Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To have zero sympathy for this woman

836 replies

wasonthelist · 16/10/2015 13:25

The tearful woman on BBC Question Time claims to have been a Tory voter. She's reaping what she sows.
www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hame-you-hardworking-mums-tearful-6643284

OP posts:
mollie123 · 16/10/2015 14:41

The Mirror should get its facts right
But now families will only be able to claim for their first two children.
this change does not affect existing or soon to be born children.

SiencynArsecandle · 16/10/2015 14:41

Defender I'll save my sympathy for my kids, with a disabled Dad and me as his carer, our 'income' has been reduced by £85 per week. There is no money this week to put petrol in the car, let alone start buying Christmas presents. This woman was quite happy to vote for a party that announced they would make huge cuts to the welfare state. She was quite happy putting her cross in the box that effectively meant my DC would struggle to receive Christmas presents. Did she care about me then? Which is why I have little sympathy for her now. I only hope this is the turning point where others who foolishly believed that the disabled 'scroungers' would be punished for daring to be ill, actually now realise that there is nothing fair at all in the Tory Party and we are all in the firing line.

Axekick · 16/10/2015 14:41

I am pretty sure you can have sympathy for her children, without having sympathy for her.

Fontella · 16/10/2015 14:42

and whether or not you like the SNP or Plaid, you can't deny that they have had an impact on how their countries are governed and what policies are implemented there.

Er what impact have Plaid had exactly on how their 'countries are governed and what policies are implemented there'?

Plaid have 11 out of 60 seats on the Welsh Assembly and 3 out of 40 Welsh MPs. They have next to no influence on how their 'country is governed', and I write that as a Welsh speaking Welsh woman and former Plaid voter.

Damselindestress · 16/10/2015 14:43

I think she was naive to trust the Tories but I still feel sympathy for her situation and by speaking out about it she has helped to raise awareness.

wasonthelist · 16/10/2015 14:43

As others have pointed out, I do have some sympathy for her kids, who didn't vote for anyone.

OP posts:
needmorespace · 16/10/2015 14:45

Pork boy didn't say he wouldn't cut tax credits - from what I remember he said he didn't want to.
Slimy politician speak.

howtorebuild · 16/10/2015 14:46

I feel bad for her. It's a shame it took for her to be punished by the Tory party to have any empathy with those more vulnerable than her.

Oswin · 16/10/2015 14:48

I feel sympathy for everyone who's suffering thanks to the cuts,but this woman was fine with other people living in poverty. With other children going without. I think she was either really naive and didn't pay attention or just assumed the 12bn welfare cuts would be for jsa claimants and disabled and ill people.

SantasLittleMonkeyButler · 16/10/2015 14:52

It's a shame it took for her to be punished by the Tory party to have any empathy with those more vulnerable than her.

Yes, quite.

MissMarpleCat · 16/10/2015 14:52

Sciency makes a very pertinent point. This lady voted knowing there were going to be cuts leaving many people living hand to mouth and even going under completely. I knew that it was inevitable that tax credits would be hit, all benefits will become the universal credit in a few years. Tax credits will cease to exist then, this information was available before the election.

lashawn · 16/10/2015 14:53

I feel sorry for anybody struggling, which is why I am a labour voter.

However. There is also a feeling of the turkeys having voted for Christmas. She was naive if she thought Tory cuts weren't going to affect her.

Muckogy · 16/10/2015 15:02

YANBU - to some extent.
despite that - i do feel very sorry for her.
but on the other hand - people have no memories when they go to the polls, vote conservative and then complain when the tories fuck them over.
anyone who thinks that the tories have the best interests of the non-rich in mind are fucking deluded.

LieselVonTwat · 16/10/2015 15:04

It will affect some of them mollie, inevitably. Because it's only 3rd and subsequent children who are included in existing claims in April 2017. If you've got 3 now, aren't claiming, but lose your job in 2018, you're shit out of luck.

GoblinLittleOwl · 16/10/2015 15:09

She said it herself: "I voted Conservative originally because I thought you would be the better chance for me and my children."

