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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To not understand why people hate David Cameron and the Conservative Party?

362 replies

SuperWifeANDMum · 11/09/2014 01:16

Just that really.

I am a Conservative voter.

PM Cameron has disappointed me in some ways such as his lax approach to curbing immigration, deporting foreign criminals and addressing the alarming benefit culture but he has implemented a fair few positive changes.

For example:

Reducing our Debt.
Introducing Bedroom Tax.
Cutting corporation tax.
Frozen Council Tax.

Of you vote labour, why?

I am deeply concerned at the thought of another Labour government next election.

OP posts:
Mandyandme · 11/09/2014 10:45

I think you will find an idea similar to the Bedroom Tax was a Labour idea

Flipflops7 · 11/09/2014 10:47

Agree, SpaceInvaders.

daphnehoneybutt · 11/09/2014 10:48

I don't hate them.

I would never vote for them as pretty much everything they stand for does not sit well with me and some of it makes me feel out and out revulsion.

They have made a right bollocks of the economy as well - blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/11/the-tories-have-piled-on-more-debt-than-labour/

We wouldn't have such an "alarming benefits culture" if the tories had not destroyed all industry in large swaithes of the land and negated to provide any other investment that would create jobs.

Frozen council tax just means essential services are being canned. Bedroom tax has just led to record rent arrears. ATOS are driving people to starve to death or commit suicide. Workfare / slavery means there are less jobs for people to do - why hire someone when you will be paid by the govt to take on a slave?

All of their policies are utter wank, frankly. The only good thing the Condems have done is increase the amount you can earn before tax. And we have the Lib Dems to thank for that.

Roll on May 2015 when we can get well rid of them.

insanityscratching · 11/09/2014 10:49

I tend to think that a Government should be judged on how they treat the most vulnerable members of society. For that reason I judge David Cameron and the Conservative party harshly as they seem particularly adept at treating people with disabilities without care nor consideration.

SlicedAndDiced · 11/09/2014 10:52

I consider myself very lucky too op.

It has only been the generosity of mine and dp's family that has kept us from having to visit the food banks ourselves.

There are many people far far worse off than me. I will be voting labour this year and praying I never see another conservative government in my life time.

feathermucker · 11/09/2014 11:20

DC is, indeed, very intelligent. He is also so out of touch with the harsh reality of Britain in 2014.

Council Tax is set by local government, not all of which are Conservative (thankfulky)

The bedroom tax has been proven to be grossly unfair, penalising the disabled, terminally/long-term ill, elderly, larger families etc.

The welfare state, and those in receipt of welfare, has not been effectively addressed, nor have the long term implications of DC's policy changes been considered.

I can see why you vote Conservative; you appear to be lacking in empathy.

I will NEVER vote for the Tories; they are completely out of touch with reality Wink

ouryve · 11/09/2014 11:33

YABU.

And really fucking goady, if you think that the bedroom tax, which affects disabled people disproportionately, is a wonderful innovation.

tabulahrasa · 11/09/2014 11:37

"I know this is moving off thread but it is totally wrong to assume that families in social housing always have less money than everyone else"

The bedroom tax is only paid by those claiming housing benefit, which is a means tested benefit.

People with an income higher than the threshold for housing benefit pay full rent anyway.

Also the horror at children having to share a room...that is not the issue.

When you apply for social housing they offer you a house they deem suitable for your needs, in most areas if you refuse it you are then put back to the bottom of the waiting list (though in some places you are allowed to refuse one or two before that happens). They haven't chosen that house, they don't in fact have an empty bedroom, they won't be given any money towards moving costs and in most cases there aren't two bedroom properties to move into.

ouryve · 11/09/2014 11:39

in the past under different governments the benefit system was open to abuse from dishonest people.

What, like the Tory government of the 80s and 90s which move people onto disability benefits in vast numbers in order to massage the unemployment statistics?

The percentage of the benefits bill that goes to dishonest claims is tiny. Even more so in comparison to the abuse of the tax system by dishonest wealthy people.

firstchoice · 11/09/2014 11:56

"Roll on 2015 when we can get rid of them"

Amen to that.

I am currently terrified that the Referendum will affect the date of the GE.

CrapBag · 11/09/2014 12:05

I claim ESA because I cannot work through ill health.

