If you tend to vote conservative can I ask a few questions - let’s keep it light and respectful!

[Holidayhavanas]

Full disclosure I tend to vote Labour, but I’m really interested to know if you tend to vote for the tories, what is your reasoning behind. the real shortage of qualified public sector workers for example teachers, social workers, police. A health service and education system on it’s knees. Police forces like Manchester and Met in special forces. I think that it’s symptomatic of years of underfunding. I work in the public sector and feel on a daily basis that the country is absolutely screwed. I assume most tory supporters would say it’s down to austerity but I feel it’s ideological cutting back on public funding. I’mgenuinely open to hear other views as I find it so depressing and just hope that it’s something I am missing. Let’s try and keep this respectful 😊

Yes this is the first thread I’ve seen in last few years that haven’t descended into left insulting Cons voters

For me it’s about which policies are best for the time but there seems to be this idea hanging over from pandemic where control has entered the conversation

I don’t know about Danes but I know quite a few Norwegians and Swedes who live elsewhere due to taxes. Also I think that there is a misconception that Nordic countries are some sort of high tax paradise. They aren’t- sweden privatised it’s schools, Denmark has serious problems with racism. All Nordic countries have generally aimed to cut taxes in the past decades.

Pay rises pretty much stopped, after 2008, more people sucked into working benefits, which were often frozen during Austerity as was public sector wages.
Meanwhile, rent and housing costs like council tax rocketed, people had far less money.
The growth in MW isn't enough to keep up with housing.

Hence the growing need for foodbanks.

I don't have access to a parallel universe so i don't know if Labour would have been any better.

I work for the NHS and still vote Tory, lib dem when they had a bit of a chance . I don’t like the current Tory government and consider myself more Centre right. I trained In the nhs under Labour and the only people who appeared to be paid well were Australian angency workers and non- clinical pen pushers. I did vote remain and was gutted the Tory government pushed that through but when you vote someone you vote over a number of issues not just one. I don’t think anyone actually expected Brexit to happen.
I prefer the Tory governments stance on the word woman and self identity etc and I prefer their ability to say things like as they are and not cover it in a layer of woke crap. We have a small business and the Tory government will always be better for that. Labour hates anyone that makes their own money.

I find the left/Right thing strange in the UK, both parties, in a european context would be considered right and far right.

Labour are now anti EU, anti Union, anti strike & anti Immigration.... the 2019 Conservative manifesto had (in many respects) more in common with RN than anything from the Thatcher era.

The LibDems are now far more in line with what i would consider "left wing" yet are by some, thought of as right of centre!

Macron, considered a centre right politician in France/Europe, has just privatised EDF, when Corbyn suggested such a thing, it was described as a Marxist policy that would throw us back to the stone age.....

It’s a matter of perspective but to counter pp the level of spending over last few years would rival any centre left party

Huge spending, taxes a bit higher, state intrusion

Probably part of the reason for backlash now. I did always say Johnson going would move party to lower spending - it’s interesting to see the machinations of how that is happening

I think it remains to be seen what the government are going to do about the wealth tax in Norway for instance.

If the Norwegian government go ahead and raise the tax and we lower taxation we might see an influx of wealthy Norwegians instead of Russians in the streets of Knightsbridge

The Norwegians left behind are faced with much higher taxation to pay for everything.

It seems to me that one of the unpredicted disadvantages of universal credit has been the freedom for big employers (especially of women), like high street retailers, to curtail job offers below 16 hours per week level, at which they are freed from providing sick pay or pension benefits, so that entire cost is shifted to the individual and the state. So of course UC is needed, when in fact it is businesses evading paying their dues in favour of currying favour with investors, who are also the people who will benefit from the pension funds investing in their shares.

Housing is certainly something both main parties have done very badly on in recent decades. We simply haven’t built enough houses for about 40 years.

I live in Denmark. Yes some rich danes leave (Wozniaki) but there is a strong sense of responsibility to the greater good. In the uk it seems to be more action based (donating to the food bank, volunteering, favours for your neighbour) but in Denmark its financial. One of the lego kids goes to our local school. You dont even know unless someone tells you.

