Conservatives and Labour - is there really any difference for middle class working families

[Sweetcup]

Please convince me otherwise as I'm feeling utterly depressed.

I really can't see what is on offer to middle class families from either party - it appears to be exactly the same. High taxes, no guarantee of decent state education or access to medical care, horrible driving on roads, criminals out of prison early picked up in luxury cars. Our salaries are worth less than they were 7 years ago.

In principle I don't mind paying high taxes but it really doesn't seem to be a guarantee of anything. Our local state secondary is dreadful as a few (non-working) families seem able to disrupt the education of the rest. As a tax payer I don't feel either the Conservatives or Labour have ever spoken to me directly about what my money is doing and what they are guaranteeing for it.

We cut right back (no Netflix, eating our, no takeout) to put money into our pensions and now I just feel like that means we will have done it to pay for other people's state funded retirements.

We like to think we got rid of the undeserving poor with the Victorians, but the Tories have done their damnedest to thoroughly demonise anyone supported by the state, helped by the media- tons of poor bashing/ridiculing TV in the 2010s. Apart from sainted pensioners, of course.

What if the people on benefits that you deem 'undeserving' have children? Are you still happy to remove the benefits and let the children starve?

It all sounds very Dickensian.

Well, as you're v intelligent, what would you do with the 'undeserving?

I mean, do you really want to be stepping over the homeless and dodging the street beggars when exiting the Opera?

So where would they go?

They could work on community projects for their benefits.

Win. Win.

What community projects? We don’t have slave labour any more. Anyone who works gets paid at least the minimum wage.

They did that before. They weren't paid.

I doubt the "very" and am beginning to question the "intelligent" part.

You gave the benefit of the doubt for much longer than me.