I live I fear of this government one day telling me that I am fit for work so off I should go. No one would ever employ me anyway and I can't claim job seekers because my DH works full time (not enough to support a family on his wage but too much that we wouldn't be entitled to anything else) so we would be up shit creek.

Cameron and his bunch of fucking toffs can knob off.

GarlicSeptimus · 11/09/2014 12:18

Haven't RTFT yet; just coming back to this:

There is this presumption from some Tories that everyone is out for themselves so they cannot comprehend why people would want others to receive benefits or support ... They assume the same self interest is in everyone so if people claim benefits they do it because they can and to amass money not because they need to in order to survive.

The Camerons claimed DLA for Ivan. He said of course he claimed it, he was entitled to it. I think that sums up the Conservative attitude.

LurkingHusband · 11/09/2014 12:26

firstchoice

The election date is set in law, and could only be changed by a vote in parliament, which on current mathematics would probably require all-party backing. Sadly, on present form, I can see Labour happily voting with Conservatives to throw us a big fuck-you. Labour are only Tory-lite anyway.

TondelayoSchwarzkopf · 11/09/2014 12:30

Just to correct you on one thing OP. It's NOT a Conservative Government, it's a Coalition Government.

tabulahrasa · 11/09/2014 12:31

Anyway...I can tell you why I dislike David Cameron...

Remember before he was either the leader of the conservatives or PM and he was posing for all those photos of him cycling to work, telling everyone that they should be cycling on short journeys because of the environmental cost of short car journeys? And while he was cycling there was a car doing the same journey to carry his paperwork...

That told me everything I needed to know about him.

SignYourNameInBrownAndFlame · 11/09/2014 12:36

I'll tell you a little story, OP, on a level you might understand.

Once upon a time there was a man. The man left school, completed an apprenticeship and got a job. It was a hard, physical job working with lots of nasty chemicals (and when the man was many years older he found out those nasty chemicals had destroyed his physical health and left him with an illness that will probably kill him). But nevertheless, he worked hard at his job.

After the man had spent twenty years in this job, a Conservative prime minister changed all the rules, and the man found himself made redundant like thousands of other people where he lived. Unfortunately, the Conservative government hadn't thought about what these thousands of people would do when it closed all their workplaces, but they lived far away from London so it didn't really matter.

The man had been given some money when his job was taken away, so he used it to retrain for a different job. He worked at his new job for nearly ten years. Shortly after starting his new job, he started to suffer from a horrible mental illness. He worked and worked for as long as he could but eventually the illness was so bad that he couldn't do his job any more. He changed to another job and worked for as long as he could, but after only a few years he was even more ill and his company told him he would have to stop work altogether.

Fortunately there was a Labour government in power by this time, so because lots of different doctors all agreed the man was "disabled", he was able to claim for some money to pay for the extra things his disability cost him, like his prescriptions for all the different tablets he had to take every day, and taxis to his doctors appointments because he couldn't remember which buses he needed to take because the illness made him lose his memory. It wasn't a lot of money but it helped him to live.

Then one day the Conservatives came back to power. Now the man has been told he won't get this money any longer. He has to try to get a job instead. All the doctors still say he is disabled, in fact they say he is worse than ever. They all agree he is worse than when he had to give up even his easy job a few years ago. The man is in his 60s now. His physical health is bad. His mental health is bad. But the people who the Conservatives put in charge of the money for disabled people say they don't care. They don't care that he worked for as long as he could even when he was ill. They don't care that no employer would take on a disabled man in his 60s in deteriorating health. They don't care what his doctors say. They don't care that they make the man feel even worse, that he cries with stress, that he thinks about committing suicide. They have targets, and he is an easy one. So they are stopping his money and he will live unhappily ever after...for a little while, anyway.

And that's no fucking fairy tale. That's my husband. That's his life. That's our life under Cameron and Duncan Smith. And we are far from unique.

So there, OP. That's why I hate this government. Because they take the dignity and humanity from those who can least afford to lose it.

Absofrigginlootly · 11/09/2014 12:56

Not rtft as it will no doubt wind me up...but I hate the conservatives and will never vote for them in my entire life for one main reason: the NHS

They have tried to very deceptively sneak privatisation of the entire NHS through the back door. No one noticed when they disbanded the PCTs for 'social enterprises' ....but luckily, most medical directors on NHS boards and other leading clinicians wrote enmass to the government when they tried the same with secondary NHS trusts to tell them their ideas to break up and privatise trusts were a massive pile of steaming shite... So they quietly dropped most of their proposed policies (for now) and are now attacking GP surgeries the same way.

