To feel like I'm not sure where I sit politically anymore, and to worry about it.

[Lookuptotheskies]

I've always been a staunch Labour voter. Always been pro refugees. Always given people the benefit of the doubt. Always felt okay that I've brought innocent kids into the world.

Labour are making cuts to disability benefits (and in turn, carer benefits). They are looking to slash sen support in schools.

My town is being overtaken with overt criminal activity. Illegal cigarettes, money laundering business, violent crime on the increase, known drug dealers, fly tipping, etc. Nothing is done. It's just a never ending thing, they bust one and another pops up.

I've always fought against the tide of racist idiots, using politics as an excuse for violent riots. I live in a multi-cutural town, chose a very multicultural school for my kids. But I can't continue to argue with the people pointing out the rise in crimes, drugs, exploitation etc which is very visibily linked to immigration. I feel so uneasy about acknowledging how I feel about this! Guilty and a bit embarrassed. I've always been live and let live, whereas now I feel more protective, more cynical, less tolerant.

I am also gender critical and very much in favour of single sex spaces, based on biological sex. This has been a slow thing too. I've witnessed the language around women changing (cervix owner, pregnant person, chest feeding etc). I've witnessed our spaces and groups being invaded by biological men (I don't want a man on the other side of the curtain to me in a women's hospital ward, or a bra changing cubicle, or a swimming changing room.

Does anyone else feel like they are completely re-evaluating what they accept/don't accept, and what they stand for politically?

I don't currently feel there is any one political party that aligns with my ideals.

I may or may not get completely flamed, but I'm curious on other's thoughts. I will check back intermittently but I don't live on my phone/mumsnet.

This is not a troll post. I've been a mn user for over 18 years.

Gideon Osbourne's austerity budgets.

I don't vote for anyone anymore, I just write what I think of each party on the voting form. I used to be a Labour voter, but they're so messed up now I can't understand what's going on. Never voted Tory. All my inclinations and instincts are right wing these days and it's uncomfortable, but some of the things I see and hear are so damaging to the country that it's depressing to be honest. I wouldn't vote Reform because of Farage. If they had steady, educated and sensible people in the party then it might be a viable option, but at the moment it's a total joke and I fear for the country if they do win the next general election.

I'm being realistic when I say I think the country's had it and I don't think things will improve, they'll get worse and worse until we're like Philadelphia in the US. I'm desperately sad about what will happen to our countryside, wildlife and historic buildings, places of education and monuments. They'll all be consigned to the history books. All I can see is ugly concrete, drugs, rubbish, loud, blaring music, nastiness and cruelty, the people we're not allowed to talk about and cut down trees, polluted rivers etc.

Although Blair used it too. And pretty much sold in the narrative that we should like it or lump it.

It does feel that people are asking why should I just have this high immigration

If we need immigrants to fill the jobs we can't fill ourselves (both skilled and unskilled) then why is it so hard at the moment for people to find work, especially young people? Any UK citizen should be able to walk into a job centre and come out with a full time minimum wage job, or funded training to go on and fill one of these 'skilled' jobs.
One reason people stay stuck on disability benefit (particularly for mental health or neurodiversity) is because the process of getting a job is now so difficult, especially without recent experience or the ability to come across well at interview. It's dispiriting, even frightening if you've been out of employment for a long time!
Some EU countries have a system where if you can pass a few weeks trial you are guaranteed a minimum wage job with good working conditions and adjustments for your disability - this kind of support could help a lot of benefit claimants into work and force other employers to give their workers fair pay and conditions to compete. Labour keep saying they are the party for working people - why not make it easier for people to find and keep a job, rather than rushing straight to removing their benefits?

Labour are getting a hard time because they are trying to put policies in place that take from the poorest in communities! Ridiculous!

Whilst I agree the decline in support for mental health’s and health conditions more generally is definitely a huge contributor to the rise in those reliant on benefits, I think it’s totally disingenuous not to acknowledge that not working is a totally viable and desirable carer choice for many claiming. My own cousin felt he was “working too hard” and not seeing enough of his now wife - early 20’s, degree educated, actually very intelligent. He’d done the maths and working just wasnt a priority. As a country we have indulged people just like him.

Well, housing costs play a massive part in it. So, you have to ask yourself who's benefiting from these huge price rises.

Answer: the boomer generation (who still dominate, demographically speaking), the mortgage lenders, the people buying up property in places like London as an investment, the private equity companies that increasingly control our rental market.

And ask yourself why, when the question of tax raises its head, the conversation always gets diverted towards taxing income rather than property. And who that might benefit.

We need skilled workers not unskilled.
We need companies to be more flexible so those with disabilities that limit their ability to work full time can take a job in the first place.
And don’t bring Christianity into this or the RF because it just makes you look ‘anti Christian’. Which I’m sure you’re not but 🤷‍♀️

Is property not taxed via income tax? The only property that isn’t taxed is your main residence 🙄

Only if you're actually earning income on it, no? So rental income, mostly.

Thing is, your cousin is making a rational choice. Honestly would you choose to work 40 hours a week in a grim chicken factory and get maybe a fraction more money (or not) than your peer who sleeps all day then stay up gaming with friends all night while people around them hand wring because they must be depressed?
Work doesn't pay and supermarket work, care work etc never will pay the sort of money people need for a decent basic life. In the past the state stepped in and filled the gaps with council housing and decent public services. That's all been stripped away and (especially housing) has long gone. Now if the state steps in to fill the gaps it's with cash, this just goes to private landlords to provide expensive insecure housing that can be wiped away at two months notice.

Wow so many replies and comments. I'd love to reply to every single one but I'm meant to be doing more sensible things ha ha.

