Personally I struggle to understand it.
The very few people I know who do seem to THINK when the DM/Tory FB page (yep they're on that) is talking disparagingly about
Lp
Unemployed
Benefits claimants (inc disability benefits)
That the tories 'don't mean me and mine' except they DO mean the very people I know who vote Tory who ARE - a mix of Lp, traditional and blended families, unemployed due to ill health/disability, in receipt of the benefits for these situations and even those who are working are not paid well enough and so in receipt of tax credits and child benefit, have had their pension age increased etc etc
True cognitive dissonance/hypocrisy/denial going on.
Even when I've directly challenged them as I'm a Tory nightmare (Lp, long term unemployed, long term benefits disability recipient)
Even harder for me to reconcile as these people I've known them a LONG time, they are lovely, caring people who raise money for excellent charities regularly (while somehow not seeing the very charities they support mainly NEED that support due to Tory policy), would help anyone they know personally.
"No viable alternative" while you use that as an excuse it's a self fulfilling prophecy to a degree as its giving the right more power that they don't deserve.
Personally I think
A Voting should be compulsory
B There should be a 'none of the above' option.
'The last labour govt were also shit' in my and many other people's opinion they weren't a true labour govt they were Tory lite.
'Tories good for economy - labour bad' - has been proven not to be true.
While I personally like Corbyn and the effect he's had in returning labour closer to its roots, I don't think he's electable. That said I'm completely bewildered May got in! I may not have liked Cameron, Thatcher and similar and MAJORLY disagreed with their policies. They did at least have strong personalities and a clear ideology - I don't see that in May, can't respect her because I have NO idea what she really stands for because she seems to 'play defence' constantly fending off threats to her leadership rather than ACTUALLY LEADING!
The anti-Semite thing - I hate bigotry BUT who is daft enough to believe the tories aren't bigots/racist? Or is it only not ok to be bigoted against a mainly white ethnic group? There was a recent issue on their FB page with an islamophobic post/comments - funny how it didn't make the news eh?
"as there are people out there who brand any criticism of Israel as antisemitic - I've seen this myself." True I've also come across this.
Trans issues - EVERY political party are being shit on this.
Misogyny - all as bad as each other, May being the leader doesn't fool all of us.
Various comments on individual politicians - yea cos Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt, Esther Mcvey and the rest of the current cabinet are doing a STELLAR fucking job! Not!
Lostincake - I do genuinely believe they're trying to crush the nhs to make it seem unworkable in order to bring in private healthcare. It's not that they COULDN'T run it and support it better, they CHOOSE not to, ditto housing - many Tory donors are property developers, it's directly in their interests to keep housing prices high.
This is why I think donations from private companies shouldn't be allowed. Would be a VERY interesting experiment to see who'd win an election if they could only use party funds raised by personal membership.
"and i vote tory as i agree with them." On everything?!
"What is wrong with conservative polictics?" Nhs being crushed, child poverty, disabled poverty, homelessness, food banks, cuts to emergency services...
BMW6 I've been voting 28 years, am I allowed an opinion on the orchestrated demise of the nhs taking place? I don't ONLY watch the news I also get information from various other sources, the news is extremely biased. Heard of the Naylor review?
"hopefully reformed and streamlined" - I'm guessing you live at least in a suburb if not an urban area. Because 'streamlining' is seriously detrimental to those of us in rural and remote areas!
"Because the leader of labour is a terrorist supporter" do you REALLY believe this? Even though we now know that thatcher and her cabinet members and other Tory MP's since were ALSO were willing to sit down and talk, and compromise with members of terrorist organisations? Even though doing this, distasteful though it may be, even counterintuitive, is what's led to peace in NI?
"Because Abbott is racist?" And Boris Johnson (for example) isn't?
"If that's fixing the economy, I despair for our future." Quite!
"Universal credit is way more of a joke than tax credits ever was" except it's FAR from funny because its directly and frighteningly efficiently killing off the poor, sick and disabled.
