To ask why you think the Tory party are nasty / evil?

[MellowBird85]

This is not a loaded question, I am genuinely interested to hear why some people are of this opinion. Fire away...

Just checked, Childcare reform Minister was Liz Truss

My parents, who are wonderful, kind people are Tories (albeit who gave recently given up their membership and volunteering after decades) so I don't take the line that 'all Tories are evil scum'. But yes, a lot of their policies are genuinely cruel and not even helpful to economy/ society with it. Setting up a benefits system on the basis that everyone who wants help is a liar who doesn't want to work has quite literally killed people. I'd rather 'my taxes' paid towards a handful of such 'scroungers' and helped more people who need it and no one in genuine need died than the current bullshit.

Plainly and simply because they lie to get votes.
And are now promising to spend money on NHS and Education.Yeah course they will...

@Miaowing I believe most benefits (excluding pensions) go to people IN work. So neither workshy or feckless.

They are not terms I’d use - selfish, now that’s befitting of the party generally.

Some of these personal stories of how austerity has affected people is making me cry.

I've never had a conversation about eg the welfare state with a Tory voter that didn't hinge on them not wanting their hard-earned taxes to be spent on propping up some workshop waster's lazy arse lifestyle.

There's never any attempt to understand the root causes of poverty of aspiration, they do not care about numbers (as in: there are fewer of those than people trying to work hard), they don't see any link between poverty and inequality - there's just such a paucity of understanding that you can't help but hate the Tory part of them.

I am sure some are pleasant enough people but if you can't see beyond your own prejudices then that is unfortunately a contributor to evil that is done in your name, even if you don't consider yourself to be evil.

I * workshy (fucken autocorrect)

Because they're essentially selfish, pursuing tax cuts for the rich at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

Personally, I'd like to keep the standard of living I have and not have it decimated to support the workshy and feckless.

Why aren't you more angry about it being decimated to support corporations like Amazon to pay 0% tax in this country?

But that doesn’t necessarily mean throwing money at the issue.

We don't. We have 0.46% of the population homeless, that is a very high proportion compared to other countries- USA 0.17% , France 0.21%, Holland 0.11% etc. In the UK 123,130 children were in temporary accommodation in the first quarter of 2018 – an increase of nearly 80% since 2011.
All they seem to want to do is roll back the welfare state, there seems no thought as to consequences.

I don't think the Tory party are nasty/evil.

Miaowing did you read Shartgoblin's post about her father. There are stories like that all over the place. I think you've fallen for the rhetoric.

Also £200k income is rich. We have a household income of $40K and we can afford things that we want without worrying. Admittedly we don't live in London which does change things.

All of the above, plus Gove's "people are tired of listening to experts" line.

Every descent into fascism has involved whipping up distrust and suspicion of knowledge and education. It's one of the of the most chilling moments of the whole Brexit farce for me.

Of course they're not evil. I think corbyn has a far more dangerous evil streak in him with his ideas

They ARE evil, though. Not in a witch-and-goblic senseof someone who radiates badness out of every pore, but in the banal sense that Arendt was talking about. The ordinary, everyday meaning of evil.

When they announced austerity measures they promised that those with the broadest shoulders would bear the burden. Their actions proved to be the exact opposite - many examples in this thread.

They are 100% dedicated to party over country, which is the reason we are currently in the current humiliating, immensely costly mess.

Whether they meet the definition of 'evil' is neither here nor there, as a party they are wholly unconcerned with the welfare of the vast majority of the country and they see themselves as our rulers rather than our servants.

@Miaowing
Those dreadful work shy and feckless people form a small part of the system you grudgingly contribute to as a not wealthy just extremely comfortably off person. So, like so many Con (and Brexit) voters you make important life changing decisions like voting based on ill informed prejudice.

The Conservative Party see people like you coming.
They certainly wouldn’t agree with the latter part of your self assessment.

I am certain that they are however happy to receive your support laced with the usual contempt for comfortably off folk. It’s voters like you that have enabled them to become the Party of inexorably lazy, mean charlatans.

All you need to know about Tories is in this diagram.

Can anyone answer the question it poses, and then explain how it relates to Tory policy since 2010 ?

Please.

(Notice how you could dish out the "Unclaimed benefits" 10 times over , and still have enough left over to negate benefit fraud).

If anyone wants to argue the numbers, take it up with the government. It's their own statistics.

