to dread a Conservative govenment?

[tryingtobemarypoppins]

As a teacher and mother I feel I should dread Conservatives getting in.....

YANBU

Well said, Captain. I have already stated that my house is not large but my mortgage is alot more than my council rent used to be!

I don't want showering. I have said before on other threads that I think it ludicrous that DH and I qualify/ed for CTC, TC, CB, HIMB etc.

I want the benefits directed to people who really need them.

And looking at the news there are plenty of people and services around who really do.

Vote lib dem

ra ra ra

Again agree someguy. It is the white boys from economically challenged, ie. not working, and I am really being honest here, I am not talking about low paid families, I am talking about non working families who have no work ethic, whose children turn up late on the first day back after holidays, whose children say matter of factly that they couldn't be bothered to get up. Parents who say that there dcs have no shoes, no dry clothes although they have had all week to sort these out and please don't say they can't afford them, these children ALL have mobile phones. There is no interest in education for these children, they have seen their parents survive on benefits and have no intention of working themselves so school is of no interest to them. We have to find some way to encourgage these children into school, although mainly they go on to disrupt classes in an attempt to get excluded, which then interrupts the education of the other children in the school, who although socially disadvantaged, may genuinely want an education.

to op & others, i don't think we can judge any of the current parties by what they used to be like. time moves on & so do they. i also remember the 'dark days' of the 80s, and 90s, trying desperately to establish myself & dh into a 'decent' life & being thwarted at every turn, tax cuts removed, public spending limited, so i could niether afford to provide for myself OR turn to govt support etc.

still, that would not affect my decisions now.

i think the current system of democracy is groaning at the seams, and people have been writing about this for many years now. the new 'post modernist' age makes it almost impossible to have one cohesive party, but that means that all parties face inner turmoil. which makes it hard for us to know who to vote for.

i don't think we can blame gordon brown for all the country's ills, did you not notice the problems across the globe for many countries, and britain is , in fact, suffering less than many others? it could have been a lot worse, though also better. but then would the uk have continued to vote labour if they hadn't provided the things they did?

my personal dread is a time of ever-changing govt, with no party able to provide clear leadership, and so much change that we are unable to cope.

obviously the reason they aren't motivated is because the benefits culture, which some posters in this thread actually want to increase, has led to complete demotivation.

If Daddy plays cricket then his children are more likely to follow suit. If Mummy likes painting her children are significantly more likely to do so.

And if Mummy and Daddy do NOTHING, what are their children likely to end up doing?

There are actually two separate things at work here:

1. Lefties who are genuinely concerned and believe that (to paraphrase Ronald Reagan) 'the government is here to help' those who they see are in need, and they genuinely believe that The Right don't care about those people and would happily see them starve.

1. Right wingers who in fact care just as much as the Lefties about people they see in need, but they see that government 'help' is actually counterproductive and reinforces poverty rather than lifting people out of it.

Same goals, just different beliefs about how to achieve them.

People like Iain Duncan Smith devote a lot of time to social justice. They don't do this because they want to slash and burn to save a few quid off their taxes but because they see that the welfare state, created 60+ years ago, has killed social mobility, entrenched poverty and created the sort of hellhole council estates and sink schools that suppress whatever remains of basic decency in those areas.

Right I don't know about all of these but cartainly have an opinion on some of the things in the list before.

1. Longest period of sustained low inflation since the 60s. You can't say that the economy is in a good place at all, surely?
2. Low mortgage rates. The average mortgage interest rate over the last 50 years I believe is 12%. When I bought my house in 1998 my interest rate was 6.5%. Labour had only just got in so it could be argues that t was the Tories who got rates heading down. My current rate (this year) is 5.5% so not really much different.
3. Introduced the National Minimum Wage and raised it to £5.35
4. Record police numbers in England, Scotland and Wales. Labour have also increased the amount of paperwork, form filling by a horrendous amount. The amount of time that a police officer actually spends "on the beat" has reduced with Labour.
5. Cut overall crime by 35 per cent. Labour has changed the way that crime is recorded. I think this "reduction" is all spin.
6. Record levels of literacy and numeracy in schools
7. Best-ever primary school results. Spin again. Crap SAT tests that should be banned.
8. Funding for every pupil in England to double by 2008
9. Employment is at its highest level ever

10. And rising fast, it was low when labour came into power. Written off up to 100 per cent of debt owed by poorest countries 11. 85,000 more nurses. I don't know about the actual figures for nurses but I know they say xxx number more midwives. However what they don't tell you is the majority of these midwives are p/t and in hours worked/real terms there is actually a reduction.

