To ask those who voted for the conservatives ....

[ginorwine]

Reading the threads here there is much criticism about conservative policy .
A lot of people must have voted for them .
Where are they on mums net ?
And on threads such as those re the w t c cuts are they not representing their views as it was clear this would happen ?
I can tell that they may be slated but surley differing views can be expressed so long as it doesn't get nasty - a know that feeling run high but surley ppl can do so .
So to Tory voters -is it how you anticipated .what are your views ?

'The Tax Credits question is a tricky one. I work one day a week in a benefits-related position. Without fail everyone who comes in answers the question "How many hours do you work?" '

If you look at part time job adverts though, they're for 16 hours - you can't apply for hours that aren't offered.

Companies have got away with offering low hours and low pay because people will take the jobs and use tax credits to survive, which is wrong, but then so is cutting tax credits before sorting out that issue.

For the poster with a 'friend' who is a TA. That is always a part time job, it's school hours in term time only - it doesn't exist as a job at other times.

`~"I believe the Tories actually want to help poor people'
interesting, how? how are they helping disabled people? (not rowing, just interested)

ihave on a national basis I'm sure they are not, no.

But MN is not a representative sample versus the UK as a whole. It's a younger, better educated, female-dominated sample, and includes a disproportionate number of members who for perfectly good reasons are not working full time.

What you know about conservative and UKIP voters is that they are on average older, and in the case of UKIP, less well educated than the population as a whole. I believe (though I haven't checked and am prepared to be told otherwise) that men are also overrepresented in the conservative and UKIP voting group.

For all these reasons, I would think MN as a population is very likely to lean left of the UK as a whole.

The tory voters I know (admittedly not many - most of my family and friends are Labour voters) did so for 3 reasons:

1. The tories argued convincingly that the economy is safer in their hands.

1. They didn't like Ed Miliband and were not adequately convinced that Labour represented their interests. They thought he was weak and unproven.

1. Fear of the Nicola Sturgeon syndrome - Labour's dithering around the subject did nothing to reassure many that the future of a united UK was safe in their hands. Ironic, given that Labour lost out massively to the SNP, who are now far more powerful in Parliament than they have ever been.

In terms of the political campaigns prior to the election, I think the Conservatives' repeated message that they were left with a note stating there was no more money was extremely damaging to the Labour Party.

I didn't vote Conservative and never would. But these are the main reasons I believe others chose to do so.

Torie here but I don't debate

Don't get any benefits anyways and never have. (Except single child benefit

Know lots of.folk who work.part time (like me) in my work place but are upset that they'll have to work f t to cover the.bills once their child is 18.

I think the left wing have been fairly effective across the board on social media at shutting down opposition. If people disagree with the left wing it tends to be policy etc which is debated. If people disagree with the right wing it tends to get very personal very quickly (scum, bastard, greedy, racist etc, etc, etc). And on here at least it can follow you away from the original thread and impact on your enjoyment of other parts of the site because people remain hostile on other threads. And I'm not even particularly right wing, I actually voted Lib Dem. So it's unsurprising that people are reluctant to be as vocal about their support on social media. I think that very much skewed the view pre-general election, because I know a lot of people were convinced Labour were going to win purely because SM was wall to wall support for them.

I think RL can also be similar. When you're at work, particularly in the public sector, or jobs which have links with the public sector, to admit you vote Tory would be career suicide. Which is completely and utterly wrong, your political affiliations should be irrelevant to your career (unless you're a BNP member applying for a job as an equalities officer or similar.)

Incidentally, I'm going to lose money from the tax credits cuts and I'm actually in favour of them. I do not think that the government should be subsidising companies which make massive profits to pay very low wages. I also think that life got worse under Labour for all but those at the very, very bottom and those who were quite a bit above the middle anyway. Yes they might have chucked tax credits at people like me, but the huge increases in housing costs combined with stagnating and falling wages has meant that standards of living have dropped since 1996 for the working poor. I also feel that society changed during the Labour years, the way people behaved, how they treated one another, how they took responsibility for themselves, their families and their actions; it never, ever felt like positive change. And some of that was reversed under the coalition IMO.

My viewpoint is also highly coloured by the fact I worked in the public sector during the Brown years; during that time I saw absolutely obscene jawdropping amounts of money wasted on a daily basis which provided zero benefits to either the patients or the NHS itself. I have never really trusted Labour after that. And that is also something I profited from, I was paid £32k a year to do a job that didn't really exist and basically sat in an office all day playing computer games because no matter how much I pestered there was no work for me to do.

They want people to not come from generations of people who don't work.

This.

