To feel increasingly alienated by Tory voters?

[BarmyBrunhilde]

I am in despair as to where our country is at. With the cost of living crisis looming (and already beginning), this winter is going to be brutal and likely life ending for so many in the UK, and the current aspiring leadership of the Tory party seem to be more interested in litigating culture wars and appeasing NIMBY pensioners in the Home countries than actually addressing any of the serious problems in the UK.

I've never been a Tory voter, but I've always been able to get along with people who have different views (provided they aren't racist/homophobic etc). But how anyone could see all the misery and deprivation on the horizon, look at the prospective leaders and frontbenchers with their complete lack of sultions, and continue with supporting them is genuinely beyond me. I find myself slowly being consumed by bitterness and rage against people for their views, and it frightens me. Am I alone in this?

Well I think that the hope was that by longer down sooner and harder, we actually wouldn't be locking down for so long, which wasn't a stupid idea at the time, I don't think. But the reason really that I think we'd have been better off under Labour with regard to the pandemic is that the Tories gave so many PPE contracts and Test and Trace contracts to people who should never have had them, and that cost billions. Not wasting those billions would have put us in a better state, I think.
I also don't agree that it minimises the issue. I can see that it's annoying, because I find it irritating when people say things like 'Can you imagine how much worse it would be under Labour?' But I think it's right that the ruling party should be held to account for how it performed, and I think it performed abysmally really. I also think that the EU offering to delay the full implementation of Brexit because of the pandemic was an opportunity that should have been snatched, so that we wouldn't have been facing all these hits at once.

This is classic!
So do you think Labour would have found other more ethical contractors? And somehow they would do so without any favour ( even forgetting the huge fight globally for PPE) You are living in cloud cuckkoo land.

Have you actually seen Starmers very long list of sports tickets and ‘gifts’?

OK - stand corrected. Didn't read properly.

A response wins 'classic' status very easily these days.
Yes - I do think Labour would have found more ethical contractors because I think they would have employed people who actually had experience in the field.
I don't think we would have seen headlines like this:
www.ft.com/content/740aa990-9bed-4cd3-b75b-0a5ce50b55c8

quincey I was looking at this chart re inflation, which seems to have reputable sources

The Tories hate the working class and below. It's that simple. They always will. People vote for them because they don't care about that.

I think Because we had massive discounts due to the sheer number of supplier and market competition here to begin with, we paid A LOT less. Hence why so many companies went tits up because they didn’t hedge properly and thought we’d always have cheap cheap gas!

We have paid much less than other countries for much longer. I have a large multi-bedroom detached house and my dual fuel bills were <£150 per month. Insane! Not realistic to continue really is it.

Should have been managed better for sure many moons ago (not strictly a Tory problem), but it wasn’t. The increases are awful, but the absolute household costs aren’t worse.
We get <5% our gas from Russia, Germany circa 50%.

In many ways it has been managed better than other places in terms of non-reliance on Russia, but not in terms of the last year.

It’s bad I agree and people will suffer, which is sickening and I am genuinely thinking about ways so can help those less fortunate than me, because I am in a better position. But don’t tell me it wouldn’t be any different under Labour.

And what do you think immediate taxation (if they were to even implement it) on the energy companies is actually going to do for the man on the street right now!

Nothing.

Labour blowing hot air because it’s easy to do so from the other side.

We have a shite government, and a shite opposition and like so many, I am politically homeless because there are no good choices.

Cheers midnight. Will take a look.

The contractors were so few and far between! You make it sound like the world was actually ready for this and awash with ppe! It most definitely was not and many had to use bin liners as aprons etc for ages.
if some companies moved from gin supply to sanitiser well good for them! That’s what free enterprise looks like.

Look at Tony Blair and his multi millionaire hangers on, that’s what Labour looks like after a stint in office - hardly Florence bloody nightingale!!

Actually this article today suggests that the Dutch are doing better than us in terms of what they are paying: www.dutchnews.nl/news/2022/02/average-energy-bills-could-rise-86-as-gas-and-electricity-prices-soar/#:~:text=Energy%20bills%20have%20soared%20over,January's%20prices%2C%20the%20CBS%20said.

It isnt the majority. We have 1st passed the post not proportional representation so we don't have democracy at all. If you add up everyone who did not vote tory they would be a larger majority. Please educate yourself on the parliamentary system.

I voted YABU only because it's easier to just kneejerk castigate people who don't see things how you do rather than, if you feel so strongly, take the time and trouble to engage and persuade. That it takes more effort than you'd probably be willing to expend isn't unreasonable though.

@BarmyBrunhilde I was in agreement with you until you downplayed the massive impact of gender ideology. Please don't treat people who care about it as daft. I am as working class as they come and I can clearly see the dangers to children and women. There is nothing more important than child safeguarding.

I’d like to think they would have.
Not sure that it would have happened that way though.

When speed is of the essence, quality and rigor are compromised.

Absolutely right to hold the party in power responsible, but I think a basic understanding of wider economics is being wilfully left out here.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/government-wont-confirm-if-ppe-reached-nhs_uk_6001c25ac5b6ffcab96408f2

The government's behaviour over PPE was disgraceful, which is why they were so reluctant to answer for it. Your attempts to justify it with a comparison with Tony Blair speak for themselves.

genuinely not trying to be wilful.
It wasn't just speed - it was the handing over of billions to people with absolutely no experience to set up vital services. Dido Harding, John Penrose's wife, was in charge of a racecourse before she was given a £37 billion pound contract to run test and trace, which was a spectacular failure. No, I don't think I've seen anything from Labour that suggests they would have made those choices. I'm not sure how the wider economics make it any better.

Not you midnight, I didn’t mean you explicitly (or even at all).

No worries - it's hard to keep up with who's talking to who.

www.bmj.com/content/376/bmj.o391

This is the BMJ's account of the government having been found to have acted unlawfully in giving the contract to Harding and Coupe. Some bewilderment about why people with no medical training and without a lifetime of business administration would have got that contract.

Mention of wider economics is wrt the OPs first, and then subsequent posts. Not PPE or test and trace.

A better example of how not to do something at the expense of the taxpayer I can’t imagine.

This Tory Government have run this country into the ground over the past 12 YEARS, In that time they have cut Health, Education, policing, they have given us BREXIT which is an absolute disaster and is only going to get worse, the have done nothing to grow the economy, Covid and the war are useful for them to use as scapegoats for their horrible mismanagement of the country

Yanbu.

To my shame I voted Tory when I was young but am hopefully more mature and less selfish so hell would freeze over before I did again.

They'll be out at the next election OP. Even the die hards are sick to the back teeth of this shitshow.

The tories are entirely responsible for BREXIT

So not a single Labour voter voted for Brexit then??

That may well be your opinion, however you're refusing to face facts.

As was demonstrated earlier in the thread, the Conservatives were elected by a minority. The majority didn't vote, or weren't living in an area where their vote mattered.

It doesn't matter that most of your acquaintances are focused on other matters, it's irrelevant that hundreds of thousands of working families are struggling with other issues. Those hundreds of thousands rarely turn out and vote.

Like it, or not, what matters is the minority that elects Governments. Identity politics is a much bigger issue to many of them.
Contemptuously dismissing women's concerns won't win votes.