Yes the NHS has problems, but running it into the ground with underfunding so that you can stand back and say "look it's not working, we need to privatise" when at the same time letting companies get away without paying BILLIONS in UK taxes is f'king criminal. Yes David, I'm on to you!!!

You only have to look at health systems like the USA have to see that privatisation only benifits the rich. Poor people be damned. Which to me sums up the conservatives whole attitude towards policy making.

MaidOfStars · 11/09/2014 12:59

I would never vote Tory. Never.

I only have to wander around my husband's home town to see the deprivation, the disillusion, the sadness, the bitterness. Less romantically, there is also the higher than average frequency of benefit claimants, the far lower than average educational achievements, the higher than average unemployment, the poorer levels of general health.

He is the only person - the only person - he knows from his home town that went to university. I grew up in a place where everyone - parents, teachers, pupils - expected a university education.

His town was ripped apart by a Tory government that brutally took away the livelihood of nearly 50% of the work force with no thought about what the fuck the people there would do. No plans to regenerate, no investment in new industry. A town often deemed to be one of the most deprived in the whole of Europe.

Perhaps that makes me a single issue voter (or non-voter, rather). But I don't care.

MaidOfStars · 11/09/2014 13:03

(I would add that even before I met him, I had never nor would ever have voted Tory, for the same reason. I just didn't have anything other than a faint outsiders view before then.)

OutsSelf · 11/09/2014 13:04

I think the Tories equate being well off with working hard and being generally 'good'. This means that they think if you aren't well off, it's cos you don't really deserve it, probably because you haven't worked hard enough or are straightforwardly 'bad'. Which would be risible if it didn't mean that they made social and economic policy which protected the capital and assets of the already well off at the expense of everyone else, based on a false and simplistic assumption that everyone that they know who is well off deserve their comparative situation next to the millions who have not been so lucky, but are usually as good, as hard working, as deserving than them.

They are conservative because they want to conserve the rules of a system which protects massive inequities and they constantly deploy a discourse which equates poverty, misery, disability, and other forms of social bad luck, with the moral worth of those who experience it, in order to achieve this.

So yeah, I don't like them very much

Subhuman · 11/09/2014 13:09

It's always the same. Tories get voted in, things pick up for a short while, then stagnate, then dip, the public get annoyed and want change, Labour get voted in, things pick up for a short while, then stagnate, then dip, the public get annoyed and want change, Tories get voted in...

It works the same in USA with Republicans and Democrats. Just two sides of the same coin. Some voters are dead set either way and the middling voters swing every 8-10 years. The actual policies almost become irrelevant as enough of the middling voters will just want change for the sake of it.

Downtheroadfirstonleft · 11/09/2014 13:12

OP,

People hate them because people want to be handed life on a plate, with all their wishes and needs being provided via "the rich" which is am imaginary term for "someone else".

The Labour Party supplied this, taking us all, deep into debt.

The current government believe that to get out of debt, we need to stop spending so much as we can't afford to keep giving away what we don't have.

Those that now don't get so much are cross and vocal.

Think that's about it.....

SevenZarkSeven · 11/09/2014 13:20

If you think that only people who are on benefits hate the fucking tories you are both short-sighted and stupid.

I've got plenty of money thanks and I wouldn't vote for them under any circumstances because they are absolute bastards with not an ounce of common decency amongst them, always have been and always will be.

HTH.

ChildrenOfTheDamned · 11/09/2014 13:20

I have DC and the Tories because of what his policies did to this man, this woman, these people, this man, these people, these 10,600 people, these people, this man, and these people. They're all dead btw.

That's just from the first page of a google search.

I grew up in Liverpool in the 80's during Maggie's reign, would die before I would vote for the scum that are running the country at the moment.

Fairylea · 11/09/2014 13:20

Some really nasty and ignorant views on this thread. Heaven help the next generation should they ever become ill, disabled, unable to work for whatever reason or fall on hard times. I doubt there will be any empathy left for anyone.

Swipe left for the next trending thread