I found the comment about the middle classes now waking up to these issues now they are starting to affect them interesting. Personally I am working class, but have always been against the rhetoric spouted by Tommy Robinson types. Yes I live in a town with a lot of poverty but also a lot of kindness. We seem to be getting more and more tension and division in our town and its scary.

The poster who mentioned a pod caster talking about civil war - five years ago I'd have laughed at that. But my town was one of the ones caught up in the race riots last summer and it was scary. We as a family went out the next day and helped in a community clean up. Friends of my children who don't look white british, their families stayed indoors that weekend as their parents were scared. Yes my children do have friends from all cultures to the person that asked.

I do think I have abandoned some ideals the last few years. I'm scared for my kids.

As well as the issues mentioned in my op, we have things like knife attacks, rapes, sexual grooming gangs, drug gangs, sheep stolen and butchered (found in flats or nearby fields), the list is endless.

Yes we do also have white british people struggling with poverty and crime. For example drug addiction leading to shoplifting and burglary, but I can see the rise in that as directly correlating to the years of austerity and cuts to public services and help.

We have LOTS of HMOs popping up, set up by greedy landlords looking for maximum profits. No one wants to live in a HMO, they are being used for poor vulnerable people from all cultures and it just makes me so sad and angry! The HMOs then affect things like rubbish, parking, antisocial behaviour, etc.

I have found the uproar about pension cuts infuriating, my nanna if she was still here would have had these cuts, but she'd have still have had a VERY healthy monthly income. Not all pensioners need fuel help. Some have plenty to pay their bills. My nanna probably had a better income than her adult kids who working for various public services.

The mentions of things like SEN taxis and independent schools, these are a direct result of lack of sen schools in local authority areas. There needs to be much more special school options. It's short sighted spending instead of long term.

I wish I had the right answers but I don't.

Keir Starmer took Tony Blair's government to court to give illegal immigrants the right to claim benefits and won under the human rights laws.

Really, @Glitchymn1 ? When was this, please?

Benefits for people coming from other countries is a bit of a specialist area, but I'm not aware of any significant changes in the law since I did a 2-day course on it approx 6 years ago. Then, the position was that generally that non-EU citizens were only entitled to benefits if they had leave to remain .

If you can provide a link to the relevant change in the law, I'd be very grateful, and so would my colleagues. We don't come across it very often now, as most of our referrals are from organisations that wouldn't be working with illegal immigrants, but it would be good to know.

I agree with this, and blaming immigrants for this is really lazy. I'm the child of immigrants and my parents, aunts etc are all very well off having lived through different times. Poverty has increased so much over the last 15 years and the standard of living for working class and middle class people has tanked. At the same time profits and CEO wages have increased, but its immigration that's the problem apparently!

You definitely don’t live in Birmingham if you feel that! We can’t trust the council one bit.

'Yes we do also have white british people struggling with poverty and crime. For example drug addiction leading to shoplifting and burglary, but I can see the rise in that as directly correlating to the years of austerity and cuts to public services and help.'

I think you might need a bit of a wake up call if you think the poor british people are just struggling with their addictions and poverty while its the brown people who are all knife crime-ing and chopping up sheep. The majority of crime, petty, violent etc in this country is caused by white people, and that's not controversial given they make up the majority of the population.

I agree completely with this. It's hard to see the wood from the trees if you listen to mainstream media who have an unpleasant agenda. Poverty and lack of funding are the problem really, as they always are.

Wowsers that a very simplistic way of viewing what I said.

I don't think that at all.

I am a massive overthinker with way too much empathy and I actually mentally tie myself in knots all the time wondering about people, communities, deprivation, crime, education, etc etc. I have worked with and also gotten to know people and families from all walks of life.

Of course I don't think white people commit certain crimes and "brown" 🙄people commit other crimes.🙄

The usual trope of racists pinning all sex crimes on "foreigners" for example is something I've always argued. They seem to forget about the catholic church, the bbc, all the white british sex offenders etc as those examples don't serve their very narrow world view.

I can't speak for every area of the UK but the part I live in is really struggling regardless of if you are white or not, British or not, poor/working class/middle class. Everyone seems to be struggling or affected in various ways and it is really concerning. 😢

So are you suggesting that you should tax based on assets more generally? So you should be taxed on your capital?

Precisely!

You’ve lost your youthful idealism/ naievete and become a seasoned traveller, is all. Wisdom comes with age.

The videos circulating of Birmingham and their crisis with waste collection are absolutely appalling. People moaning about rats whilst littering.

i think people with different cultures and values, and those who haven’t had them instilled from their parents are just ruining it for the rest of us. I live down a 60mph road and have to cross a grass verge to walk home from the village. I can collect a bag of rubbish each time. Little picturesque village. It’s disgusting.

I disagree with this. I actually think the biggest issues are cultural. There are many families and sometimes even communities where they have attitudes that are incompatible with a functional and productive society. You could pay these people infinite amounts of money and pay for as many outreach workers as you like but ultimately their attitudes remain the same. They have no interest in education, work or even being a useful member of society in a broader sense. They are the families that allow their kids to terrorise (other poor) people on their estate and engage in other anti social activities. That don't even try to parent their kids properly and often introduce them to drugs and alcohol themselves. It is intergenerational and it seems to intensify every generation, all funded by the tax payer.

I know I will get flamed for this but I grew up around families like this and saw how entrenched attitudes are. Throwing more money at these families won't improve things unless you can break the cycles.

Absolutely.

Can you share on what basis? What’s the threshold? Or who do you propose should be taxed and in what circumstances?