To despair that people still vote Tory given their track record and outright dishonesty?

[flashbac]

I don't get it. Its depressing. We deserve better than this surely? Why give them the green light? What kind of society do we want? One where liars get our approval?

[quote fiheka]@StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind no that is not true. Previous governments have not given away billions of public money to friends for little in return.
This is the lie that is being seeded that they are all the same. It is not true. Prime Ministers in the past have resigned for far less.[/quote]
Ha ha ha ha ha...

You are so naïve.

Couldn't agree more op.
Thats why I'm voting for independence.

I'm supporting Labour although the gender identity stuff is troubling. Relieving poverty, investing in the NHS, fighting back against creeping privatization etc are important. Johnson's lot have been up to some dodgy dealings and I don't think they have the well being of the people at heart.

YANBU OP. I don't get it either. I think it genuinely comes down to - not meaning to be rude but - ignorance. Not stupidity, just a genuine misunderstanding of what has been going on.
I'm friends with people with different political views, though my closest friends have similar ethics to mine.

And the ones who vote Conservative seem to -have no interest in politics, or -have a slight interest but either disbelieve that Conservative policies have hurt anyone, or that those people somehow were undeserving, or are quite open about being well off and not wanting to pay more taxes (even though they're not well off enough to actually pay very much more if they were fairly raised).

My more left-leaning or Green friends tend to be really engaged with politics. They know about all the injustices and the corruption and so on, they protest about the local library being threatened with closure, they care about recycling and they're quite knowledgeable about what's going on, even if it's in areas that don't directly affect them.

If you look at actual Conservative policy, what it's destroyed, who it's taken income away from, then anyone who either cared or knew properly about not just immediate impacts, but longer-term ones could vote that way.

I'm with you, OP. Incredulous that after the absolute incompetence and dangerous decision making of the past couple of years, Brexit and Covid, huge numbers of people STILL think this government are doing a good job.

What is it that would be so terrible - so much worse than what we have now - if Labour were elected?
Keir Starmer (or for that matter Theresa May and David Cameron too) would have included us in the lame duck pan-European vaccine procurement strategy. We wouldn't be in the strong position we are in now.

I highly doubt that the first lockdown would have come any sooner under a different PM. Remember that the medical/scientific advisors would be the same people and that they were worried that a strict lockdown might be counter-productive.

In the autumn, Starmer pushed for a "fire break" or "circuit breaker" lockdown of just two weeks. We had one of those here in Wales, it was a disaster.

@duffeldaisy

YANBU OP. I don't get it either. I think it genuinely comes down to - not meaning to be rude but - ignorance. Not stupidity, just a genuine misunderstanding of what has been going on. I'm friends with people with different political views, though my closest friends have similar ethics to mine.

And the ones who vote Conservative seem to -have no interest in politics, or -have a slight interest but either disbelieve that Conservative policies have hurt anyone, or that those people somehow were undeserving, or are quite open about being well off and not wanting to pay more taxes (even though they're not well off enough to actually pay very much more if they were fairly raised).

My more left-leaning or Green friends tend to be really engaged with politics. They know about all the injustices and the corruption and so on, they protest about the local library being threatened with closure, they care about recycling and they're quite knowledgeable about what's going on, even if it's in areas that don't directly affect them.

If you look at actual Conservative policy, what it's destroyed, who it's taken income away from, then anyone who either cared or knew properly about not just immediate impacts, but longer-term ones could vote that way.

This is so incredibly patronising, such an air of self satisfaction and superiority.

I say that as a left-leaning lifelong labour voter who hates the Tory party.

We have so many ridiculous situations in this country, like rail companies - every single rail company in the UK has a European national railway as a large shareholder. The insane costs of our privatised system are subsidising nationalised railways around Europe. It’s an embarrassment.
Not true, which European railway has shares in Caledonian Sleeper, Great Western Railway, Heathrow Express, Hull Trains, London North Eastern Railway, Northern Trains, South Western Railway, TfL Rail and TransPennine Express?

Actually, the Dutch were subsidising Scotland's railways before the pandemic.

