Long-standing Conservative voters thread

[Katypp]

Any one else who has - up to this point at least - been a Tory voter?
I have voted Conservative at every national election (I am late 50s). This one is probably the most likely to change. Purely because I think new blood would be a good idea. I live in a very Labour area and have never shared my colours with anyone from being in my early 20s.
Given the fact that the Tories usually win, I suspect there are a lot like me.
I know it's a big ask, but I hope thar this might be a sensible thread for other natural Tory voters to discuss the election and not be called names and shouted down like we are on every other thread.
If you are a Labour voter, please don't hijack the thread and tell us how wrong we are. There is free speech in the UK and we are just as entitled to hold our opinion as you are to hold yours.

Why have you singled out the Conservatives as being most at fault for The Post Office/Fujitsu problems?

Because they've been in charge for the last 14 years and still haven't sorted it out despite knowing what was going on, whilst innocent sub-postmasters continued to suffer?

Exactly. It’s amazing how the Tories are trying to persuade us they’ve been in opposition for the last decade and a half.

So Paula Vennells and the Post Office representatives didn't lie and cover anything up then? It's all the Government's fault and nothing to do with Ed Davey or any of the other Lib Dem ministers? Not to mention that Keir Starmer was DPP during that period as well.

18 months ago my relative spent 5 hrs in an ambulance outside a&e and then another 30 hours in a&e waiting to be admitted.

Last year, dd and I spent 10 hours in a&e before being seen by someone who wasn't a doctor. They barely looked at the injury before sending her home to wait for an appointment with a trauma doctor in 3 days.
When they failed to call her, we followed it up and she was finally seen a week after the original trauma.
It took 3 months to get through the system due to a lack of staff before she finally had the operation she needed to come off crutches (the staff were brilliant, there just weren't enough of them).

If you want more of this, I can only say you are lucky not to have been in need of care.

No-one but the Tories are responsible for the last 14 years of government inaction.

The PO ran their own prosecutions.

Lucky you. I nearly lost DS waiting in a queuing ambulance in 2006. DH came to find me and carried me in with another chap. One of the paramedics was in tears. Similar events happening outside hospitals all over the country. Poorly set targets lead to fudging in the name of “improvement”. NHS has been a mess for years - a mess in this government, a mess in the last one and a mess in the next. It’s a national religion rather than a health service.

I’m sorry that happened to you but the data doesn’t support your assertion.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey has apologised to the victims of the Horizon scandal for "not seeing through the Post Office's lies" during his time as postal affairs minister between 2010 and 2012.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/sir-ed-davey-says-sorry-120951934.html

Sir Ed [Davey] ... has been criticised for [initially] failing to meet Post Office campaigner Alan Bates

Former Lib Dem leader Sir Vince Cable was Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – the department with direct responsibility for the government-owned Post Office – from May 2010 to May 2015.

The timing of their roles in Government makes them directly responsible for government oversight of the Post Office during the period that questions about the Horizon IT system and postmasters’ convictions first came to light.

https://teddingtontown.co.uk/2024/02/07/local-politicians-will-be-witnesses-at-post-office-inquiry/

[Jo] Swinson was postal minister from 2012 to 2015, replacing Norman Lamb, who lasted a little more than six months in the role.

...the Post Office maintained that there was “absolutely no evidence of any systemic issues with the computer system”. Swinson backed up this position in a statement to the House of Commons.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/08/paula-vennells-to-ed-davey-the-people-with-questions-to-answer-on-the-post-office-scandal

The PO ran their own prosecutions

Not all of them;

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/post-office-scandal-keir-starmer-b2476524.html

Your chart shows waiting time from arrival. The whole scam of the ambulances queuing is that the patient doesn't count as having "arrived" until they are unloaded and handed over. So the incentive is to keep patients in the ambulance as long as possible to delay starting the clock.

Some news links from the era - a snapshot from a quick google. I have picked the first few from different areas of the country - it wasn't a local issue.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2008/feb/17/health.nhs1

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/6976853.stm

https://www.theargus.co.uk/news/6808345.ambulances-in-ae-queue/

From your first link

A Department of Health spokeswoman said last night that 'these statistics are based on only seven out of 11 trusts and measure the time taken to turn around an ambulance for its next emergency, including cleaning and restocking the ambulance ready to go back out on the road. They do not reflect time spent by patients in the ambulance before being admitted to accident and emergency.

From your second link

In a statement, it said a third of emergency patients could be treated by a GP or pharmacist. Hugh Ross, chief executive of Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said: "Our emergency unit has been under greater pressure this summer than in previous years. This has meant more patients have experienced delays, and the trust regrets that this has been the case. We know that more than 30% of people who come to our emergency unit could be treated by their GP or pharmacist, based on Welsh Assembly Government surveys."

From your third link

Gary Walker, chief executive at Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, said those with life-threatening conditions were seen immediately and any crew needing to respond to an emergency would be released. He said the casualty ward at East Surrey Hospital saw more than 300 patients every day, rising to 350 over Christmas. He said there was no record of a patient complaining of chest pains waiting four hours to be admitted and dismissed fears ambulance crews would not be able to respond to a disaster as "a gross overreaction that damages the reputation of the NHS".

