Who the F**K still thinks voting Tory is a good idea.

[beachcitygirl]

Just that really. Sociopathic Patel refusing visas. In a time where we need leadership & empathy & intelligence there's a ducking idiot at the helm & Rees~Mogg making a fortune with insider trading.
Who the hell will admit to being so sociopathically selffish & grabby to still vote Tory?

Mainly taxes fund Govt to put barriers in the way of competition, production, importing and servicing - ie to make your fellow citizens poorer.

Taxes should also fund a working legal system - your civilisation - but they don’t right now.

You don’t want any.

@R37sraY 😂

Regulation are not necessarily barriers and don’t make people poorer. Do you really think that the free trade agreements that will see markets flooded with poor quality food imports will help British farmers? No.

Will ignoring the climate crisis work for the insurance industry? No.

I’m just back from a meeting with cross sector UK businesses and pretty much everyone was in agreement that there needs to be firmer leadership from government and well written regulation, not less, because this helps create the stability needed to invest.

I’m just back from a meeting with cross sector UK businesses and pretty much everyone was in agreement that there needs to be firmer leadership from government and well written regulation, not less, because this helps create the stability needed to invest.

I really hope they had a plan B then.

Have you considered taking a bit of personal responsibility, locating some self reliance and finding out the facts for yourself rather than demanding to be spoon fed like a helpless baby bird?

Not a joke:

Cheap food helps poor people to eat. Lower food costs do make us all richer. Those who want to can pay for more expensive food. Animal welfare promises can be audited.

I would have been against the Corn Laws. UK poverty reduced as a result of their abolition.

Climate action involves increasing the cost of energy and requiring costly reporting. Of course it’s abolition would help industry in general.

Insurers price risk. Why should they start getting it wrong? Is there regulation requiring them to cover the uninsurable? What risks are you expecting to come from allowing cheap energy? Natural or Govt risk?

Your conference was full of Big business? Those who benefit from high barriers to new entrants? Talking to Govt whose views are well known, and not wanting to be the boy who pointed out that the emperor had no clothes?

Cheap food helps poor people to eat. Lower food costs do make us all richer. Those who want to can pay for more expensive food. Animal welfare promises can be audited

Rubbish.

Eating better quality food is well know to reduce obesity, increase concentration levels at school and avoid longer term health issues... or in Tory world, is feeding crap to the poor a good way to keep them in their place?

Audited? you mean bigger Government? lol!

Consumer groups and trade groups often do this. If not, there’s an investigative news story for you. I never mean Govt if I can avoid it. On defence and legal system, I can’t see an alternative.

Choice is the thing you don’t understand. Why would you think foreign food poor quality? Ours was famously poor in the 1970s. If people want to choose to buy foreign food, that’s up to them.

Your authoritarian view is that you have the right to require others to be cold and hungry. You don’t like what you assume might be their choices so you want to take away their self determination. Ultimately where Govt do this, welfare crises follow.

I rest my case

The tory party has lost the vote of most forward thinking business leaders. Who they would vote for instead is not clear but it’s clear they are sick to the back teeth of rhetoric, poor quality decision making and short termism.

A few representatives of big business and the vast majority SMEs who WANT clear strategy from government, and more carefully designed regulation that fosters good business practice. This message was clearly spelt out by the keynote speakers, which included dragon investors, and CEOs, and was widely agreed with amongst audiences.

If businesses don’t have a stable environment to invest, some will give up, some move overseas. Some business leaders can afford to retire or do something they enjoy that just employs themselves and pays pocket money. Which means fewer skilled jobs, increased risk of poverty for the people who rely on the income, and people in the businesses who supply them, with spirals into the wider economy. The economy contracts. We all get poorer. There’s already been a substantial brain drain that has weakened UK industry / academic partnerships.

I used to think at one time that the Tory party was about empowering the poor by creating plenty of job opportunities - the party of aspiration and all that. But according to you they are the opposite.

Climate action means energy independence and better food security through supporting UK food production = more stable prices.

Not really, many raw ingredients are sold as commodities, at world market prices + the UK is not capable of producing its own food supplies.

Much like the guff on home produced energy, Green or Fossil, its all done by private companies, selling it back to us at what the market price is.

Don't see the UK nationalising the energy industry.

Nope, you just want to keep the poor where they are ie cold unhealthy and obese and pls don't put words in my mouth, i never mentioned "Foreign" food... but cheap food which means more addictive and processed foods with low or no nutrient content.