12. 32,000 more doctors. Junior Drs now work a lot less hours so there needs to be more Drs to cover the same amount of work. Again more Drs now are part time.
13. Brought back matrons to hospital wards. Hardly. I've worked in 3 different hospitals over the last 5 years and only seen one matron in that time. She was walking down a corridor with a load of paperwork to a meeting. Its not a clinical role but yet another pen pushing, junior managerial/clerical role.
14. Devolved power to the Scottish Parliament
15. Devolved power to Welsh Assembly
16. Dads now get paternity leave of 2 weeks for the first time
17. NHS Direct offering free convenient patient advice - which ime is crap and seems to consist of "go to a&e"
18. Gift aid was worth £625 million to charities last year. And therefore cost the taxpayer £625 million. The money comes from somewhere.
19. Restored city-wide government to London
20. Record number of students in higher education. Top up fees means that working class students are increasingly unlikely to go to uni. HE is now for the wealthy only.
21. Child benefit up 25 per cent since 1997
22. Created Sure Start to help children from low income households
23. Introduced the Disability Rights Commission
24. £200 winter fuel payment to pensioners & extra £100 for over-80s
25. On course to exceed Kyoto target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2010
26. Negotiated the historic Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland
27. Over 30,000 more teachers in England schools
28. All workers now have a right to 4 weeks? paid holiday
29. A million pensioners lifted out of relative poverty
30. 800,000 children lifted out of relative poverty
31. Introduced child tax credit giving more money to parents
32. Scrapped Section 28 and introduced Civil Partnerships
33. Brought over 1 million social homes up to standard
34. Free school milk for five, six and seven-year-olds in Wales
35. Banned fox hunting. Mmmmm
36. Cleanest rivers, beaches, drinking water and air since the industrial revolution. Again taking credit for something that was already there under Tory government.
37. Free TV licences for over-75s
38. Banned fur farming and the testing of cosmetics on animals
39. Waiting times for operations halved. Again its spin. I wasn't going to make the target time for my op so I had it done privately at a BUPA hospital. All pai for by my local health authority and costing a lot more than if I'd had it done on the NHS.
40. Free local bus travel for over-60s
41. New Deal - helped over a million people into work
42. Over 1.5 million child trust funds have been started. Including to a lot of wealthy families who aren't in need of it. This money comes from our taxes - is it really put to good use.
43. Free eye test for over 60s
44. Five, six and seven year olds in class sizes of 30 or less. There are plenty of people, inc MNs who will tell you this isn't always true.
45. Free entry to national museums and galleries. May be free at the point of entry but who do you think is paying for the running costs/upkeep? Taxpayers. So now you pay whether you go or not.
46. Overseas aid budget more than doubled
47. Cancer death rates down by 12 per cent, saving 43,000 lives
48. Cut long-term youth unemployment by 75 per cent. Be interesting to see if thats still the case.
49. Free nursery places for three and four-year-olds in England, Scotland and Wales
50. Free fruit for all four to six-year-olds at school

If the Tories get in, you can say good by to childcare vouchers for a start. Cameron was against them from the beginning and voted against it.

That will be the start and it will be downhill from there.

I'm just waiting for Cameron to do like all Tory wannabe PMs do in the run up to election. Start spouting that the country is being taken over by immigrants. Worked for Thatcher back inn 1979.

Also, how long before they try to do away with the minimum wage?

And the problem is that Labour have borrowed too much money, messed up the economy something terrible. They will be voted out and they will walk away leaving the Tories with an awful mess. Tories will have to cut public spending and will then be villified for it.

The only reason the Labour had it so good for so long is that they inherited a strong position from the outgoing Tory government. But they fucked that up big time.

the Tories tried the taken over by immigrants line in 2005. It didn't work, they've scrapped it. Times change, things move on.

someguy....i've read a few of your posts...are you in politics?

Yanbu I well remember the last conservative govt.

Unless you are wealthy and earn a very good wage, you will no doubt be financially worse off.

Kiss goodbye to working family tax credit.

I had to go back to work full time when my dd was born.
No paternaty leave.
Limited maternity leave.
No entitlement to part time hours.

I am not a labour fan but for those of you too young to remember it was the Thatcher govt who:
Scrapped miras (tax relief on mortgages-thereby making ALL mortgage payments vastly more expensivey.
Abolished married persons tax relief-more expense for all married people.
Brought in high vat on all fuel- again the less well off suffer the most.
POLL TAX_everybody within a household had to pay this-including Shams.
Ruined whole communities via the miners strike-destroyed workers rights and gave power to the employer.

They did however allow people to buy their council home but sold off vast amounts of property to private ladlords resulting in high demand thus increase in rent etc

God do not vote for them in the general election unless you are loaded!!!!

Labour did not mess up the economy.

I would also remind the Tory supporters that quite a few Tory MPs like William Hague, Oliver Letwin, David Willets,Liamm Fox, Francis Maude who are/were Non-executive directors or advisors to financial institutions that are now being shored up by tax payers money . I would like to know why they have not been brought to task about their incompetent governance?

As a working class leftie working in te public sector I go cold at the thought of tories getting back in. I probably won't be affected that much as although I will be a single mum I will have a good income and a steady job, I also teach in a very middle class well resourced school but I fear for those who do not have my advantages.

But it does go in circles. The one good thing though is that they may have 10/15 years and then labour or perhaps lib dems will get in and dd will be ready to go into the world.

I'm a single mother, work part time low income and I don't want a tory govt because I don't want my standard of living to plummet. Which it will if they are elected.

someguy, how can you say a strong work ethic is a middle class value? Wash your mouth out with soap and water! A strong work ethic is a WORKING CLASS value. The clue's in the word 'work'.

For heaven's sake, the working classes have always had to work harder than the middles - much longer hours, much more physically demanding work, for much less reward.

City boys and junior professionals do sometimes work long hours - but they do it because they expect they will be at the top of the tree one day, able to dump all the dreary stuff on someone else while enjoying high status and rewards. That is NOT the same as working back-breaking shifts just to survive.

Benefits dependency is a problem, and it started with Thatcher's destruction of working class communities and jobs. Sadly Labour have not done enough to build those places up again and give people some hope that they can play a part in the world. But at least they have tried. Which is more than Cameron will.

It was Michael Howard who came up with the ruse to move large swathes of the unemployed onto sickness benefit..........

I wonder what they will do next time round?

I am not a labour fan but for those of you too young to remember it was the Thatcher govt who:
Scrapped miras (tax relief on mortgages-thereby making ALL mortgage payments vastly more expensivey.

Er no, that was Labour in 2000 that did that.

MIRAS was actually attacked by the left as welfare for the middle class which is why Labour scrapped it.

Abolished married persons tax relief-more expense for all married people.

No that was scrapped by Labour in 2000 as well. Again Labour ideology opposes any tax breaks for two-parent families.

Brought in high vat on all fuel- again the less well off suffer the most.

Well 8% actually.

POLL TAX_everybody within a household had to pay this-including Shams.

The unemployed got 80% off. It was replaced with the Council Tax which has been DOUBLED in real terms (AFTER inflation) since Labour came to power.

The council tax rise is equivalent to 4% on income tax.

Ruined whole communities via the miners strike-destroyed workers rights and gave power to the employer.

No it was Arthur Scargill that did that. And of course the shit products produced by the unionised nationalised British car manufacturers that destroyed that industry. It took the Tories inviting the Japanese to each us how to build cars to leave us with anything at all.

Can't wait for the tories. Labour are a nightmare.

As a teacher I feel that Labour have destroyed the education system. TBH in terms of education I am not sure the tories will be better but they sure as hell won't be any worse.

I dont care who gets in - they are all as bad as each other, There is no hope for this country. It is finished.

"There is no hope for this country. It is finished. "

I absolutely loath that saying. We have it far, far better then most countries on earth. Think before you speak.

I'm another public sector worker dreading a Tory government. Just glad dh's immigration status is sorted.

tryingtobemarypoppins nope you haven't given me reasons you have given me MEMORIES (a long with a lot of other posters on this thread) go and read the Conservatives policies and then come back abd tell me why you dread the conservatives coming in.

I am a teacher and a mother and I can't wait for a Tory government.

Labour have balls-up education and balls-up family life. We need solid values.

"solid values"

What are they then?

How has Labour "balls-up" (??) family life, exactly? And education, for that matter?