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 ?

Voting for someone on the basis of their ability to empathise over a problem rather than their ability to solve a problem is bizarre to me.

Bang on target Lurked!

That Joseph Rowntree report is ridiculous. 1% of 100% is actually a lot of people when you look at the population as a whole. They're also going to be quite a disproportionate burden to the rest because there will be more of them not working compared to the 17% where one generation works. They have also skewed the figures to say what they want. To get outside the 1% of workless 2 gen families you just need to have one person in one generation who works. So you could have 3 grandparents and the parents all on benefits, but because one granddad works they would ignore the fact that the rest of the family had passed on that culture of worklessness.

Plus, if you look at the figures for who has worked ever (as someone said earlier that is skewed because it could be for a week 20 years ago), the entire family needs to have been out of work forever to get into the top 9%. If just one family member worked for a week or two at some point during the timescales given the entire family moves down to the lower category. It does not give an accurate representation of the facts and seems very much to have been constructed to suit JRFs agenda.

Agree that many Tories keep their heads down in debates, as they don't want to attract the vitriol, as did many of the 'No to Independence' voters in Scotland. The Yes camp thought they were winning beforehand, as their supporters were more vocal. The 'No' voters probably wanted to avoid getting their windows egged so kept quiet and didn't hang out their banners.

Shock Report Shows Benefit Bashing Unjustified, Says Anti-Benefit-Bashing Charity

I know people who voted Tory reasons varied

One voted because she couldn't bring herself to support ED Balls as her local MP anymore and conservative was the only real vote to get him. Her neighbours felt the same.

One is ex army and won't support labour until they stop peddling be Tony Blair out. He feels he is a war criminal and thinks any party that gets happy because Tony is supporting the candidates really need to look at themseleves.

One didn't trust labour or Ed Miliband since he didn't have any real plans on how he was carrying them out. Then the whole will he/won't he, in regards to a working with the SNP, made him look weak and like he didn't know what he was doing. The stone carving was the nail in the coffin. He also felt that labour would only do something similar to Tory when it came down to it. He didn't trust them.

Others were a mixture of the second and third.

Personally I wouldn't come on threads here to defend a Tory vote. After election I was appalled at some of the threads here. Lots of Tory voters were posting their personal reasons and were met with vitriol and people not wanting to listen.

That's why there is little debate.

I don't mind saying I voted conservative. I'm not a lifelong supporter but wanted to get a strong confident economy back and there was no way that would have happened with Labour. I'm also ex mil and I hate the fact that labour dragged us into two major conflicts. I will never vote for them again.

I run a business now and because of a stable conservative government confidence is on the up and business opportunities are increasing. This will enable me to start hiring more people soon. Job creation is a much better long term plan than life on benefits.

Btw I don't eat babies or worship Satan. I do regularly donate to food banks and support social charities.

I don't understand how you got wtc on £43 k income. We were. Less than that?
But then I've never claimed ... we used to get the £40 whatever it was even when dd was In childcare

Agree that Labour didn't cause the 2008 financial crisis, they did, however, pursue policies that meant we were much harder hit than other countries, the lack of honesty about that suggests that a) Labour leadership doesn't get that, so they can't be trusted not to make the same mistake again, or b) they do understand, but don't respect the British electorate enough to apologise for their mistakes.

A lot of the cuts aren't about needing to save money, but change how the british tax and benefits system works. I don't like Working Tax Credits as an idea, it strikes me as a very "New Labour" policy, about increasing the range of people dependent on the state, very much about the government deciding what your labour is worth and what you should live off, rather than putting pressure on employers to pay better wages. It's patronising the electorate, creating a dependancy on the state, while also sucking up to big businesses - not pressurising them to pay higher wages to fix the problem of low paid work.

othe I don't think Tories are sadistic. Poor hating - well they certainly talk the talk on the national stage. Maybe they don't actually personally think poor people should be hated...but that is what they have deliberately caused to happen in the general population with the skivers rhetoric.

'Rich' and 'Selfish'....well most Tory MPs are genuinely rich. Many of them on inherited wealth (rather than earned - for whatever difference that makes). Given they are still all personally rich after 5 years of a struggling economy and battling the deficit, I guess they are also selfish. Not outstandingly so - most humans are the same, but it is still selfish to maintain your own inherited personal wealth while others disappear below the poverty line.

I think for me the clincher is the foodbank data. Whatever it is the Tories are actually trying to achieve (it is kind of impossible to tell from this side of the impenetrable bullshit screen (note: other political parties also guilty of impenetrable bullshit screens)), the net result is a huge increase in the number of people unable to feed themselves and their families without queuing for donated food.

I would imagine we would all agree that it would be better if the number of people using foodbanks was going down rather than up?

So if nothing else they don't care enough about the poor to stop that number rising. Not sure that equates to hating someone though.