I really am enjoying this thread. Id been toying with the idea of starting one in very similar terms. Brexit taught me i need to be a better listener and engage with people who have different views.

Thank you OP, this has been a unicorn thread. It is so rare to get a political chat that doesn't descend into vitriolic name-calling.

Pension are payable depending on income though not contracted hours. If you make the minimum your employer must offer a pension and pay a minimum contribution. There is no requirement to pay sick pay beyond ssp for full time workers. Also uc means that you should seek work if you are not working full time and are not exempt.

at the moment we have a shortage of workers but things don’t seem to be better for people. Why is that?

You see it on mumsnet constantly. 'Tory' is an insult. If you've done well for yourself, it's always because you were privileged in some way, never any recognition of personal agency.

Indeed. There was a thread on Dominic Raab and people called him a toff and said they'd have achieved as much as him if they had his background. He had privileges they could only dream about. And he was as thick as mince he'd just drifted through uni being being lazy and not working.

In reality, Raab' father fled the Holocaust and came to Britain with his parents when he was 6. He was a food manager and his mum a clothes buyer. His father died when Raab was 12. Raab went to state schools. He got a degree in Jurisprudence from Oxford and his masters at Cambridge where he won the Clive Parry Prize for International Law.

And even after all that, one poster said, yeah but he went to a grammar school. 🤷 Because heaven forbid anyone is acknowledged as just achieving from working hard.

@MsPincher but the reasons not enough houses are being built of the right size/configuration for real families, or for the ageing baby boomers - who can't find property they are willing to downsize into is that few communities want a huge housing development plonked down on the perimeter without additional facilities. And, the UK has seen its population increase almost 20m since the NHS was created. Nobody has worked out how to manage what the FT called "the pig in the python"... and that article was published in the late 1980s.

If Dominic Raab had come to the UK when he was six, he would be about the same age as my DM, who is 87, so you must be talking about his father. I tend to believe that refugees and immigrants make committed citizens, so you are talking to the converted.

Sorry, mea culpa, I misread your post MsPincher. You did say Raab's father.

Here's where we fundamentally disagree. I believe the term fairness can only be applied to that which is done by humans. People can and should treat others fairly.

But that which is an act of God, ie accidents of birth, are neither fair nor unfair. They just are. There are those who are born into riches and others into poverty, and society shouldn't interfere. In the same way that we don't redistribute any natural talents or aesthetics.

While as a society we must strive to provide opportunity and education to everyone, we can recognise that there are unequal distributions of wealth (along with natural talents etc), and there's nothing wrong with that.

I might be jealous of my friend who's pretty/athletic/tall/musical etc, but I wouldn't want an artificial 'redistribution' of those attributes. Same with money.

Truthfully, what is euphemistically termed 'redistribution' is really taking away by force that which X worked hard for, and giving it to Y for doing sweet fa.

Even taxes, at around 25%, is essentially the government telling you, you've worked for yourself Mon-Wed, now we're forcing you to work for the collective on Thu. In any other context we'd recognise this as slavery.

Don't get me wrong, I get why taxation is necessary, but it should never be seen as anything other than a necessary evil, and the less of it the better.

Labour want to remove charitable status from my child’s school, which is immoral, short-sighted, and would cost me thousands of pounds each year in raised fees - on top of the already insane amount of income tax (£100k+ per year in tax) DH pays towards the free education and healthcare of others.

Labour have a weak leader and few competent politicians. Not saying the Conservatives have any either, is all very depressing.

Labour want legal ‘self id’ for trans people which would effectively abolish all single sex spaces, with huge implications for girls’ and women’s dignity and physical safety.

No idea who I’d vote for if an election was tomorrow but as Labour, LibDem and Green all want self ID for trans people plus other policies thay’d cost me thousands, I guess I have to vote Conservative 😕

I don't think Labour are clearly saying 'TWAW, stuff single sex issues'. Their 2019 manifesto section on 'Women' that I just looked up says:

"Deliver gender pay equality by making the state responsible for enforcing equal pay legislation for the first time. The new Workers’ Protection Agency working with HMRC will ensure that employers take equal pay seriously and take positive action to close the gender pay gap. Women will no longer be left to take enforcement action by themselves through the courts.