My DMum is a teacher in a massively deprived area. She has been working there for so long that she is teaching grandchildren of children she first taught.

The children are 5/6 and the grandparents under 40.

She asked the children what they wanted to do when they grew up and none of them said work. It was mainly to have babies, get a house and play XBox. Because that is the example that has been given to them.

It's shocking that I have friends and friends of friends who struggle to afford 1 or 2 children and live in their means, when there are numerous families where I live with 4-5 children from multiple generations who do not work.

It is just storing up massive issues for the future.

If you know families with multiple generations of unemployed people...you might

Try again (stupid phone and fat fingers).

If you know families with multiple generations of unemployed people you might want to contact the Rowntree foundation - they've been looking for quite a while and couldn't find any

It's really depressing to see people trotting out the old nonsense about labour ruining the economy when that has been proven to be untrue by many economists and indeed the austerity supposedly needed has not improved things. Shows how successful the propaganda is.

Cool, will send that over to my DMum.

Although I think SS might have something to say about a 5/6 year old potentially being sent out to work

I agree Fanjo. The Conservative propaganda machine was fairly effective. The media played a huge role in this.

I'm against slagging each other, too. How will we learn why people vote Tory (or anything else) if they are just shouted down?

I (a hideous old leftie) am learning from this. I find it particularly interesting hearing from people who have switched from Labour to Tory.

I couldn't bring myself to vote Labour at either of two most recent elections, as they weren't Labour any more.

I want to thank the Tories who are sharing their views, it's interesting, and as many have said, there's not much incentive.

Well put it this way. Not me. I don't get off on the poor becoming poorer

Comments like these, put people of posting. Bullying, patronising, personal shit. 'Everyone Hates a Tory', according to my Facebook updates - and MN is no different.

I voted Conservative at the last election, as did DH.

The main reason is that it was truly a two horse race and I couldn't possibly have voted for Ed Miliband to run the country. Now with Jeremy Corbyn at the helm the chances of me voting Labour any time in the near future are pretty much nil.

I am also a regular MNer - is that not allowed then?

I agree with much of the above. I'm centre left in my own views, but as far as social media is concerned I'm a raging rich selfish right wing scumbag.

I'm Scottish, and I voted for our one lonely labour MP. But I don't discuss my vote publicly or on SM because in Scotland nownow, the labour party are hated for being so right wing.

You couldn't make it up.

Err we've moved on Cone. That comment was made in the olden days. Well a few hours ago at least, so not quite the olden days

It's really hard not to feel people are stupid if they just trot out lines from the right wing media to explain why they voted Tory though. "Generations on benefits squandering my hard earned taxes " etc

Jaxsbum Mon 19-Oct-15 12:18:46
`~"I believe the Tories actually want to help poor people'
interesting, how? how are they helping disabled people? (not rowing, just interested)

still interested

I voted Conservative, and I did so proudly. There are far too many on the left who spit such hatred at the Tories that it starts to undermine their case. I do not know why it's acceptable to abuse Tories here (and elsewhere) in a way that if it was any other group save perhaps the Nazis it would be despicable.

Us Tories are the quiet plodders. We pop up from time to time on the odd forum, or on twitter, but we're soon driven underground again when we realise that there's no rational or reasoned debate to be had. When that happens, you lot are left preaching to a church of the converted, with nobody to challenge your assumptions...... anyone calling the election based solely on social media, would have predicted a labour landslide. Meanwhile, out in the real world, the Tories were winning the argument.

I wouldn't vote Conservative but DH did. My Facebook was full of people saying that Tory voters are cunts etc, so it seemed as though the whole world was full of Left wingers. Most Conservatives I know are far less prolific on social media than Labour voters - maybe that's why the disparity here.

DH would say that is because most Conservative voters are actually at work. Ha.

He voted Conservative because he believes Labour fucked up the economy.

He believes they have stolen our children's future by getting into huge national debt. He loathes Ed Balls.

He thinks Labour did absolutely nothing for the working people except force a reliance on benefits. He thinks they did nothing for the very poorest people - no opportunities etc. except give them benefits.

He wants us to be able to put more money by for our own kids and we can't (high tax). He has a dread of being poor (again) and would also like to save against that. He thinks Labour reward incompetence and laziness, screwing the system, and do nothing to support hard-work.

He is pro-immigration and Europe.

He hates the wealthy labour elite with their hypocrisy, their two homes and their comfortable lives.

Clearly he is not alone.

Don't believe a word of that, Squadgoal.

The older I get, the more I conclude that the media and maintream politicians are all lying to us most of the time. There is loads of spin and propoganda on all sides.

ghost/lighthouse/etc err, thanks for the heads up