to be really scared of the Tories getting into power?

[Coldhands]

I've never really been into politics but now I have a DS, I am thinking about the things that have helped us etc and I realised that Labour has actually done a lot to improve the things that I think are important.

If the Tories get in, the things they want to change/cut effects me and my family and I am really really dreading them getting into power to the point that it is making me quite upset.

I am on In Cap benefit for M.E./CFS and everytime I have a medical I have to prove how I cannot work. It is difficult to do this with a fluctuating condition that you cannot test for or see and the Tories want to retest everyone on In Cap with harder tests and I am terrified of not passing and being forced back to work where I would end up at square one again and have no energy, have to give up work again and go through the whole sodding process again whilst not being able to afford to live.

Then they want to get rid of the Child Trust Fund for anyone who earns over £16000. My DH earns just over this and it wouldn't be fair to subsequent DCs for them not to have a TF and DS has one so we would have to find the money to start them one.

They want to cut funding to Surestart that I have found to be absolutely brilliant and it really helped me when I had PND. There is more stuff that I can't remember and don't want to make my post too long.

I have sent off my postal vote so I have a voice but me and my DH were talking and we really don't see Labour getting back in as there are so many people who are fed up them and blame them for everything. One reader in The Sun (I know, quality paper that I read) was blaming Gordon Brown for the sodding volcano.

AIBU?

I definately don't want them to get in.....I have 5 kids and all we get is my husbands wages, child benefit and child tax credits......we so can't afford cuts in these benefits.

Ripeberry not sure what point you are making about university? Clearly not everyone goes to university, less than 50% in fact. So you think it should just be for the richest few? Or that there's no point anyway?

I'm gutted about Uni fees, DH and I having had similar personal experience as Dinosaurinmybelly, both from very working-class families, neither of which would have been able to afford to send us to Uni without grants and free tuition.

However, looking at education as a whole, I don't see how anyone can vote Tory - they're going to halt the school building scheme, cut 40,000 public sector jobs and let the academies take over.

I agree wholeheartedly that we can't go on paying out more in benefits than we take in from income tax - but how putting 40,000 taxpayers on benefits will help that situation is beyond me.

"I definately don't want them to get in.....I have 5 kids and all we get is my husbands wages, child benefit and child tax credits......we so can't afford cuts in these benefits."

You chose to have five children though, if your decision to have those children was based on the state paying for them then that indicates exactly what is wrong with the system.

Haven't read all threads but I am also really concerned about the tories maybe getting in. Am a single mum and know that the will do nothing to help me or my dd. Don't get why people moan so much about labour, I think they have done loads for single parents, working parents and improved support and provsion for the under 5s (childrens centres, more nursery places etc) Hang on a min just had a quick at the above 'nobody needs childtrust funds' wtf? Err well my dd will certainly need hers if she stands a chance of going to uni, buying a car or getting her own place, or maybe even to go travelling if that is what she wants to do. Im a nurse so unless I marry a millionaire in the mean time, unlikely to be able to afford to help out as much as I would like.

Girliefriend, in haste: if by some horrendous miracle Labour were re-elected, they would take, take, take from you. In return they will give you £250 to put in a CTF. Under a different government, you could probably save far more than that for your DD yourself because you wouldn't be paying out so much in the first place.

Benefit fraud is actually nearer £3 billion and that costs all of us more in tax. If those people weren't defrauding all of us, then we could have lower council tax bills, or there could be more money allocated elsewhere.

Tax avoidance is perfectly legal, tax evasion isn't; there is a difference.

As for your one child comment; you may care to reflect that medically some of us may only have been able to have one child and are therefore unable to produce tax payers of the future.

The bias in Johann Hari's piece in the Indy is evident and the article is scaremongering. The simple truth is that the UK is running very close to broke and we cannot afford to pay for the welfare state for much longer.

If it's legal tsc, it isn't a scam by definition. Define 'rich' as well - anyone can read all the rules on the freely available HMRC website and see where they can save money. Tax avoidance for instance on a small scale is the savings being in my name as I don't earn enough to pay tax, and therefore avoiding any tax being paid on them.

My reply about one child wasn't po-faced at all; I could only have one child, there are presumably other women like that on here - so perhaps a little sensitivity on your part might be appropriate.

The Indy article - why blame the Tories for the Health and Safety issue? Who is in power at present? Who therefore runs the Health and Safety Executive who should have overseen this? Blame where due; not the Tories fault.

The European Arrest Warrant isn't working; see the article about the man being deported to Portugal, even though it has been shown he wasn't involved in the incident, and the UK judge saying he should not be extradited, but that it can't be stopped.

Heroin - don't know enough to comment, but presumably there are other treatments as well.

Surestart - here we go again. How many times does this have to repeated? In the Manifesto, the Tories say they will keep Surestart going.