I don't think terms such as evil are helpful at all and the extreme types of rhetoric being used currently are no good for anyone. However, they are one of the parties (and others are doing it too) who are fuelling the more extreme speech being use3d.

As a party, the tories have a history (and current practice) of helping to support the better off whilst ignoring the needs, and in some cases worsening life, for the less fortunate. To name a few of the top of my head:

They have vilified and demonised disabled people, pushing a narrative of all people with disabilities of being workshy and scroungers.

Put policies in place which disproportionally affect disabled people.

Policies such as the bedroom tax, which was bought in despite there not being enough smaller properties for people to move into.

Sanctions to benefits to an extent people have died due to them. Sanctions which are too harsh to allow for a continued standard of living.

Expecting the poorest in society to wait 5 weeks for benefit claims.

Freezing the incomes of the state dependant people whilst giving tax breaks to those who are well off.

Blaming economic crash on the poorest when in fact its roots were well developed amoungst the richest institutions across the glove.

Annihilation of social care and SEND budgets.

Assessment scheme which deems people fit for work, when those people have been weeks away from death.

In summary, the tories are too focussed on ensuring their backers keep backing them while that those with less power and a smaller voice get trampled on and blamed for all of the countries problems. This leaves a horrid taste in a lot of peoples mouths and feeds resentment towards the party.

Section 28.

I am not 13 years old, so my voting preferences would never be swayed by me thinking someone / some party was "nasty" and "evil".

I don't vote Tory, because I disagree with their traditional ideology, which aims to reduce the size and influence of the state on the general population. I disagree with the promotion of free market capitalism and lower taxation, less state 'involvement' (which unfortunately sometimes translates as less help from the state, even for those who desperately need it).

I think this means that the most vulnerable in society then get left behind, which is something I do not like.

Aside from that, although Tory voters have their reasons for voting that way and I'm sure it is well researched and what they believe is best, either for themselves, the country or both. But, I also dislike the way some Tory MPs appear to pander to voters' less pleasant sides. It makes me not want to be lumped in with that element of society and pushes me even further from ever considering voting for them.

But surely we can all agree that something needed to change

Not in the way you mean. The man you've described was a killer so obviously it's hard to have sympathy for him but most alcoholics do have my sympathy. It's a dreadful, distructive addiction as are other addictions. Austerity hasn't helped the situation. In fact there are more alcohol related deaths now than ever before.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/news/health/alcohol-deaths-dependence-addiction-liver-disease-austerity-nhs-digital-record-a8764671.html%3famp

I want to live in a society where money is spent on the NHS and on rehabilitation programmes that actually help these people get out of the addiction trap. I want to live in a society where it pays more to work because wages are higher not because benefits are low. Yes you say you earned less than him but doesn't that mean you deserved a pay rise? Do you honestly think taking money off him and making his life desperate would have made things better?

We need to invest in our public services, NHS, care and education so that people who need help can get it. Austerity has crippled these services and has completely disproportionately affected the poor and working class. Remember the Tories also cut tax for the richest and haven't done nearly enough to sort out the tax dodgers like Amazon. They seem genuinely to believe that hard work can get you out of poverty yet have overseen a massive rise in in-"work poverty. Their employment statistics are a lie because they count people who work very few hours a week and not through choice so they seem far better than they actually are. There's also a huge rise in zero hours contracts and use of foodbanks.

It's naive to think that austerity was necessary, that's what they tell us but there are other financial models that would have worked. Remember it was a GLOBAL financial crisis but the Tories chose to address it by taking loads of money and services from the vulnerable and poor while their lives remained much the same. They've managed to brainwash many into thinking "we are all in this together" but actually what sacrifice would you say Boris Johnson has made in the last few years?Austerity has caused deaths and suffering and it never should have been an option no decent goverment would have gone as far as they have. Even the UN agree.

I think many of the current crop are selfish and self serving and it follows that people who look at that and think “yes please” are the same. Particularly baby boomers who aside from a few months of high mortgage rates have had the cushiest ride possible due to nothing more than luck and timing but are happy to pull the ladder up behind them to stop others having similar advantages, whilst berating those as lazy and feckless. I’m so glad my parents aren’t like that.

They are not evil.

But at root of a lot of their policies and approach is that everyone should be assisted towards to aim of looking after themselves so that state support isn’t required.

I don’t believe that this utopia exists, and think that the more fortunate of us should be paying more tax to support people who need it.