Carol decker -
Charges for prescriptions, opticians and dentistry on the nhs were introduced in 1952...by Churchill - Tory
"British politics is messed up but so are a lot of other countries." True could be much worse! Even in supposed democracies - trump putting kids in cages, anyone want that here?
Motherofdragons - I agree with eightfaces he'd have had more than a 'few thousand' I'm old enough to remember thatcher, blairism and so on and been in a position through either my own circumstances or others to know roughly how much savings affects benefits, even under thatcher it was a significant amount.
Currently you get jsa with savings up to £16k I'd be very surprised if it were much different in the 80's.
"they had £8k in the account." As we thought - that's more than 'a few' - adjusted for inflation that's equal to £23k now!
As an aside - I've spent past half hour TRYING to find out what the means testing parameters were back then - to no avail - using various search terms, WHY is this info not easier to find? (If anyone has links/is clearly better at finding this info I'd love to see). This information SHOULD be easily and clearly available to the public.
"I would certainly vote Tory. Socialism is all about giving big chunks of my hard earned money and giving it to other people whether they deserve it or not. I want to keep that to a minimum
This post sums it up. Individualism. Not wanting to help the vulnerable, classing people as deserving or not." Couldn't agree more.
Also thinking 'it' will never happen to them - 'it' being redundancy, sickness, bereavement, a sick or disabled child or spouse, a life altering accident...
Wow!
"Because if the alternative is a racist Natzi supporter I’ll stick with the torys." And "letting fair to many people come and live here, crippling the free services like the NHS" do you SERIOUSLY not see the contradiction in those 2 comments? The irony?
"The benefits system is a joke people allowed to not work and do nothing and earn hundreds of pounds tax payers money etc." Jesus! You ever ACTUALLY have any REAL EXPERIENCE of the benefits system?
"but for those being too lazy to work then why should they get benefits (as opposed to help into employment)." - see above paragraph. Also 'help into employment' can only work if the jobs are there. This govt has done NOTHING for job creation.
IslaBoots - you too. Benefits are NOT easy to get, or keep, or live on. The money IS there - it's being spent on the already rich. As for your 'when I were young' lecture - it sounds like when you were young a single adult wage was enough to support the average family, there WERE more jobs, housing prices in comparison to wages were MUCH lower - if the men in these families became sick or disabled or died the family were screwed! I'm guessing you're talking 60's? My parents hit working age then. They left school on Friday walked into a not bad paid job on the Monday, my dad was in the army and is now retired he's not had ANY experience of the labour market SINCE the 60's, he talks like you do. My mum who only retired a few years ago and was repeatedly needing to apply for jobs as a trailing spouse throughout 60's/70's/80's/90's/00's/10's rolls her eyes at him when he starts cos he's clueless! When my sister was job hunting a few years back we had an interesting conversation with him where we SHOWED him the jobs available in the near vicinity, his impression that there were "loads" of jobs was proven wrong when we showed him that -
He was wrongly thinking the same job advertised in multiple places was more than 1 job.
That most of the jobs were less than 15 hours BUT were ad hoc shifts so impossible to get another job to fit round them to make up to full time hours.
Were nmw - and he wouldn't believe how low THAT was until we showed him proof!
That most of the jobs were temp, usually 3-6 months. We also had to explain to him how this fucks up your benefit money meaning you're left with no income for extended periods of time - and that's if they DON'T make any mistakes. Lots of employers where I am (don't know if this is an issue elsewhere) employ a person on a temp contract, let them go for long enough that they can re-employ them on ANOTHER temp contract at a later date so as to AVOID being held to the rights afforded to permanent employees - you know silly things like sick pay, maternity leave, annual leave, redundancy payments - so that they have the same people on their workforce over the course of a year but they're NEVER properly responsible for them. Not sure if this also benefits them in terms of NI payments too.
So you're right - things AREN'T the same as they were - in many ways they're WORSE!
"if you increase and allow benefits and a good benefit life for those who do not want to work, why would the rest of us want to work?"
The off used response to this argument is 'great - if you're so certain it's such an easy thing getting and living on benefits go ahead and quit your job and call up UC line tomorrow - come back and tell us how easy it is!'
