Please convince me that the Tories WON'T create wider divisions btween the rich and poor and haves and have nots?

[poshsinglemum]

I'm not great at politics but I am under the imptression that things like inheritance tax and tax breaks for married people are going to widen the gap between the rich and poor?

Am, I wrong? Would anyone like to explain how the Tories would improve my lot as a single mum. Would they find me a nice man to marry for example?

I think it's a damn shame that Labour have become so unpopular- largely (from what I can gather) because of the Iraq war and the recession. The Tories supported the Iraq war (only Lib Dems were anti) and the recession was global and would have happened no matter who was in government.

Labour have helped the poor/vulnerable and families in so many ways but these things get overshadowed.

And can we all remember that Cameron is a Mrs T supporter. The woman who was friends with General Pinochet, sold weapons to Saddam Hussein, brought in state-enforced homophobia and created the highest levels of unemployment since the 30's. To name but a few

That DC does give me the creeps. He comes across very badly to, all greasy and insincere.
Not at all trustworthy.

GB, where do I start...?

I do like the the 'sounds' the sounds the lims are making, just don't quite know...

to the op, thanks for starting this thread!

I'll read it with i nterest, althought TBH nothing I'll read could convince me the gap between the haves and the have nots won't widen should the tories come to power

The tories are talking about cuts in public spending because that is what the country has to do because of NuLab's terrible mishandling of the economy (remember Gordon's Golden Rules about balancing the books over an economic cycle? Load of baloney). NuLab daren't admit to cuts, they have to come out with pathetic euphemisms like 'tough choices' and hope that the stupid people don't realise what they are.

A lot of people like NULab's spending because they benefit from it. NuLab has bought their votes with taxpayers' money.

I'm not 100% convinced by David Cameron either and if I vote Tory it will be with a heavy heart.

However, the gap between the rich and poorest HAS got wider under this administration. Labour squandered their chances to do something radical which really disappointed me.

Labour is all out of ideas - the idea of a booklet for new Dads that came up today made me laugh. They spend so much of our money tickering and fart arsing about rather than being decisive enough to actually tackle issues head on.

You do realise that whoever gets in power will have tio impose drastic public spending cuts to sort out the abyssymal state of the public finances?

"Alistair Darling has warned that Britain faces its toughest spending cuts for 20 years if Labour continues in office.

The Chancellor, indicating a dramatic shift in his party?s election strategy, tells The Times today that severe spending restraints are ?non-negotiable? if he is to bring down the £178 billion budget deficit. " Here.

Even Labour MPs concede that the poor are worse off, and the (very) rich better off under Labour:

"The pattern of gross inequality set by Thatcher was what Labour faced in 1997, and it is astonishing that 10 years later the poorest 20 per cent of the population had a smaller proportion of national income than when New Labour first took office. Despite all New Labour?s claims to have tackled poverty, with increased pensions and the winter fuel allowance, the minimum wage, and the morass of means tested credits the poor had slipped even further away from the better off than under the Tories...
...Incredibly too, another change in income distribution was that the middle and fourth 20 per cent, those on middle and upper-middle incomes, saw their shares of national incomes actually fall, an astonishing result given New Labour?s alleged concern for Mondeo man and Worcester women. What actually happened was that there was a relative shift of income from those groups to the very richest. "

Labour party website

There are now more people living in poverty than ever before - so hopefully the next lot (if they get in, of course...) will not balls it up as much as GB and his cronies. However, there will have to be big cuts in public spending, so whoever gets in is going to have their work cut out.

Quite why anyone would actually want to be a politician is beyond me.

Of course the gap will widen

If the gap has not closed under labour, imagine how much huger it would be if we'd had all this time under the conservatives.

There would be no free nursery places for 2 and 3 year olds. These didn't exist before labour. There would be no sure start centres, no children's centres. There would have been less investment in public services, in hospitals, schools, bus services....how could any of that serve to lessen a rich/poor gap

The point of conservatism is to let the strongest reach the top with the supposed result that wealth is created and then trickles down through society

which is ok for some but always founders because in society there are always those who are vulnerable and cannot pull themselves up in the same wayand THERE is your rich/poor gap, and there is a society that I do not want to be a part of because it is honourable and civilised to look after your most vulnerable

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need....is NOT a Conservative mantra!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm a bit torn tbh.
I do believe in the family and I am definately pro marriage -it's just unfortuante it's not happened to me. I think that married couples should not be worse off than single parents and I do think it is ridiculous that some coupkes are worse off than us.

I don't think people choose not to live together or split up just to get benefits though and if they do they are very stupid.

i think that dc is much more charismatic, charming and articulate than the current pm but he's a politician so one has to be sceptical.

As a budding entrepeneur (well I have been designing and making jewelery since dd was born) I woneder how the tories would help me in my business adventures if they are all for helping businessess succeed.

(Don't worry - I have no intention voting for them.)

The impression I get is that conservative values are shy of real change and life is all about embracing change. To me conservatism means sticking with tradition.

i do think diversity is a good thing and should be celebrated.

I guess the businessess that the Tories are interested in mostly involve oil- or am I being flippant?

The gap has not closed under Labour - it has widened. Labour took over from Conservatives, spent years blaming the Tories and turned the country into one where the gap between the rich and the poor is wider than ever before under any other Government.

I wasn't aware that there were free nursery places for 2 year olds, so you learn something new every day. There are no Surestart centres up here in Scotland, and our local children's centre has just be threatened with closure. There may have been more investment in public services, but there have also been more tiers of bureaucracy and management created, and money certainly doesn't get through to frontline services. They have created one of the most complex - and unjust - tax systems in the world, they have decimated the postal services in rural areas which need them most, they have taken us into an illegal war and they have bowed to the pressure from banks.

I'm at a loss to imagine how anyone could do a worse job.

I'll be glad to see the back of this government.My NI bill has gone up and up thanks to them,not to mention Council Tax,Fuel Duty,Car tax and everything else they can screw us for.Sadly they have wrecked the economy to such an extent,that whoever gets in is going to have a hell of a job trying to sort it out.

poshsinglemum,

The single best tax proposal I have heard from the Conservatives is that new startup businesses will not have to pay national insurance on their first 10 employees for a year.

I don't know why they aren't shouting about it from the rooftops to be honest. Small businesses are going to be our only chance of getting back to decent growth.

Everyone says Cameron is fantastic at PR but I'm not entirely convinced. He doesn't seem to be able to get his message across as effectively as Blair. The airbrushed posters were a big mistake, for example.

yup, 2 years 9 months on - you get 2.5 hours free daily childcare at nursery/pre school

I tell you what Paolos - meet me back here in ten years if conservatives get in, and we'll compare, and I really think you will not have to imagine what a worse job looks like

"What is wrong with people being responsible for their own actions eg getting pregnant outside of a stable relationship and without the financial resorces to support themselves.
I am not knocking single mothers, just people that do not consider the consiquences of their own actions."

Really? You dont think your kicking single mothers Beastoftheeast?
In your little world I supose women go and get themselfs pg to get a council flat?!
What about relationships that break down? Contraceptive fails? or hundreds of other things that could happen to result in a woman becoming a single mother?

WTF should I have done about being pg and having the living shit kicked out of me by my xp?
I guess I'm a twat for leaving and claiming IS and a place in a hostel?!
Grow up. The world is not black and white.

if labour couldn't manage it in a boom there's no way the tories are going to even begin to think about tackling it in a major recession, what ever the social consequences.

It's everyone for themselves from now on in: just the way the tories like it

Someone said to me recently that he would prefer to complain about Labour than complain about the Tories.

So who would you rather complain about then? I suspect we will all have somehting to complain about regardless of who wins.

You don't close the gap between rich and poor by doling out existing wealth- you do it by creating equality of opportunity. On that basis, fiscal policy is less relevant than education policy.

Despite a huge majority and an historic mandate, all Labour has done is dumb down educational standards (admittedly continuing a Tory trend) so that many kids with an A level have not come close to achieving the standards of O levels 25 years ago. Teenagers are being told to go to University in ever greater numbers, pay their own tuition fees, and leave with huge debts. At the same time, many have degrees which have been dumbed down to cope with falling A level standards and are not viewed as intellectually rigourous enough for "graduate" level jobs by employers - i.e. they would have been better off to leave school at 18.

In an increasingly global economy, this culture of mediocrity is an extremely dangerous policy, and it's especially counter productive for people whose jobs are more easiy outsourced globally- i.e. the working and lower middle classes.

Education is the answer to closing the social divide. Creating a society where everyone has to win a prize and "it doesnt matter as long as you tried your best" isnt going to cut it in the next century.

Arctic, well said, I agree with you more than anyone so far. Abslutely the nub of the matter.

Paranoid at all Times - you can't let GB off the hook for this recession but hold Mrs T responsible for the last one. Economies are cyclical, and arguably,if Callaghan hadn't allowed the unions to run amok like he did, the remedial measures wouldnt have been so harsh. The Winter of discontent ring any bells?? Thatcher inherited a real mess with a lot of very uncompetitive, nationalised and hugely overmanned industries where wage inflation was out of control.

This is actually a great reference point- we should probably look to the late 70's /80's as an example of what happened last time when we allowed ourselves to become uncompetitive. We didnt react in time to changes in the global economy (manufacturing/ steel/coal- bu 1983 it was cheaper to mine and ship a tonne of coal from Australia than mine it in Lancshire)and we risk doing this again.

ahem absolutely