Food in the 70s was actually less processed, almost no fast food outlets, with low levels of obesity.
Taxing alcohol, cigarettes & more "authoritarian" health campaigns, has led to lower levels of usage.

Doubtless you'd also want to make education a choice too.

Well-off people who want to stay well-off more than they want to improve things for others, vote Tory.

I have a friend who votes Tory. She’s lovely, but comes from a family which are proud of their strong ‘family first’ attitude, which basically means ‘whatever benefits me and mine over all else’. If they were disadvantaged I could understand it, but her father is a millionaire several times over. He thinks he deserves every penny.

I think they are classic Tory voters. It’s just too uncomfortable to think that ‘there but for the grace of God, go I’, so they don’t think it, and read the Daily Mail instead.

Wrong. We produce around half of the food eaten in the UK. The UK is largely self-sufficient in production of commodity grains, producing over 100% of domestic consumption of oats and barley and over 90% of wheat. Most of the gap is due to fruit, most of which is imported because the UK growing season is short without reliance on heated greenhouses, and bananas don’t thrive in Basildon. There is a new Land Use Framework to identify the best uses for UK land, including where more food for humans can be grown. So a lot of work in the UK food security area in spite of the ideological push of the tories to render the UK less food and energy secure.

As for renewables, read this

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2022/jan/opinion-renewables-are-cheaper-ever-so-why-are-household-energy-bills-only-going

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-07-12/fossil-fuel-demand-for-electricity-may-have-peaked-globally?leadSource=uverify%20wall

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/solar-panel-prices-fossil-fuels-b2419251.html

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230414-climate-change-why-2023-is-a-clean-energy-milestone

At a time of escalating instability in the Middle East, why would anyone argue for continued reliance on imported fuel. Watch what happens to domestic prices if conflict disrupts supply.

If they were disadvantaged I could understand it, but her father is a millionaire several times over. He thinks he deserves every penny.

I know plenty of millionaires who deserve every penny. They also live in the U.K., not the likes of Monaco, and pay a significant amount of tax. Some of them also run successful businesses that employ large numbers of people.

I've worked in investment banking where colleagues regularly earned million pound plus bonuses. They were based on 20% of fees earned so good for them. (Nothing to do with trading, lending or the GFC before we go down that rabbit hole). I'd agree that not every multimillionaire deserves it, and there's plenty of sharp (if not worse) practices but plenty have justified their worth.

So what about the other half? Even during WW2 and a far smaller population, that was happy eating less and with little choice, the UK relied extensively on imports from the USA.
Whilst we produce 100% of wheat etc we also import huge amounts too! not all wheat is equal! proteins moisture content.... we often have very poor harvests too.

I'd certainly love to have NS production, Nuclear and Green energy bought under state control... look at how France kept energy prices down... my point is it wont happen, we cannot afford to nationalise the energy industry and we don't much in the way of storage either, even if we opened up what little we have, we need new facilities.

Is this thread still going?!

Clearly. Or you wouldn’t have been able to post on it. 🙄

People who have a basic grasp of economics and biology

I'd agree that not every multimillionaire deserves it, and there's plenty of sharp (if not worse) practices but plenty have justified their worth

I know what you mean, that they have earned the money legitimately. But ‘deserving’ has a moral component to it doesn’t it? Who is the more ‘deserving’ - a very clever businessperson, or a humanitarian aid worker (for example). Capitalism doesn’t work that way though, of course.

My friend’s father is intelligent and has made savvy financial decisions. The money is legitimately his and a product of his work, but there is nothing more fundamentally ‘deserving’ about him as a person, or his family. I think some recognition of this and a more generous outlook towards others would suit him well, but hey ho.

Is that why business has turned to Labour? And it’s received more in donations than the Tories - whose fiscal performance is comically dreadful?

Seems that some on this thread are developing a theme that it's only the rich that vote Tory. Which suggest that a Tory victory is dependent on there being a fucktonne of rich people in the UK.

Not quite sure that's correct. Although I suspect Rish! like most tories - having never met a poor person - probably thinks they are like unicorns or scared deer.

Yes Wales is a good example. You get Labour long term as votes fit the demographic more. The idea that ‘someone else’ can pick up the tab.

Hopefully the someone else’s don’t mind as otherwise you’ll have a problem.