I can't tell you how much I hope the Conservatives win the election.

antoinetteOuradi So are you trying to tell me that everyone who votes knows all the ins and outs of the party they are voting for? And where did you see me mention that i'm voting for Labour? I'm not, i'm voting SNP. Don't speak to me like i'm some illiterate fool just because i'm not heavily into politics. And for your information tax credits are not benefits. I know enough about the tories to make an informed decision not to vote for them, never have, never will!

To be perfectly honest i think all politicians are as bad as each other.

Me too vintage, it's been sorely missed!

Ah I see TheHeathenOfSuburbia has got there first with the article on Hammersmith and Fulham.

Genuine question for those who want to wake up to a Conservative government on Friday; what do you think of what has been done in this flagship council?

I have to go out soon but I would be very interested to read some reactions from MNers who actively support this style of governing.

Repost of link in case anyone missed it.

oh yes cant wit for the foxhunting to start back up

If we ignore history we are are condemned to repeat it. Throughout the twentieth century the Conservative Party opposed every move to improve the conditions of working people. In each case following the implementation of the progressive policy and its popularity the Conservative opposition became support, but the party has never been innovative or pro-active in improving the conditions of the great majority of the British public.

Old Age pensions were introduced by the Liberal Government elected in 1906 and their introduction was delayed by vehement opposition from the Conservatives. The National Health Service thought up by a Liberal and implemented by the 1945 Labour Government was strongly opposed by the Conservative Party. The minimum wage introduced by the 1997 Labour Government was strongly opposed by the Conservatives. There is no reason to think that 'the stupid party' has changed in the twenty first century.
In fact they continue to hate EU social legislation which gives evryone an entitlement to paid leave and protection against being forced to work excessive hours by exploitative employers. As the great Winston Churchill (yes a Tory) said about employment legislation, it's needed to protect good emplyers from bad employers and bad employers from the even worse.

Labour or Lib Dem or Green, - I don't care but please do not vote Conservative for a return to the 1980s!

I meant of course just because one is obese it means you are well nourished. I was just so amazed at the rubbish on previous post.

There were no undernourished children when free school milk was stopped? What nonsense. Many children today still have to go to school with no breakfast. That is why it is still subsidised for under 5s, and for those on free school meals.

Just because you're obese doesn't mean you're undernourished! You can get obsese by eating mars bars and fish and chips every day. Not much nourishment in that. What absolute rubbish you're talking, ninny. Sorry, I meant ninna.

And child poverty soared under the Tories and we had two recessions and one of the very first things Thatcher did was to give massive tax breaks to the super rich.

Christ. I'm certainly not going to vote Labour but if you're going to vote Tory at least don't spout shite about how great the Thatcher years were. They were great for the very few. Most struggled very very hard.

I have just written on another thread, saying I now don't want the Tories to win. If they do, they will go down in the people's memories as the party who brought a lot of grief. It will be impossible to bring the economy back into equilibrium without causing grief.
Margaret Thatcher and the tories did this previously and yet people seem to think she was some kind of monster. In particular, I get so tired of people blaming her for stopping free school milk. Free school milk was brought in, quite rightly, when many children were undernourished. My son had it for one term, when he started school, before it was stopped. By then there were no undernourished children. Indeed it was the start of the rise of the obesity problem.

Although I would hate to emigrate I fear alot of hardworking people may well just do that if Conservatives don't get in. If alot of the people who pay taxes to the government bugger off overseas, who is going to fund all the benefits, tax credits, public sector etc?

He was a victim of health-rationing. I don't think that will be worse under a Tory government. They may be more honest about it.

Yeah what Chil said. Measures of poverty are relative not absolute. It is usually measured as 60% or less of median income.

abride, exactly how do you think he would have been better off under the Tories?

Did you read the article which Heathen linked to?

Thanks Chil

That's a good, nice liberal country Canada

I expect it has a lot to do with upper and lower percentiles of average income. Comparing the 10th percentile with the 90th percentile... something like that

Well, we've sold our shares and we're looking at Canada, and if it's not a Tory victory tomorrow I think my husband will be wanting us to go.

I remember the seventies too... And the eighties. For the first time in the eighties people like my parents had some money to show for their hard work. Their standard of living shot up. My mother was a nurse and my father was a middle manager: they weren't high-fliers. They could transfer pensions (which you couldn't do pre-Thatcher, meaning limited job mobility).

Talking of 'utter callousness' I am thinking of my father, tacitly deemed last year to be too old, at 79, to benefit from heart surgery on the NHS. He's had his ops now, privately, and is much healthier and happier. Exactly how would be he have been worse off under a Tory government?

Does anyone know - I really don't know - how they measure the difference between rich and poor. Is the gap wider because the rich are richer or because the poor are poorer or both?

Yes it was... but instead social mobility has decreased and the gap between rich and poor has widened. Everyone talks about the Thatcher years as some kind of political low-point but, if you lived in Britain in the mid-late seventies under a Labour government - power cuts, 3-day weeks, wage freezes, constant strikes, appalling services - the eighties were positively the sunlit uplands.

In an ironic 'give them enough rope to hang themselves' kind of way I rather hope we get a re-run of the 'Lib Lab Pact' this time around. Let them have to come totally clean about the austerity measures we need.... let them slash public spending, chop benefits, introduce crippling tax rates and preside over rocketing unemployment.

That is utterly shocking, heathen.

I cannot comprehend the degree of utter callousness required to be a Tory supporter right now. Or is it just ignorance?

'I want to live in a MERITOCRACY, where there is an equal opportunity for all children to succeed, and those in power are there because they are best able, not there by birth-right or who they know.' Wasn't that supposed to be what the past 13 years were about?

This was in the paper today:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/poverty-and-injustice-in-david-cameronrsquos-model-borough-19 62318.html

about how the Conservatives in control of the 'flagship borough' Hammersmith and Fulham council have cut council tax... by slashing services for the homeless, disabled, etc etc.

Very depressing, it's just going to be the same old Tory party fucking over the vulnerable again, isn't it.

"The council here told people that if they took away services like this, there would be volunteers; if the state withered away, people would start to provide the services for each other. But nobody opened their home to Jane, or volunteered to feed Debbie, or started a new youth club on their own time and with their own money. The state retreated and the service collapsed."

Big society my arse.

(oh, and they turned took the athletics track out of the local park so they could turn it into a polo pitch. I mean, FFS.)

Yes, and I think they gave it a bloody good go tbh - they did lots of things wrong too, of course, as well as much that was right. Like the minimum wage, sure start, repealing clause 28 etc - I do think 'society' is in better shape than it was.

I say, of course, because that seems to be the way of long-term governments

I'm not convinced that DC does want to care for the vulnerable. I might be wrong, of course, but it's difficult to swallow and he hasn't really convinced - either in person or in policy. I haven't really got over the conservative's attitude towards apartheid - I know it was a long time ago, but it did then speak VOLUMES to me

I think the Tories were kept out of government because people believed that Labour could combine running the country well, with creating a fairer society.