Voting for Reform.the north/south

[Jollyjupiter]

As a proud Northerner i can say 80 per cent of my peer group will vote for Reform in May. Do you think it will be a North v South split?

I think you need to spend time educating yourself before spouting off at others. We absolutely do have welfare in the country alongside social security. If we didn't then anyone who hasn't contributed sufficiently into the social security system would receive no government help.

Welfare spending is roughly 12% of GDP. Health spending is roughly the same. Double what we spend on education and quadruple what we spend of defence. Currently 34% of all our GDP funds the state. Interestingly we now spend more on welfare then we raise through income tax. Do you think that's right?

Why is it rude? It does just show an insight into your social circle, as in it doesn't show a wider picture.
As others don't know anyone in RL and their circle are mostly never voting for them.

That doesn’t extrapolate to everyone in your small town. Nice people and voting Reform is an oxymoron.

Maybe she was.
But, they’re probably not that nice if they’re voting for manipulative Trump aligned Farage and his cronies. Many of whom are public apologists for the dreadful Tommy Robinson.

Reform are ahead in the polls. It is more common to intend to vote for Reform than any other party. Those trying to pretend it's some marginal, ill informed position are fundamentally undemocratic.

Until you acknowledge what’s causing the huge benefits bill you won’t get anywhere.

No, it's not. You are not the arbiter of what is 'nice', a subjective concept in itself.

Are you a supporter of democracy?

And I don't know a single person who is.

I genuinely don't see what Reform even claims to offer that is worthwhile to vote for.

If you dislike immigration, well Brexit caused the Boris wave, supplanting European care workers and nurses here temporarily with African and Indian workers here permanently. I personally have no beef with this, but if you are voting Reform to stop immigration the evidence isn't great for them.

Lower taxes mean worse public services. And our public services are on their knees as it is.

Some kind of dismantling of the NHS - who votes for that?

Flags and a picture of the King in every school in the first 100 days - feels like fiddling while Rome burns given the crisis in child mental health and attendance data.

I honestly cannot understand why anyone would vote for them other than the catchy name because they want a change. Well, be careful what you wish for!

If anyone voting Reform could explain which of their policies they are in agreement with, I would genuinely be interested to hear.

So you voted for Brexit because of superior attitude of others and now you say look where Brexit got the country?
Responsibility of Brexit and its outcome lies on people who voted, not on remainers with superior attitude.

But it is a tragic indictment of our current political system that nice people are choosing to vote reform.

But it isn’t undemocratic to oppose a party and what it stands for and say that publiclly

Of course that's true but who is acknowledging it and tackling it?

Interestingly I see that Farage has stated that he will tackle public sector gold plated pensions. Another ticking time bomb. Of course it won't be easy but who else has even acknowledged the issue?

if everyone at my work place and at all the parents at my children’s school (so not people I’ve chosen to be friends with) dosent extrapolate then neither does all the labour /green voting carefully picked friends of posters on here.

Of course I support democracy. That doesn’t mean I can’t disapprove of a political party and its allegedly nice supporters.

But the public sector pension isn’t the issue.

The issue is the state pension.

They’re both issues and no government will ever touch them.

Of course you can. I oppose the Greens. What I won't do though is pretend that they're extremists because they're more radical in areas than I would like. I also don't think they should have their platform removed or that their supporters should be insulted en masse. If the policies don't stand up to scrutiny then ultimately people will turn away from them. If a compelling counter argument is made then they won't win.

It isn't rude. It is a statement of fact.

If everyone you know is voting the same way, then that suggests an extremely narrow social circle, regardless of which party they might be voting for. Or it suggests that you're possibly making assumptions about how others might vote without actually knowing the truth.

Even the polls that suggest a very strong result for Reform don't pretend that a majority of the electorate will vote for them. Indeed, a majority of the population won't.

Does insulting people work for Labour anyway? They’re losing voters each week. Perhaps the mn take is driving people away.

Exactly this.

It's obviously incorrect to say Reform are marginal, not with that level of support. So anyone who thinks that is just wrong.

But there's nothing remotely undemocratic about offering a view on whether their fairly substantial support base are informed or not. Democracy doesn't require one to say or refrain from saying things about other people's political choices, indeed it's a rather important part of a democratic society that we all get to slag each other's votes off if we want to.

But many do have extremist views, to say so is not to insult anyone. I’d go as far as to say we should be calling out some of the poison they spout.

Of course I know that but my point is that successive other governments haven't tackled anything in this area at all.

Yes the state pension will have to be tackled too but no political party wants to do this currently so what alternative party can anyone vote for if they want the wider issue of pensions to be tackled?

Absolutely call out extremist views but what extremist policies does Reform have?

In my bit of the north it usually seems like common sense tends to prevail (narrowly) so I can’t relate, sorry.

It's a dog-whistle because it's a divisive trope and founded on many untruths. It seeks to scapegoat the older generation to the younger in much the same way as the opposite "youth are snowflakes with mental health problems" trope.

It's a dog whistle because its a massive generalisation that doesn't reflect the lived experience of many people.

Let's look just at education - the trope is that the older generation all got free university and the younger generation get stiffed by huge loans (this latter part is true and scandalous). Yet only 5% went to university and many left school at 16, even 15 and straight out to productive work. Now almost everyone stays in school for 2 more years and 50% in university for another 4 years. That's 6 years economic inactivity for themselves and the country. Hardly surprising that living standards fall.

Certainly younger people struggle with massive rents (as do older) but house prices are a function of low interest rates, suppressed during the financial crisis and also of the enlarged labour force. But thats hardly the fault of the older generation.

Yes, pensions have risen but that's a function of the stagnation and inflation within the economy not a policy of the aged.

You might say that the older generation have voted to dismantle the settlement (though what that means is nebulous) but generally the voters of any generation have little impact on the policies enacted. Politicians are considerably younger than the boomers you dislike yet seem intent on not fixing anything. That seems more like an indictment of the younger generations ability to get necessary things done.

Also, much of this trope compares the current situation of one generation against another. Rather than of each generation at similar ages.

When i was young we had awful landlords with horrid housing, rising interest rates, IMF bailouts, petrol price spiking and imminent rationing, and lots of strikes and general unrest. It looked bleak, and was for a long time.

Sound familiar??

But things changed over time and many prospered subsequently. It took a strong person to make the necessary changes, and also the good fortune of north sea oil, but it was a time when politicians had come from a life of actually doing jobs and running business etc. Since then I just see professional politicians who only know how to campaign and who, on achieving power, continue to campaign instead of being unpopular but governing wisely.