Conservative Manifesto Launch

@greatfiresoflondon

The idea being the money follows the
pupil/patient if they chose to move
from a failing school/gp surgery to >somewhere else.

This already happens. NHS hospitals already work on funding follows the patient. This is what worries me with the Conservative plans because if the patient does not go to an NHS hospital that means a real cut in the hospital's income.

Most NHS hospitals are already running at close to their most efficient - the private sector cannot approach many hospitals for the price that they do the treatments. The problem is that if the Conservative plans are implemented then it could tip some hospitals into debt. In my area the hospital is very efficient, but the chief executive says that if 10% of patients go private (which could happen under the Conservative plans) the hospital could no longer be financially viable. That means hospital closures.

All this community empowerment stuff sounds exactly like the 'fourth sector pathfinders' guff from In the Thick of It. I reckon it's a smokescreen because the hidden agenda is privatising as much of local government as possible. It's the 'minimal state' theory from the Reagan era. A lot of Cameron's ideas seem to be coming direct from the American right.

I think the small government with community groups picking up the slack idea may come from the US. When I was over there working, local groups would adopt a highway for example, by maintaining the verges, and building affordable housing was done by supervised volunteers. Taxes and state interference were low compared to the UK. It was also quite common for people to donate 10% of their pretax income to local causes.

I liked it but I'm not sure I can see it working like that over here.

Absolutely spot on LadyBlahBlah - exactly the conversation DH and I were having last night. There isn't any kind of coherent idea. I think we really need a new direction, but the Tories have a lot of nice words but no real substance.

To answer your question Italy, I was quite a politics-aware teenager during the later Thatcher years and John Major government, and to me the policies now seem very similar to the way they were then, just put a nicer way and taking advantage of Labour's unpopularity to sneak through. There is very little difference as far as I can see.

I'm finding this thread a little weird to be honest. Where are the all the true blue Tories that have been laying into any doubters on the other threads?

I would quite happily be a full time volunteer if I were a multi millionnaire

according to Cameron, your Facebook status page would also say whether you volunteered or not, "in much the same way as your relationship status."

(Not by law, obviously - by encouragement).

Manifesto means "a public declaration of intentions, opinions, objectives, or motives, as one issued by a government, sovereign, or organization"

I don't see much of that

I see lots of posturing and fixing of things that don't need fixing.

As someone else said, there is no big idea. In fact there is a distinct lack of ANY ideas. I get no genuine impression of their motives and opinions.

This Big Society, Small government is a contradiction in terms.
They are advocating creating a big society........but who is creating it? Father Christmas? Oh no, that will be the government, so therefore the government will actually be extending it's platform by telling me, for example, that I should be married.

What a remarkably strange idea.

Zephirine, I don't find it encouraging, I find it creepy and heavyhanded! I think you misunderstood me

Except that it doesn't actually mean anything does it?

Oh well, that's a little encouraging.

(Still won't be voting for him.)

Yes - make it easy for individuals to do these things, definitely. But don't rely on it or co-opt it.

From a Cameron speech last year:

"But I also want to argue that the re-imagined state should not stop at creating opportunities for people to take control of their lives. It must actively help people take advantage of this new freedom. This means a new role for the state: actively helping to create the big society; directly agitating for, catalysing and galvanising social renewal.

So yes, in the fight against poverty, inequality, social breakdown and injustice I do want to move from state action to social action. But I see a powerful role for government in helping to engineer that shift. Let me put it more plainly: we must use the state to remake society."

Actually I thought Cameron's comments were very reminiscent of Thatcher's "no such thing as society" speech. Like her he seems to be suggesting that government should not concern itself with trying create a fair society, but instead to allow individuals to do it themselves.

The mechanism by which individuals are expected to do this, and how we might all be individually persuaded to consider the needs of society at large rather than just serving our own interests are of course a mystery.

What Thatcher said was "There's no such thing as society, only individual men and women." Cameron is focusing on society over individual people. I find him too much of a collectivist.

(don't get me wrong - I love community, but I find Cameron's Big Society ideology impractical and a bit creepy).

I don't really know much about what went on when the Tories were last in power because I was a child then and didn't pay attention to the news, so its interesting hearing comments from people who remember them when they were last in power. Do you think the party have genuinely changed and taken a new direction, or do you think its all waffle and if they got in power they would revert back to a 'greed is good' and 'no such thing as society' philosophy?

walkies, think it's just that the Tories are wrapping themselves up in "community speak" to make their values more acceptable. Their values are still tax less, spend less on public services and value business above anything else. This is all just waffle.

I find it odd that Margaret Thatcher said that 'There's no such thing as society', and now Cameron wants us believe the Tories will be 'Big on Society, small on government'.
I'm confused ...

While I think the idea of communities rather than government is a nice idea I think it is badly thought through. I struggle enough with a FT job, soon to be two kids and a house and an allotment to maintain, and that is without any semblance of a social life. Am I now going to have to spend my precious evenings (when I am not going to bed at 9pm due to pregnancy) going to community meetings to organise bin collections and how to run schools.

It's a real cop-out - we don't have the money to run government but rather than sort that out with taxes and efficiencies we are going to make you do all the work for free!

Communities groups are all very well when you don't live in a society where you need 2 wages to be able to afford to live.

Yes thanks Catherine - that must have kept you guys busy!

glad we agree Italy! YEs, there are such things as youth clubs - many more now than there were under the Tories, and also Labour have rolled out an undeniably massive programe of extended schools activity - so on site after school stuff such as drama, sport, music etc is absolutely standard in most state schools now - that is something that Labour have done, that was not there when the Tories were in power, and which gives kids something improving to do. I have just read this back and sound like a Labour evangaliser - I promise I am not - I really abhor many of the things they have done, and actually never thought I'd get over the war in Iraq, but here I am, more frightened of a Tory government than voting this bunch back in!

P.S.

Also thanks to CatherineHMumsnet I read through your summaries - they were really useful.

Rocknstroll, I do agree with what you are saying, but everyone has been so 'me, me' in this country over the last few years and its people from all backgrounds who are so rude and angry all the time. I do think people need to change their attitude to children and teenagers in the UK where I still feel there is a 'children should be seen and not heard' vibe, which I do feel contributes to some of the problems with our teenagers. Are there such things as youth clubs any more or have they been stopped from too much red tape? Education should be good across the board so everyone is on an equal footing. Still not sure who I will vote for.

I am a bit disappointed with the Conservative Manifesto.

To paraphrase David Cameron,

'If we're elected on May 6th you're on your own on May 7th'

isn't a very attractive idea as we are just coming out of a recession (even if it was a single issue bank thing this time). (yes I know he didn't say that but that was the impression it gave)

When I watched the launch I was really hoping for some ideas and inspiration. A plan maybe but ...

I wonder, perhaps, if a coalition might not be the best thing for the time being.

ITalylovingmummy - the huge anti social overcrowded mess you describe would be o so so much worse if we'd had a tory government all this time. at least there have been new schools built, people encouraged back to work by tax credits and a minimum wage, kids encouraged to stay in education for longer by those cash payment thingies that i can't remember the name of, child care being cheaper and better than ever before (though still not cheap enough in my view!), new hospitals built, children's centres all over the place, blah blah. i have real problems with them - the war and their daily mail pandering immigrant bashing, such as detaining child immigrants, but i really think if it is the anti social mess you are worried about - vote to keep the tories OUT not to help them in! Whether that be lib dem or labour where you are I don't know - but imagine all those in the middle of the anti social mess being left to set up their own schools etc?! It's got me shuddering! And there is no point in this being a government that works out for some already empowered people who are willing to really engage and have the skills and motivation to set up their own schools, if there are vast swathes of people just around the corner who haven't a hope of benefitting.

Thanks Alicatte, my misunderstanding!