To think that some left-wing supporters are just so NASTY

[cathf]

This is based on posts I have read on here and a couple of very vocal left-wing friends I have on facebook.
I have truly never read a Conservative supporter personally attacking Labour in the same way.
I find it astonishing and if I am honest, a bit childish.
Recent examples include a website pulling Teresa May's living room apart and costing out every single thing in it, to a chorus of comments along the lines of how can she sleep at night when children are hungry and she has a £25 candle.
Every time the subject is raised on here, there is a long thread of hysterical comments about how nasty the Tories are. Yes, Tory supporters state their case and answer back, but they seem to be able to do it in a more restrained, mature manner than outraged Labour screamers.
There seems to be a lot of personal bile aimed at Teresa May, which I am at a loss to understand - just what has she done that is so terrible?
She is pushing through Brexit, but that was what the country voted for. Is she supposed to go against the country's wishes?
All of Labour's policies look very lovely, but none have any substance at all. My friend recently stated on Facebook she was supporting Jeremy Corbyn because he wanted peace not war. And? How is he going to implement that then? It reminds me of the 1980s T-shirts stating War is Stupid. Lots of nice words, but to implementation strategies.
It amazes me that supposedly intelligent people seem to be so brainwashed by this nonsense and think that flinging mud is an appopriate way to behave.
Is it just me?

Really? My social media is littered with odious views about immigrants, muslims, 'gypos' and women. I have to keep blocking everything. But I'm not a teenager, that said.

We haven't really had a figurehead of real public division since Thatcher's day, have we? I felt people knew how they voted and what they thought more clearly then. But perhaps life was less complex too.

Of course the press plays a part in what we choose to believe but there are many factors

We will also want a different type of leader at different times. Blair was the opposite to Major, young charismatic in touch with his voters and the person to lead the country out of economic depression (things had started to change for the better before he became leader) he made Major look old and out of touch. I think now the Tories are on to a winner partly becuase of the leader they have chosen May isn't warm or charismatic but comes across as dependable, no fuss gets on with work and doesn't have much time to flatter her voters as she is getting on with sorting out her back benchers business where as Corbyn is wanting to be in touch with his supporters getting out there and talking with them

I think at times the peoplws person approach works well with voters but right now with Brexit it is the head down gets on with it approach that will appeal more

Socialism is fine in smaller societies, but it simply doesn't scale well. In every larger country where it has been tried it has failed spectacularly. I'd love it if that wasn't the case but I'm afraid I have to live in the real world. Whilst all the Tory cuts are regrettable they are in response to the prior few decades of plenty being wasted under Blair/Brown.

After being a lifelong lib dem voter I'm going to vote Tory, and start volunteering at a food bank or something once a week. I've come around to the conclusion I can't delegate my social care responsibilities to a government by way of voting. They will mismanage and cock it up.

There are many social problems in this country and people need a safety net and I think we need to start being that safety net for one another.

"I am in favour of the assessments not being done by the individuals own GPS but I do feel a doctor or nurse should be the ones carrying out the assessments."

So how come GPs can be trusted with their own budgets but not with disability assessments.

Pensioners on DLA who turned 65 after 2013 are now part of the DLA to PIP transfer.

Yes sorry Rufus that's a fair point. I think people choose the paper that supports their views. I don't think the press set the agenda though I think that respond to public opinions.

enthusiam I totally agree with your assessment of May and that certain times work best for different leadership styles.

On Question Time a few years ago the owner of Next was moaning about ppl receiving disability benefits. Not one panel or audience member asked him what his policies were on employing disabled people. Which is what the obvious next question should have been. Unless someone did ask and it didnt make the final cut.

Now ive read loads of threads on here about how Next retail workers have to be in til midnight on Christmas Eve and back in at 3 to 5 am on Boxing Day.

Its hard enough to get a taxi in those hours from some areas let alone an accessible one.

You see a lot of hypocrites who moan about disabled people claiming but then have a real NIMBY attitude when it comes to offering them employment.

The Tories wont change this hypocrisy any time soon. Especially as they have now agreed that women should risk damaging their feet to please their employer by wearing high heels.

If they wont make a change to something as simple as that then they certainly wont be tackling disability hypocrisy and discrimination some of which is dished out by their mates who own some of the companies.

After being a lifelong lib dem voter I'm going to vote Tory, and start volunteering at a food bank or something once a week.
Maybe you should volunteer more frequently, as wealth inequality and the need for food banks has got progressively worse since the Tories have been in power

Net migration to the UK stands at 273,000 in the year ending Sept 2016. The years before that were significantly higher.

Even if Corbyn builds his 1m homes it won't cover the net migration we've had to date or the forthcoming migration. We would still be in a housing crisis. And given it's likely net migration would increase significantly under Corbyn it probably wouldn't even cover the forthcoming migration let alone ease the crisis with any sort of significance.

Dervel I think you make an interesting point about making an effort to volunteer and that we all should take some responsibility (where we can) and not just leave it up to governments and local authorities to deal with but that doesn't excuse cutbacks (though I would support changes in how the social care system is run there is a ridiculous amount of paper pushers in my experience)

I too have seen lots of virtual signaling on FB and social media I guess it depends where you look. Lots of Tories are Bastards anyone who voted form them is a selfish bastard type of thing (I switch off then) and lots of uproar about cuts which I support but there seems to be a lot of effort in shouting about it and not much in actual doing something to help people

Of course the issue then is the reliance on volunteers but we really all should try and do something if we are in a position to rather than just inform others of our outrage online or at a march

There's also a lot of bellowing on the internet from refugees from the 1980s (takes one to know one!). Lots of talk of "Thatcher" and "Tory Scum". Some people just long for a return of miners' strikes and the chance to wear a donkey jacket.

