory.

If this government stood on a platform where they were open about their ideology and the real reasons behind the cuts, and people voted for that then fair enough.

But while people still believe the lie that the Tories are having to make cuts because of the "mess Labour got us into" and while they still think benefit reform is happening because benefit scrounging is a massive problem or because the Tories want to help people, we're not going to shut up about it because an injustice is happening, people are being conned.