I am saying that Mr Hari is a journalist with a political agenda and therefore there will be bias in his article. From reading the article, he is left wing and evidently doesn't want the Tories elected, so by juxtaposition of quotations and his opinion, he conveys this. He would be careful of course not to lie outright as then his paper would have to apologise.

The only bit on which I agree with him is that spending cuts are necessary to pay down the deficit - the sooner the better; otherwise we may end up like Greece.

No, I don't agree that tax avoidance needs sorting - I think that a joined up system involving benefit payments would help to track fraud and multiple claims. I can't find the ONS figures at the moment, but I heard on R4 that total public sector fraud last year totalled £19 billion. Sort that first and that would help.

H&S is currently run by the govt we have had for the past 13 years, or has it all just been a nightmare and I'll wake up and find it wasn't true? How can the Tories be responsible for something that has happened in a workplace during Labour's term of office? Pull the other one.

I wouldn't like to be like Greece - riots, uncertainty; the whole thing will implode fairly soon and it will not be pretty.

girliefriend just had to respond to your message about *needing" the CTF. I don't pay taxes so that your daughter can buy her own car or go travelling if she wants to and it worries me that some people think the state is there to provide just such things. Also, as a nurse - haven't you heard that DC is going to ensure that less money is going to be spent on consultancy and inefficient layers of management - surely you agree the NHS can only benefit from an assurance that the budget will start going to the right places.

I also can't understand this view that we need to sort out tax avoidance before benefit fraud. If people were comfortable that their taxes were genuinely going to fund an efficient system that helped people in need, then I'm sure there would be less avoidance.

And trust me when I say you don't want to be Greece right now. Aside from the riots - it'll be some time before they have the kind of state benefits we have in this country again.

Interesting approach here from Conservative supporters.

Addressing people who express concern in a hectoring tone and telling them they are stupid for being worried is hardly reassuring.

"If people were comfortable that their taxes were genuinely going to fund an efficient system that helped people in need, then I'm sure there would be less avoidance."

So it's ok to not pay taxes because some of your taxes might be going to some person or some thing that you don't 'approve' of?

My understanding is that paying taxes is a legal requirement of living in this country. It's not opt-out.

Maybe, Janos, but we're entitled to express opinions if we feel there's waste going on. And, as girliefriend has shown us, the CTF is a huge waste if it's for teenagers to go travelling or buy cars with.
Is that why we're on the brink of bankruptcy as a country?

indeed, Janos

Well, of course people can express opinions. MN wouldn't be MN without it, after all.

However, addressing people in such a didactic and overbearing way is hardly going to convince them their worries are unjustified.

They may even be thinking their concern is spot on, judging by some posts I've seen here.

"Auntie Flo died prematurely of cancer, as her NHS trust wouldnt fund the drugs she needed, but, hey, at least girliefriend's DD is having a lovely time on a beach in Italy."

You know something is wrong with current policies when people expect the state to buy a teen a car or to pay for them to go travelling.

That money has simply put us further into debt and probably taken money away from schools and hospitals.

Peoples sense on entitlements from the state is getting way out of hand. A radical change is obviously needed so that people support themselves and the children they chose to have.

The above posts illustrate what I mean perfectly.

Just read all the posts and wanted to point something out re tax avoidance, this is not tax the govt has ever had, by going in this direction you will lose the higher tax payers and therefore the welfare state will suffer as a result (if all these tax avoiders are so wealthy then yes they will bugger off elsewhere - otherwise yet again you will be penalising the middle ground - those of us who do a bit of switching around to make the most of the tax benefits like an earlier poster mentioned re savings and tax allowances), it is more important to concentrate on stopping the benefit fraud that is costing us so much money as if this money wasn't going to the defrauders it could be spent elsewhere which would mean that the cuts to you and I would be smaller.

It would be better to recoup the money we know we could through defrauders first and then see what else we can do to get the country back on track financially.

But whoever gets in, all of us are going to have to sacrifice something, I hope it is CTF and Health in Pregnancy grants, survived last time without one and can this time - these things should be means tested if we want them so that the truly needy recieve them. However I do think that CTF are a complete waste of the tax payers cash. I would have preferred to have not payed tax on my smp (due to a tax fuck up I recieved less in smp than if I would have been on benefits ) but of course that wouldn't have been fair would it?

And for those who have said DC and the Tories have been resorting to playground tactics I would suggest that the whole general election has been a fucking playground with a he said, she said mentality where no one actually knows who has said what and frankly I don't particularly care but I will vote for who I think will do the fairest thing for the area I live in and for the country as a whole - particularly someone who sorts out nhs postcode idiocracies! I just hope like hell we don't have a hung parliament as we will just have to do this again in the not so distant future. AND I AM SO BORED OF IT!

So come on then, Janos. Explain why I should be happy to contribute to waste.

I feel that we, if we're truly a civilised nation, should support the vulnerable and those who can't work. Absolutely. But some people are just taking the mick. Why should that not make me cross?

Oooohhhh the good old Labour state of entitlement!

Please sir can I have some more!!!!!