Keir Starmer (or for that matter Theresa May and David Cameron too) would have included us in the lame duck pan-European vaccine procurement strategy. We wouldn't be in the strong position we are in now.

The EU procurement strategy was completely up to each country. Even if we had been involved, we might have been able to help to speed up the process if we were keen for the vaccines earlier, as we could have been involved in the talks on that.

I highly doubt that the first lockdown would have come any sooner under a different PM. Remember that the medical/scientific advisors would be the same people and that they were worried that a strict lockdown might be counter-productive.

The Chief Medical Officer is appointed by the government, with an external process, but the gov website says "The appointment has been made with the support of the Prime Minister". Plus meetings can be held with certain slants on what is going to happen. If Johnson had wanted to take a Jacinta Ardern approach, he could have asked the medical experts on their advice on how to go for a zero covid strategy instead. Instead of that, he didn't bother even going to the first few COBRA meetings to find out what was going on.

Labour might be disappointing, lacklustre and ineffective at the moment, but they would have been extremely unlikely to have been up for letting the virus 'sweep through' or for bodies to pile up. They would have been extremely unlikely to give vital jobs like PPE procurement or ventilator manufacture to their mates in completely unrelated fields of work. The mainstream media is predominantly against them, so they would have had way more eyes on what they were doing, too.
Probably if they'd been in, the media would have been criticising Starmer for 20,000 dead or something, unaware of how terrible this whole timeline would have been instead.

[quote babbaloushka]@DdraigGoch Great name, and I thought it was contentious with the right to freedom of speech? Anti-zionism is different from anti-semitism, and I think that's the core issue.[/quote]
Freedom of speech is not an unqualified right. If I were to go around shouting "P*** go home" I would quite rightly receive consequences.

Duffle - that is a terribly silly naive thing to say. It’s as though your view is the way to go and if people don’t agree with you they are ignorant.

No wonder Labour got stuffed in the last election and will hopefully get stuffed again in Hartlepool..

You sound like that silly bint Ash Sarkar who spouts off woke nonsense and wonders why people aren’t listening to her wonderful ideas. Are they stupid she thinks....

It might sound patronising, and it's really not meant to. But seriously - if you look at the actual facts - like how many Surestarts were closed down, a third of all libraries shut down, no pay rise for nurses and their bursaries cut.... if people who voted for all of that weren't ignorant that all that would happen then you're saying that they voted for that willingly?

I thank god Corbyn wasn’t in power when the pandemic hit. He would still be sitting on the fence wondering what to do next. Labour themselves need to hang their heads in shame for keeping Corbyn on for so long. He was a disaster and has put Labour back perhaps a generation.

Until they get another Blair who sweeps away Momentum and the woke agenda they are going to be in the wilderness.

We needed to be out of the EU to get the vaccine rollout done. Labour are a bloody mess and despite a new leader are still ballsing it up.

Having said that Starmer has a poisoned chalice but it was all self inflicted and for that they need to take full responsibility.

The EU procurement strategy was completely up to each country.
I never denied that. On the contrary, I know that (whether we were in or out at the time) Starmer/Cameron/May would have chosen to join it. Which as history has told us would have been the wrong choice to make.

They [Labour] would have been extremely unlikely to give vital jobs like PPE procurement or ventilator manufacture to their mates in completely unrelated fields of work.
In a crisis (admittedly one which was partially of the Cameron administration's making), wouldn't you just buy up as much PPE as you can on the basis that even if the odd one or two fails to deliver (or turns out to be Turkish con-artists), most will (and did) make it through? I remember several Labour MPs going "look, I've had a load of offers to make PPE who say that the government hasn't contacted them". Only it turned out that the offers included one from a law firm with no background in anything vaguely relevant (you know, like manufacturing). So they are hardly any better.

James Dyson (who is not, as some have alleged, a party donor,) makes a variety of machines which move air. In a crisis wouldn't you phone him up and ask if his firm could help out? As it turned out, he didn't charge the Treasury for machines which weren't used.

The mainstream media is predominantly against them, so they would have had way more eyes on what they were doing, too.
The media source with the most reach is the BBC. An organisation packed full of Blairites.

