to ask you why you would vote Tory?

[Dromedary]

I have a nasty feeling that if an election were held now the Tories might get in again.
Lots of you out there support the Tories.
Some of the rest of us find that very hard to understand.
Can you explain your reasoning for us? I for one promise not to bash you for your views on this thread (but may do so on other threads).

[Crinkle77]

Why should anyone have to justify who they vote for?

[OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos]

Fork, you make a valid point in your first paragraph and I agree with you to an extent.

But everyone does have basic education and healthcare and money to live on available to them, there is only so much that the privileged can do to support the disadvantaged. That's where personal responsibility comes into it.

Our children are never going to make the best of the education they are offered if their parents don't take responsibility to support it and enable their children to reach their potential. We are never going to make the most of the healthcare we have available if we don't make healthy choices in our personal lives.

I agree that wealth distribution is a problem, and I believe that in society we have a responsibility to one another, but I also believe it is up to every individual to do their best in the circumstances they have, and it's up to every parent to ensure their child has better or equal opportunities than they themselves had.

[CogitOCrapNotMoreSprouts]

"There are very few people who are 'swinging the lead' actually."

I'm sure they are a minority. However, ask about and everyone seems to know someone - a friend, a cousin, a friend of a friend - who is not as disabled as he's cracking on. Only last week a friend told me about one of her in-laws, a 38 year-old man that has not worked in 20 years, who claims disability for chronic incontinence and yet can be regularly found propping up the local bar with seemingly no bladder control difficulties at all. Could be idle gossip, could be genuinely incapacitated, could be a total shirker but these stories circulate without any intervention and they gather pace in the community.

[almapudden]

I have always voted Lib Dem but since they had a sniff of power and abandoned all their principles, I won't be doing so next time. I don't know who I'll vote for yet as I am worried that Labour will (further) bugger the economy but the Tories are dismantling the NHS.

I don't see that one party is intrinsically 'better' or more moral than the other. Milliband is as much a twat as Cameron.

[OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos]

Cogito, if government policies did not allow stories like this to be a real and valid and believable possibility, then these stories would not continue to circulate.

That's why benefits need to be better targeted and less generous.

[Crinkle77]

Anonymumous, excellent post

[ForkInTheForeheid]

Outraged

[perceptionInaPearTree]

niceguy - I don't think you are right about private schools, ie everyone wants their child to go there and everyone who can't is just jealous. I know people who can well afford it but don't agree with the concept. (have a child in a prep school myself so no axe to grind.)

[Alibabaandthe40nappies]

Fork that is exactly the point. We need a good, free education system that all children can access regardless of background - and then people can achieve whatever they wish.

The current charade of 'choice', is the most divisive, socially stagnant thing imaginable, because you have to have money to buy a house in a decent catchment otherwise your children run the risk of being failed utterly by the education system.
Also, the idea that one-size-fits-all is ludicrous. The grammar system worked, but what didn't happen was the third option of technical/vocational colleges taking kids from 11/12. Everyone else was lumped into a comprehensive and teachers were left trying to teach academic subjects to children whose talents lay elsewhere. A total mess.

[OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos]

What's SES?

I agree that people will not always have the same opportunities, but I don't think that healthy people are so disadvantaged at the bottom end of the scale that they can't become successful in life.

[autumnlights12]

The Labour Party always bankrupts the country and uses bribes to win votes. It's easy to throw more and more borrowed debt at problems. It's far far harder to ask what those problems are and prevent them from happening. It's not about taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Most Labour politicians come from the same public school, Oxbridge backgrounds as their Tory counterparts and have as little personal knowledge of living on the breadline as a privileged Tory does. If they really understood poverty and the cause of poverty, they'd not just throw more benefits at it like Blair and Brown did.

[ForkInTheForeheid]

Socio-economic status

Yes, they can be successful, of course they can, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

[perceptionInaPearTree]

'everyone seems to know someone - a friend, a cousin, a friend of a friend - who is not as disabled as he's cracking on.'

No, everyone thinks they know everyone else's circumstances when in fact they couldn't possibly. And those people who come out with comments like this tend not to be very nice ime. I never gossip about anyone I know or presume to understand their circumstances.

In practice DLA is very difficult to claim - you have to jump through a lot of hoops. And a lot of people have to go to tribunal with a genuine claim before it is agreed.

[larrygrylls]

Wealth inequality probably increased the most ever under New Labour. They were the one's who encouraged the banks to overvalue their assets and give huge bonuses as they could then use the taxes paid to splash the cash on their favourite projects. They were the one's who allowed top level public sector workers to have increases many times that of inflation whilst penalising the old and savers. They gave enormous public service contracts to their pet companies who paid their executives basic salaries of hundreds of thousands (and sometimes millions) to achieve nothing positive. Gordon Brown was pretty much the inventor of PFI as it allowed him to cook the books.