Not what is best for my country, what is best for me.

mollie123 · 16/10/2015 15:13

liesel - I realise that - it was the Mirror being slightly misleading (what a surprise) about the 2 children rule. It may affect the woman in question (there is no info on how many children she has or her income) but that is mere speculation rather than fact.

SilverDragonfly1 · 16/10/2015 15:14

multivac is spot on. She was happy for other people's children to live in poverty but how could hers possibly be expected to do so? I am very sorry for her children, because they are quite helpless, trapped in a situation created by a whole bunch of selfish, gullible people as well as being brought up by one.

FrancesHeck · 16/10/2015 15:16

Fontella, I would say that the very existence of Plaid had a direct impact on the creation of the Welsh Assembly. If people hadn't voted for Plaid before the Assembly, then I think it's unlikely there would have been an assembly at all.

I'm not saying that Plaid "created" the Assembly. But the fact that enough people felt strongly enough to vote for Welsh nationalism, influenced things. If everyone in Wales had just voted Tory or Labour, I doubt anything around devolution would have happened. It's more about what the people who voted for them were expressing than what the party itself did.

And I think the Welsh Assembly has had some impact- lower MRSI rates due to hospital cleaning being taken back in-house, changed building regulations having a big impact on environmental sustainability. It's not headline grabbing stuff, but it will make a big difference over the long term. The building regulations stuff is actually a really good case study for how having control very some of the finer details can effectively create a much higher level policy, in a way that is actually enforceable.

Those things aren't directly down to Plaid, but the existence of Plaid means that the big parties have to pay a bit more attention to what people actually want in Wales, and so policies reflect that.

Both the Scottish parliament and the Welsh Assembly cannot overturn what happens in Westminster, but they can mitigate it's impact locally, just like the GLA did in London in the 1980s. And that can influence what happens in the rest of the country. It's also part of the reason the Tories are so keen on exporting the poor out of London this time round- they don't want a left wing London being a beacon of resistance/a place people can flee too when it gets too tough.

MrsJorahMormont · 16/10/2015 15:17

Owen Jones has written an interesting piece in the Guardian in response to this, saying that rather than gloating at women like this Labour voters need to be love bombing them and bringing them back to the Labour herd. Because really she just lost her way for a while, if she thought that DC didn't see her as a scrounger. DC sees anyone on less than a quarter of a million a year as a scrounger. Anyone using state schools and healthcare is a scrounger. We're all fucking scroungers, except him and the old Etonian brigade.

David Cameron really is a giant arse clinker and so are those who voted for him.

MuddhaOfSuburbia · 16/10/2015 15:17

Not what is best for my country, what is best for me

I'd hazard a guess that that's a good 99% of tory voters' rationale

(I'm dropping one per cent to be kind)

MrsJorahMormont · 16/10/2015 15:19

To be fair if I was a single mother, I would probably vote for what was best for me and my kids. Because I wouldn't feel like anyone else was looking out for us. Although why anyone would think DC was looking out for her I have no idea Confused She's the kind of person DC and his ilk take the piss out of over their £200 bottles of wine and pig-head banquets, where at least the pig doubles as both dinner and ... erm... entertainment.

derxa · 16/10/2015 15:19

I feel sorry for her. I actually shed a tear and usually that's getting blood out of a stone.

LieselVonTwat · 16/10/2015 15:26

The Mirror were being misleading Mollie, but so were you when you said the change doesn't affect existing or soon to be born children. Because it will affect some of them. The truth was somewhere inbetween the two. Bear in mind that you really only need a pretty minimal change in circumstances to end up as a new claim.

MistressMerryWeather · 16/10/2015 15:28

I have seen it said on MN before that tax credits and child benefit are not real benefits.

I think this proves people really believed that, but it's not true where Tories are concerned.

I have sympathy for her though.

StormyBlue · 16/10/2015 15:30

I agree that the Owen Jones take on it is the best, tactically.

I have sympathy with her children, and I empathise with how it feels worrying over how you will support your children.

But I also think that people are showing a lack of understanding toward those 'gloating'. People aren't rubbing their hands together because they love to see a tory suffer (well, some might be), but some people are rightfully resentful that she was happy to throw other people's children under the bus for the sake of her own.

I have mixed feelings towards her, personally.