The problem imo isn't that benefits are too high, but wages are too low! Punitive measures don't incentivise people to work, rewards do. That said the lazy dole bludger trope is largely a myth and has repeatedly been disproven.
"The Conservatives care for teh less well off better" where you getting THAT idea from? They demonise the poor.
"And better to piss money than to hold it in until teachers are forced to buy school supplies and food for their students, benefits are repeatedly cut for the most needy and elderly, food banks are increasingly popular and thus stretched, amputees and cancer patients are told they're fit for work... better to have a heart than none at all" agree, though I don't think spending on the most needy IS 'pissing it away'.
Pepper I too am DREADING being switched to UC. The waiting period purely ideological and DISGUSTING.
I'm a floating voter EXCEPT I'll never vote Tory.
"Are you deliberately taking the piss? Look at what’s happened to disabled and the poor and disadvantaged under this government." Exactly!
"She supppted the IRA while they were killing thousands of innocent people." The wilful ignorance on this issue never fails to amaze me! You are aware thatcher and her govt supported the OTHER terrorists in this conflict? Who behaved JUST as despicably? That even members of the armed forces and uk security services were involved in some pretty dodgy behaviour in NI too? In a binary debate you can't use the actions of one side to illustrate how they're wrong - when the OTHER side were doing the same!
"Yeah, fuck the disabled kids (and adults, and the poor, and under-employed and the hundreds of thousands living in poverty despite living within a working household, and the people committing suicide because of the fucking DWP) - self ID is much more important. I don’t agree with self ID (which was a Tory policy initially if you recall) but enabling this government to continue their abuse of the most vulnerable is inexcusable." Agree with this too.
"Liam Byrne's 'there's no money left' note" - seriously? You do know this was a long standing in-joke that each party did upon leaving that office?
Would be great if tax avoidance was tackled, currently I'd be happy if they even properly tackled tax evasion which they don't!
"Very few people get their political ideas from papers these days." You really think so? I don't. Older people are the most likely to vote - and the least likely to get info from anywhere but msm which is heavily biased.
"Well in Scotland, as a tactical vote against the SNP. And because people think Ruth Davidson seems pretty o.k." Erm and how did that work out for you?
"The UK would be much better off if everyone gave some thought as to how they would provide for their offspring before creating a single parent family." Really? Everyone meaning who? Single mums? I'm one. I was married for 5 years, both parents working full time, planned conception for dd. Tell me at which point up to and inc my ex cheating, getting ow pregnant and after we split refusing to pay cm - I DIDN'T give thought to if it was sensible at that time to have my dd. Should I also have predicted the arse that ran into the back of my stationary car leaving me disabled? Having the first nervous breakdown that in combination has left me terrified to leave my home?
And I refer you to my earlier comments on this post re benefits being such a fucking blessed existence - not!!
"Because some people are grownups who realise that if you want something you need to work hard and pay for it." And some people are grown ups who realise not everyone CAN work hard.
And even if they can work "the work doesn’t pay. Zero hours contracts, pay freezes" exactly!
Tammy excellent post at 1249! Puzzled - heard of David clapson? Mark wood?
www.independent.co.uk/news/health/tory-austerity-deaths-study-report-people-die-social-care-government-policy-a8057306.html
www.vice.com/en_uk/article/7ba7xe/benefit-sanctions-have-driven-people-to-suicide-110
www.theguardian.com/society/2018/may/27/rise-in-coroner-warnings-nhs-patient-deaths-tory-austerity-labour
Why even when presented with the examples you requested are you STILL denying it's true? It IS happening.
"the gentleman was deemed to have had a long history of MH problems" nice. Just blame the victims then eh? Don't accept that this means the mentally ill are MORE vulnerable and therefore require MORE support, MORE protection.
" "My children and 20 and 16. They know lots of "These people"
Anecdote and not in line with the actual data, perceptions are tainted by your prejudices." Completely agree - absolutely NO evidence of fraud, no true knowledge of 'these people's' true circumstances. Very nasty prejudiced post NOT borne out by even this govts own stats.