My problem is I don't believe you should get money for doing nothing. However I've been on benefits and I've also had a couple of 16 hour jobs before working my way up the ladder.

Labour didn't create the underclass the closing of the mines and the factorys did. Labour stopped them starving.

Unfortunately it created a breed of people who are quite happy to live off of benefits their whole life. Even though I am a labour supporter and a party member I'm quite happy that the age of income support dropped.

But I'm not stupid, people getting out of paying the correct amount of tax and fiddling the system take far more then the few permanently jobless.

It also really annoys me that the tory voters shut down any discussion by saying labour ruined the economy. No the whole world's economy crashed and we did pretty well out of it.

It would be great to have a thread full of discussion and facts instead of daily mail headlines and insults.

Gordon Brown ran a budget surplus during the first four years. Two of those years they followed Major's Conservative spending plans. As spending would go up gradually rather than in one fell swoop, you would expect it to remain a surplus for a couple of years after too.

Oh but didn't vote Tory. Just wouldn't vote Labour at the last election and won't at the next with Corbyn, I accept that means a Tory government and with a realistic choice between Labour and Tory, I'd rather Tory this time round and probably next time I will vote Tory if Labour still has Corbyn as leader - while I don't like the man, I'd feel safer with Osborne as PM than Corbyn.

And everyone saying MN is left leaning, from memory the last MN census had it fairly evenly split. One side is just a lot more vocal!

Icebeing - so you are basing your conclusions on your observations about Tory MPs? What about Tory voters? Is it your observation that they are also rich and selfish?

I suppose I'm always a bit at the stereotypes about Tories as I live in an area that is both staunchly Tory and also pretty working class.

The real problem is the lack of future proofing in current rhetoric.

Slashing green tax on energy bills....well okay but in reality the planet will eventually go to hell - sooner if we keep spending energy like it is limitless when it patently isn't.

Everyone should be gainfully employed....well okay, but doing what? Selling tat on ebay? pyramid selling tat on facebook? eking a bit of money out of being link 24 in a 35 link chain that produces horsemeat lasagne? Phoning people up to tell them about government schemes and selling on their details? There are 7 billion people on the planet and it doesn't take all of them working to keep things ticking over. Nowhere near in fact. And again, we will eventually run out of people to sell tat too...or natural resources to make the tat out of...we will eventually have robots doing almost everything humans currently do because they are more efficient and cost effective..so what are we going to do about our inbuilt 'people only have value if they are earning' rhetoric then?

An economic strategy dependent on continual growth is doomed to fail...physics/maths/common sense says so.

Does the government realise that and they just can't say anything coz the politics is bad? Or do they not even get it?

othe I said all along that I don't have a problem with Tory voters. I don't know any and wouldn't presume to judge. Well there was that woman on any questions. But she seemed pissed with the party she voted in.

So the general gist is: Tory Mps are rich and selfish - unlike Labour MPs (two kitchens Ed and high flying Blair who are er not.

People who vote Conservative are stupid - the economy was fucked anyway - and they all get their facts read the Daily Mail. Unlike Labour voters who er...are very widely read and intelligent.

Malice You are quite right, I should have said anti EU not Europe.

I love Europe.

I think the really unforgivable Labour decision was not letting the banks fail properly in 2008

I'd agree with this but again it felt a symptom of labour becoming tory lite and the political elite both nu-labour and now tories protecting the financial elite.

America at least went after some justice, why were people getting bonus's when they failed, again the crap of 'we must pay these people to keep the talented in the uk' you know the ones that caused this problem...

Voting conservative can seem very right, being fiscally responsible etc, but then when I read about all the conservative tax breaks,(receipts

How odd not to know any Tory voters Icebeing

Do you live a very sheltered existence?

People who vote Conservative are stupid - the economy was fucked anyway - and they all get their facts read the Daily Mail.

Not ALL people who voted Conservative. But quite a few IMO.

There is very much a left wing rhetoric at the moment that the only way to help poor people is by the state giving them money. They seem to have all but abandoned original Labour principles about people being paid a fair wage for their labour and having decent affordable housing.

Personally I saw that creation of a culture of dependency having an incredibly destructive effect on society. And the situation where many people on benefits were a lot better off than workers, especially when housing costs were taken into account, was unforgivable for a Labour government.

Absolutley correct. Capitalism demanded that the banks fail. You, could have protected certain deposits.... Instead, they chickened out.

You're welcome exit

There was quite a lot of vitriol from both sides during the election on here.

However the Tories seem to delight in ..then and on this thread..getting in there first saying that Labour voters are saying they eat babies and drown kittens etc. .even though no one is actually saying that.

When results were announced there were indeed people..often upset because they were going to financially suffer under the stories. .who said harsh and reprehensible things about Tory voters.

But there was also a large contingent of Tory voters who were smug and gloaty to these people.

The "poor hard done by" MN Tories rhetoric really irks me.