Aside from that, TB and GB both went to top Scottish schools and the cabinet was mainly Scots guaranteed to toe the line. I think people (certainly a fair few English people) don't realise that those top Scottish schools are pretty much the equivalent of Eton.

How people can forget all the above and think of the Tories as the "nasty" or "posh" party, I don't know.

[OutragedAtThePriceOfFreddos]

Thanks Fork.

[almapudden]

I genuinely know someone who has five kids, doesn't work, and spends every weekend posting photos of herself (pregnant!) out on the lash. Not saying this person is in the majority but she does exist!

[niceguy2]

Thatcher & Major both led the Conservative party from very humble beginnings. So it doesn't follow that only rich privileged folk get to be Tory leader.

What does make me laugh is the feeble attempt at trying to position Ed Miliband as a man of the people because he went to a comp school.

[Ephiny]

It's only an anecdote (and probably one I've told before), but both my parents came from the kind of properly dirt-poor background that doesn't really exist any more in the UK. Thanks to the grammar school system, supportive (though poor and uneducated) parents, and a lot of hard work, they both got PhDs from top universities, and while they were never wealthy, they did well enough in their professional lives to buy a home, support their family, and be comfortably retired now.

Yes it probably was a longer and harder slog for them than for someone who had it all handed to them on a plate. But I guess that's just how life is, and sometimes we need to look at what we have (free education for every child until age 18, free healthcare etc) instead of despairing because some have more than others. And it seems to me a very patronising attitude to suggest that there are 'limits' to what someone can achieve because they come from a disadvantaged background. The culture of low expectations created by that sort of attitude is potentially more limiting than the poverty/disadvantage itself.

[almapudden]

Ephiny - absolutely. And I don't feel that Labour did anything to challenge the culture of low aspirations that is prevalent in some areas. By chucking money at the problem indiscriminately, they created a sense of entitlement that actually lowered people's aspirations: why should you work for something that is being given out for free?

[FushiaFernica]

I can't vote Labour anymore so I would probably end up letting the Tories back in, by not voting. All major parties as bad as each other now.

[niceguy2]

it seems to me a very patronising attitude to suggest that there are 'limits' to what someone can achieve because they come from a disadvantaged background.

Exactly. There are plenty of people who have 'made it' despite not having a penny to rub together when they were younger. John Caudwell grew up on a council estate and Richard Branson is dyslexic.

Whilst the US has many problems of their own, one thing I love is their absolute belief that anyone regardless of background can achieve. The American Dream. They look up to those who have achieved, have been successful and aspire to emulate them. Unlike the UK where we seem to sneer at those who are successful and imply they have only been so by treading on the backs of others.

[heidihole]

Havent read the thread but I vote Tory because:

They support Grammar schools which is TRUE social mobility.

They don't seethe and scowl at people who have worked hard and earnt their own money.

They don't want to squish everyone down to the lowest common denominator like labour, they'd rather everyone was rich whereas labour seem to only like poor people and would be happy if all the rich were culled.

People HAVE to stand on their own two feet. The handout culture, whilst heartwarming, is unsustainable as we're now seeing.

So many reasons but I can't think of ONE reason i'd vote labour. ever.

[ForkInTheForeheid]

I don't think it is patronising Ephiny, I think it's realism.
For every person like your parents (who were obviously very intelligent and hard-working people) there are others who were unable to achieve that potential due to circumstances beyond their control.
For all labour's faults their policies did result in a huge increase in uptake in higher education. Although this has its own problems, with the devaluing of degrees etc., it does suggest that there was a positive impact on the aspirations of young people.

niceguy
Does the fact that the people who did make it against the odds are well-known for that not tell you something about the chances of the majority from that background? Just because some people make it doesn't mean that everyone can. The US don't have the same kind of class system as we do in the UK, hence the lack of sneering.

[LaCiccolina]

I grew up in a conservative gov. I went to Uni work in a labour one. I'm now a mother and its blue again.

On the whole I did not get great impressions of labour at the point I was planning/able to think about voting. Parents/locality informs my opinion prior to this. My area was blue and it worked well. It still does. So the area nearest my house greatly influences my thoughts for the country (doesn't everyone do that?).

This is now the first time in questioning this, simply as there's a few recent changes I don't agree with; child bens axed, employment law altered, suggestions of nursery places axing etc. these affect my life as it is now, and whilst my locality is just as good I don't know if I can give them the country again, so to speak.

I'm now completely undecided. Dreading it as ill hAve to actually research the next one. Ugh....

[ethelb]

I will never vote Tory but the smug 'out of touch' manner of the OP is another reason why it will take a long, long, long time before I ever consider voting Labour.

I can completely understand why some people will vote Tory, even if I don't agree with them.