Some volunteering will require CRB checks.

So who pays?

DBS check for volunteers is free the admin cost is (or should be) covered by who you are volunteering for

DBS needed for workers some are paid for others are not you pay yourself

Well, to be fair Helena, I do volunteer work and the charity has always paid for CRB checks. Although I know that's not really what you were asking.

Batgirlspants The Murdoch press supported Tony Blair. If you have the support of the press you are presented in a more favourable way which can effect how the electorate see you.

Look at Ed Milliband and how they only ever seemed to show photos of him eating and looking a bit silly. Do you think there were no similar pictures of Cameron? How many of them did we see?

Lilyoftheforest I can't forgive and forget what the Lib dems did with the uni fees

The Lib Dems didn't do that, the coalition government, of which the Lib Dems were a junior member, did it. And they did restrain the Tories somewhat in other ways, they should get some credit for that.

If the public purse is out of money we can't pay for things. It's a flat out choice between raising taxes or borrowing more to condem future generations to mountains of debt. I sympathise with anyone who subscribes to either choice it's a bugger isn't it?

The suggestion I should volunteer more is a valid one. For the guilty party in all of this is me or at least it's whomever is staring out of the mirror at any given time. We actually elect people to do impossible things, but in reality they are just there as a receptical for all our collective angst, disappointment and rage that we purge ourselves of periodically every few election cycles so all the countries problems can be neatly expunged from our own doorsteps.

The more successful of politicians manage to deflect the blame away from themselves and onto third parties like the rich (if you like the left), or immigrants (if you like the right). The one thing they have in common is that it's never their fault, and actually they also have that in common with the electorate (us), so yeah I think we have a political system that's pretty representative of all of us at the end of the day.

If the public purse is out of money we can't pay for things.

Trident Renewal - £250 Billion
HS2 - £42.6 Billion
Tax Evasion - £85 Billion
Tax Avoidence - £19 Billion

Oh look I found some money

Volunteering is all fine and dandy if ppl have the time but many dont. A lot of ppl spend time commuting to and from work as well as caring for their children and elderly relatives.

They are called the sandwich generation. And now people should volunteer on top of that as well?!

Ah 76% with Lab , 63% with Libdem and 41% with Cons after doing that test , no real suprise there then , I have always been left leaning or as DH calls me a wet liberal

It's not as straightforward as that at all, JustAnother. I can quite see, despite my distaste for nuclear weapons, why we cannot pretend they don't exist and uninvent them, especially in uncertain times.

HS2 - May is backing down on according to the papers. Plus, Labour supported it too in the last election. What do I think? I don't know. I think public transport outside of London is atrocious mind.

Tax evasion and tax avoidance - if it was easy to identify and easy to pin down, governments would do it. Governments have to be realistic about what they can do.

if it was easy to identify and easy to pin down, governments would do it. Governments have to be realistic about what they can do.

Well the tories chose to employ more benefit fraud investigators and layed-off hmrc employees so guess they chose their priority and I dont doubt some of their nearest and dearest benefit quite well from the current arrangements, lets not forget our last prime minister and the panama papers

@dervel

Socialism is fine in smaller societies, but it simply doesn't scale well. In every larger country where it has been tried it has failed spectacularly. I'd love it if that wasn't the case but I'm afraid I have to live in the real world. Whilst all the Tory cuts are regrettable they are in response to the prior few decades of plenty being wasted under Blair/Brown.

Very good point. Never thought of it like that actually. Even though the cuts were harsh and cruel, the Tories were only putting right what Labour had done. It never was a good idea to be giving multiple 10s of 1000s to people to stay on benefits. And the more they got, the more it encouraged people to stay on benefits.

Also,

@mireme

The Lib Dems didn't do that, (triple uni fees,) the coalition government, of which the Lib Dems were a junior member, did it. And they did restrain the Tories somewhat in other ways, they should get some credit for that.

Good point I guess. It's just I hoped that the fees would be abolished, and they ended up being tripled, so I kind of did blame the Lib dems for it.

Re Corbyn and his 1 million (social housing) houses. That's all well and good, but if he lets the world and his wife into the UK, there won't be any more homes for the natives IYSWIM.

The nastiest people I see on internet forums are the far right. Luckily there are not many but they are very vociferous and egg each other on. When thrown out they come back with new names.

Some of them are just Daily Mail neofascists, but they cluster round the anti-foreigner, anti-black, anti-brown, anti-Islam, anti-immigrant and anti-Europe tendencies. Some are also openly anti-Semitic but thankfully that seems to have got less popular among them.

There's a number of issues with relying on volunteers.

It's quite hard to find good, reliable volunteers who are willing to do what are quite often boring jobs.

People who are working can only volunteer outside of their working hours. This might not be when a charity needs them.

As with fund raising, charities with causes that are unpopular will lose out no matter how worthwhile their work - this is also a problem with reducing the responsibilities of the state.

www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/25/food-banks-report-record-demand-amid-universal-credit-chaos?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter