to dread a Conservative govenment?

[tryingtobemarypoppins]

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

DP- i'd rahter have a discussion about the here and now- poll tax and miners are irrelevant.

Your take on the reasons for the mining situation is an opinion- I do have some politcal savvy, and I just happen not to agree with you!

I am a labour voter born and raised. Anyone than honestly believes that the government in power atm is a labour government in any shape or form is very much mistaken IMO.

If I was reliant on benefits then I too would be worried about a conservative government, but as I am a part of the married working classes that are completely ignored by the current government I welcome the conservatives with open arms.

I don't think you can look at the conservative history as a pointer as to what they might do in the future, any more than you can say this 'labour' government is representative of the labour of old.

My dad would turn in his grave if he knew I was putting a cross in the conservative box but then I think he would be equally appalled at the way 'labour' are currently running this country.

I think there are far too many "benefits" on the go tbh.

Diasbility benefit is a bug bear of mine-it should only be available to those genuinely unable to work due to disability. Not those al la the freak talented geriatric old person on Britains got talent spinning on his head yet too ill to work poor thing. Ps I know of plenty other cases too.
Same for the nhs nobody should receive any free treatment unless they can prove they have lived in the uk for 5 consecutive years.

childcare-limit the amount you are able to claim back to 50% max.

All parents should pay for their own kids with help only as an additional top up. Unsure how any party can achieve this. The erosion of the married persons tax allowance was in my opinion a mistake. It has been confirmed that married/co-habiting couples where one parent is a full time carer(ie not working)are financially worse off than those who are in the same position but seperated. I will vote for someone who address these issues head on.

YANBU

David Cameron is very charismatic though and lots of people are gullible so it could become a reality.

I am also a teacher and it is bad enough as it is without further derision.

I think that the tories are not interested in helping anyone but the rich and lucky. But mabe I don't know enough about politics.

Riven I was thinking about how married/cohabiting parents are genuinely penalised financially.
Absent fathers/mothers cost the state millions in extra benefit. The state has to accomodate those children and parents who are left with little help from their estranged partner.
I believe that 2 parents living together (all things being equal ) should be better off than those who are single at the moment this is simply not the case.
Getting pregnant and choosing to live off the state shopuld not be an option.

Simplysusan If the childcare limit was 50% I would not be working or at uni, I would have to be a SAHM, single and on IS. I see flaws in your logic! And do you really think people choose to get pregnant and live off the state? There are very few. Simplysusan is being Very unreasonable.

OP, YANBU, not at all, I will be really worried if we had a conservative government. I want to be able to finish my degree and do a Masters. It is the Labour government who have made HE more accesable to low3re income etc groups, conservatives seem to be all for maintaining traditional social and class barriers.

simplysusan - i beg to differ as i personally know of lots of women who got preg on purpose to get a house & live off the state.

Sorry should learn to read before i post, i meant that above comment for MANATEEequineOHARA

PM73, she is saying that they do??? But really, under what circumstances? it is such a backward conservative view that 'youung girls get pg to get benefits and a council flat', as I think some Tory fool once claimed in the 80s (and was subsequently proven to be talking nonsense in academic studies). I know of ONE, and that is not someone I really know, but someone I hear about, and it is simply not that straightforward, their is always a story behind a decision, not 'I want more benefits, I will get pregnant'.

Oh, well I have responded anyway!!!

Oh, and this is soming from someone who grew up on a council estate btw, not like I don't know the KIND of people who are accused of this.

YANBU

I DO know of someone who got pregnant so she could get a flat and not have to live with her parents. She went on to have 3 children, never having worked a day in her life. She had the audacity to tell me that at my age (many years back) I should get a move on if i was going to have children. Errr...one reason for the delay was putting ourselves on a secure financial footing, without state help, to support those DCs!

It does happen.

I don't know how the situation could be managed, without a revolution, but there should be a difference in benefits between women whose husbands desert them, or who are widowed, women who worked before having children, or who are able to work part time, and women who have children with no means of support- or any desire to support themselves and their children.

Don't forget the women who who have babies with married Tory MPs who also love to preach about the scourge single mothers and the lack of morals in society

"Wtf is relative poverty? It is bollocks. If everyone can afford to drink champagne but some can afford Cristal and some only Moet & Chandon does that make them relatively poor? Yes it does.

Does it make them poor, no it doesn't.

The real poverty in the UK is not poverty of not having the right trainers it is the poverty of demotivation and lack of ambition to try and improve yourself. Every child in this country has an opportunity to go to university and to enter pretty much any career they went.

If you're born into poverty in Africa or Asia, you have no chance. No money, no education, no chance. The real problem in this country is why people spurn the opportunities they have, and don't give a fuck that their kids after 15 years of formal education can barely read and write."

Great post someguy and i absolutly agree!

spokette- which mothers are you talking about? I can think of one - Cecil PArkinson about 25 years back, and I think Tim Yeo- ditto.

I have never heard either of them talk about morality- and I bet their children aren't supported by the state.

You are talking morality- the issue is benefits that support an irresponsible, parasitic lifestyle.

I think you are being a bit unreasonable.

I've always voted Labour but i think the country needs a change. Labour did some brilliant things but they spectacularly fucked up as well. I won't vote for them this time around.

I don't think comparing previous conservative governments is particularly relevant - times, people and policies change.

I agree with Thebunk this govt has never been a true Labour Party it calls itself New Labour but has little to do with the party of the people that it was originally.I grew up in a pit village,went to grammar school and university though dad was disabled,mum worked in a factory canteen and gps had a market stall.That was in the 50s/60s.Now children from that background have no chance.Education is devalued,most degrees worthless,many comps are places where clever children have to pretend to be stupid in order to survive.Which party will restore the grammar schools and full grants for students from poor homes?No one will and so having voted Labour for years I will quietly bow out-our politicians are corrupt our economy is in bits and our international standing has never been lower.Yet....you know...I wouldnt want to live anywhere else

I am looking forward to a Conservative government as they realise there is life outside London, and that rural areas such as the SW need investment. Labour seems to think England stops at Bristol.

Labour have screwed up both defence and education. I went to a Comp in the 80s when the Tories were in and had a far higher standard of education than that which exists today, with both streaming and setting within those streams. This was far better than the mixed ability teaching in comps today. Labour have also fostered division within education by the funding of schools.

It always strikes me as strange that those schools in Labour areas got far more funding per child than those in rural Cornwall for instance. The textbooks cost the same wherever you live as does the cost of educating a child. Penalising kids because of how the adults voted always seemed puerile to me; and that is one reason why I never have and never will vote Labour as long as I live.

Labour do not give a shit about defence, ranging from the state of Married Quarters to equipping the troops for Afghanistan and the cutting of the Navy. They overtask the Armed Forces, but don't give them the resources to do the job.

They have proved that they are incompetent with the constant loss of data; intrusive with the advent of the shockingly expensive and sinister children's database (did you know your kids will be on it until they are 24?), and the proposed introduction of ID cards. They have kept quiet about the change to Home Responsibilities Protection when you receive child benefit (ceases from April 2010 when your child reaches 12). Mr Brown and Mr Balls masterminded the raid on pension funds that has affected all of us and has ruined the pensions system in the UK. They have passed power to Brussels, and given up our rebate from the EU (won by Mrs T), for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy that hasn't happened because the French have blocked it (quel surprise!).

For all those who want to compare the Conservative party of today with that of the 80s; perhaps you'd like to do the same for Labour. Ed Balls is an old Labour man if ever I saw one; Glenys Kinnock is back on the scene, and since Brown has been in power it has become apparent that New Labour was only spin and window dressing for the old class war that Labour can't move past and won't let go.

I cried in 1997 when Labour were elected, but hopefully I will cracking open the Cornish bubbly and celebrating either this year or next when the Tories get back in and Labour in the words of Norman Tebbit, 'get on their bikes'.

howtotellmum

"You are talking morality- the issue is benefits that support an irresponsible, parasitic lifestyle."

Yeah, like the millions of pounds from the tax payer that are being used to pay the obscene salaries and bonuses of the incompetent parasites in the financial sector who have done nothing to earn their financial recompense as well as actviely avoid paying tax but still expect the taxpayer to contribute to maintaining their lifestyle.

But I guess it is easy and populist to attack the have nots rather than the wallowing in its in society isn't it?

Who would have thought that die hard capitalist would go begging to a government to bail them out when they had spectacularly fouled up the financial system? I bet many of them are same people who spout on about the feckless unemployed, scrounging single mothers etc.

One law for them, one law for the plebs.

spokette- I think you are forgetting one thing- it was Labour's decision to bail out the banks! The Tories would have let some of them go to the wall.

At least get your facts right- and don't just hang on to the old line of "us and them"- the politics of envy.