Require all employers with over 250 employees to obtain government certification on gender equality or face further auditing and fines. By the end of 2020, we will lower the threshold to workplaces with 50 employees, whilst providing the necessary additional support for small businesses.

Revolutionise parents’ rights by increasing paid maternity leave from nine to 12 months, doubling paternity leave to four weeks and extending pregnancy protection. We will ban the dismissal of pregnant women without prior approval of the inspectorate.

Transform the workplace and require all large employers to have flexible working, including a menopause policy, and consider changes to sickness and absence practices.

Enable positive action for recruitment to roles where employers can justify the need for more diversity and introduce a right for all workers to request flexibility over their hours from the first day of employment.

Ensure that the single-sex-based exemptions contained in the Equality Act 2010 are understood and fully enforced in service provision.

Create a safer society for women and prioritise domestic abuse as a health issue, introduce 10 days of paid leave for survivors of domestic abuse, and ensure women’s refuges receive the long-term sustainable funding they need.

Misogyny and violence against women and girls will become hate crimes.

Increase women’s representation across parliament by building on the Equality Act, passed by the last Labour government, and enact Section 106 so that all political parties publish diversity data about electoral candidates."

And that was back in 2019 when the rather more lunatic fringe was in charge. I get that individual MPs are doing and saying rather mad things, but the actual policy around women's rights seems....reasonable? Labour also has MPs who would be part of a Labour government who are making pretty considered remarks around this.

I'm not a Labour supporter, I just don't like the way that Tories are positioning themselves as the saviours of women's rights on this issue when self id was their policy and the mess is something they've blown a lot of hot air around but barely done anything practical to fix. Labour, on the other hand, are being portrayed as utterly mad when their stated policy was to fully enforce single-sex based exemptions contained in the Equality Act.

Labour want legal ‘self id’ for trans people which would effectively abolish all single sex spaces, with huge implications for girls’ and women’s dignity and physical safety.

As far as I can tell, this isn't true.

If we are talking about access to gender recognition certificates, then trans people who have not had full surgery (which is the usual objection in single sex spaces) can already get one. Self id would make it easier to get one. The Conservatives have just made it easier to get one in a different way by putting the process online and reducing the fee from £140 to £5.

Under the Tories, trans people who have not had full surgery and who do not have gender recognition certificates have already been accessing what many people would consider single sex spaces, including women's prisons and hospital wards.

The mechanism to exclude people of the opposite sex, including those who have gender recognition certificates, from single sex spaces already exists in the Equality Act and Labour had a policy in their last manifesto saying that this would be maintained.

The GRC is a bit of a red herring.

Public spending means either taxes or debt. Governments do not have money in and of themselves, they spend our money. The bank is independent. So yes, sure, we need more public services, the question is how to pay for them when we've pissed a decade's worth of budget up the wall on random COVID measures that made very little difference. And of course Brexit has removed billions in trade opportunities.
Voted Tory in 2010, I don't vote any more.

@MsPincher hence the disbelief that he was happy to pull up the drawbridge on others fleeing dictators and persecutors....

I vote Conservative because I’m wealthy (not “super rich” but top 1% PAYE and I want to keep my taxes low.
i say low, between income tax and NI it’s about 50% of my income. I’m broadly ok with that but I wouldn’t want it to be any more. I am also concerned about a wealth tax. I’ve always been a saver and have managed to accumulate a fair amount of savings (paid out of taxed income), so the idea of a wealth tax strikes me as very unfair.

@XingMing well yes. It's a thread largely positive towards the tories who need all the help they can get at the moment. When it comes down to it, it's almost entirely based on opinions which are not necessarily factually accurate.

So would you object to providing a little for Z, who through an accident if birth is never going to be employable, never mind live independently?