@Moonstone1234

I thank god Corbyn wasn’t in power when the pandemic hit. He would still be sitting on the fence wondering what to do next. Labour themselves need to hang their heads in shame for keeping Corbyn on for so long. He was a disaster and has put Labour back perhaps a generation.

Until they get another Blair who sweeps away Momentum and the woke agenda they are going to be in the wilderness.

We needed to be out of the EU to get the vaccine rollout done. Labour are a bloody mess and despite a new leader are still ballsing it up.

Having said that Starmer has a poisoned chalice but it was all self inflicted and for that they need to take full responsibility.

I'm no fan, but J C would have attended the cobra meetings early on and not given money away to his chums. You can't really say ' it would have been terrible ' as we will never know. I believe that Theresa May would have been better than Boris Johnson has been , but it's all relative isn't it? At least she didn't waste money on wallpaper and try and get others to pay for it when they discovered that 30k of taxpayers money wasn't enough money to appease his girlfriend. We are where we are regarding the pandemic. It doesn't mean that the other things that have gone on are any less important either. The tories are on course to stay in power for a long time anyway as people trust them more. Baffles me, but they do.

Well until there's another option that's what I'll do. I'd love there to be but there really isn't right now.

In very short, no, I'd phone up every manufacturer currently supplying the NHS. The same that if you have a leaking tap you look around for a plumber, not ask a friend who has some other water-based job.

BBC News, which is the part which matters on political reporting, is far more represented at the top by the right wing.

@duffeldaisy

It might sound patronising, and it's really not meant to. But seriously - if you look at the actual facts - like how many Surestarts were closed down, a third of all libraries shut down, no pay rise for nurses and their bursaries cut.... if people who voted for all of that weren't ignorant that all that would happen then you're saying that they voted for that willingly?

Maybe and here’s a thought... people are voting to stop women’s safe spaces from being obliterated. People are voting to stop men dressed in nurses outfits giving their daughters their first smear test.

They maybe voting to stop what has happened in Scotland from ever happening here. Did you hear about the Legally MALE CEO that just been appointed to the rape crisis centres. Even though the advert for the role stipulated no males could apply. Here the kicker - there will be no women only days for women to come in. So a woman who has been raped will have to sit with men and possibly have to see a male councillor. Crazy right? A service created by women for women now longer exists.

So yeah - I’d willingly vote Tories in Every.Single.Time because Lisa Nandy et al are chomping at the bit to smash us all to pieces.

[quote fiheka]@Brainwave89 yes which is why those councillors have been forced out.
Every party has individuals who are not honourable. In the past every party got rid of them. Until now.[/quote]
No, in the Liverpool case the Mayor was not forced out by any form of internal inquiry. He was arrested by the Police and only then suspended. Under Corbyn Labour was Semitic to the point of being found wanting by the Equality and Human rights coalition. These were/are deep and systemic issues not a "few bad apples". I am a supporter of no particular party, but it is far too simplistic to say Tory bad Labour good.

Think the Tories are dreadful, still not impressed by Labour, a Lib Dem at heart, but voting Green more frequently. Wish more people would vote away from the big two so it wouldn’t feel so much like a vote wasted.

Tbh, on paper I look like a Tory, but I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to vote for them. Certainly have never been tempted thus far! I do have a soft spot for John Major though

James Dyson did not supply any ventilators although he was paid to. Firms that made ventilators and contacted the government were ignored.
Its like me having a leak in my office roof and ringing my friend Chris who works in IT to fix it, instead of contacting an actual roofer.

@MangosteenSoda I have a soft spot for John Major as well. I am a centrist at heart. Which is why it makes me laugh when people assume that anyone criticising Boris Johnson must love Corbyn.
But at the moment I would accept anyone who would not spend billions of our taxes giving money to their mates.
I really can not get over the corruption.

@Hotankles while I agree with your concerns I would bet my house on the fact that if I stood outside my local polling station and asked people why they are voting Tory today not ONE of them would mention any of those reasons.

Low tax would be the number one reason. Not much else if my local social media is anything to go by .

@fiheka Ha, yes. I describe myself as a raging moderate.

But I genuinely am enraged by BoJo. On so many levels.