A tad misleading when you actually read the article and not just the headline.

@Blossomtoes, the question is - as far as this thread is concerned anyway - would you or any other Labour supporter accept those 'explanations' if the Tories were in power when they happened? Would you accept the waiting times were not as long as they looked because some people should not have been there? And that the waiting times included the ambulance being cleaned and restocked? I don't think you would, although I am happy to be corrected.
It's difficult to see things from a completely neutral perspective, because we are all biased in one way or another, but I think it's a fair question.

I accept them because I worked in the NHS at the time and I totally recognise the reasoning behind them. I ran campaigns to try to dissuade people from pitching up at A&E when it was inappropriate. I do know that the situation now is far, far worse now than it’s ever been before. There are fewer beds, fewer staff, no step down facilities and the processes that were used to keep waiting times down are now lost in the mists of time. I get really angry when people try to tell me the NHS was as bad then as it is now because it really wasn’t - we actually sometimes had empty A&E waiting rooms back then. Now we don’t have winter pressures any more, we have year round pressures. It has to stop.

I agree the NHS is a shambles, I don't think anyone could argue otherwise really. And so patchy. My dad died on Saturday after two months of NHS merry-go-rounds, three hospitals and two nursing homes. The staff attitudes and care have varied from appalling to brilliant, with very little in between, to be honest.
We obviously need a sensible discussion about the NHS and its future and to abandon the rhetoric that everyone who works there is an angel. I have seen some examples of people behaving in a way that would not be acceptable by customers in any other circumstances, yet when I started a thread about this last year (my dad has been ill for some time), I was torn apart, because apparently being overworked means you can eg chat to your mum on the phone while people are waiting to be processed.
I also think people have a massively simplistic view about the NHS just needing more money. I have to say Reform are the only party which have acknowledged it needs drastic reform. Both Cons and Labour have been short on detail, but some people seem to expect Labour will 'fix' the NHS in the first few weeks (as evidenced by the thread about Labour's first few weeks).
What would you do?

No Tory voters have commented on this thread so I'm a bit worried it's not being seen. Perhaps some of the Tory voters on this thread could go and comment.
https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/general-election-2024/5105598-conservative-voters-how-do-you-honestly-feel-about-the-gamble-scandal

One week to go! And after seeing the debate last night, I think I am reverting to type and voting Conservative. I have a postal vote so I am going to have to make a decision in the next couple of days.
Starmer avoided every single question put to him - why would he do that if he had nothing to hide?
On the basis that there is no one party whose manifesto I agree with entirely (or disagree with for that matter) I am going to have to vote on the basis of core ethos and I think I am most aligned to Conservatives - and I say that as someone who may well lose my daughter's disability benefits if the Tory reform plans come off.

Well it's important that we have freedom of speech and the right to vote for whoever we choose. And if you're happy with this lot as posted on another thread then great, that's democracy.

After 14 years we can only judge the Tories on their record.

We can only judge Sunak on his record.

Highest tax burden for 70 years.

First Parliament that has ever reduced our living standards

Highest food inflation we've ever seen

We're all paying higher mortgages and rents.

Our pensions took a 40% hit and would have collapsed entirely if they hadn't had a huge bailout from the BOE.

The NHS has been hobbled.

Our schools are crumbling.

The Tories have allowed the energy companies to charge us whatever they like and the water companies to pump shit into our rivers rather than going to the trouble of treating it.

I didn't say I was 'happy with this lot' - in fact the opposite. Deciding to vote Tory is not an easy decision because I am actually quite unhappy with a lot of what they have done.
However, I am utterly unconvinced that Labour will be much different and Starmer's performance last night gelled it for me.
Anyway it's good to have debate - getting het up in an echo chamber gets you nowhere.

I'm still undecided on who I will vote for, but based on last night's debate I know it definitely won't be Labour. Starmer was, to me, flustered, dodged questions and I'm sorry but his "but I've got wimmin in my Shadow Cabinet" answer to the question on women's rights made me shout at the tv.
Sunak was not good last night, don't get me wrong, but that was Labour's chance to convince me and they failed.

My vote will either be Independent or my local Conservative who is actually a "not bad" local MP (damning with faint praise I know!).

Yes, there is the candidates at a local level to consider too. Our constituency has changed and I have a really poor opinion of the Labour candidate. My previous job involved contacting MPs from time to time, and the Labour pcc consistently ignored me and never responded to emails or phone messages. Our Tory MP used to phone me personally. Another Labour MP in another constituency was also very good at getting back to me herself. A Labour MP in another local constituency would get my vote in a heartbeat.
Our Tory pcc lives in the town and is a small business owner, which is another tick from me.

@Katypp you could vote for a smaller party? Doesn't have to be Labour or Tories..

To be fair a lot of these are true for many, if not most, European countries.

Drop in living standards
High mortgage rates
Food inflation
Cuts to health budgets
Education cuts

It's always worth trying to look beyond a country's borders for context.

NHS needs to change to an organisation that does charge for care, like several European countries. It would cut wasted visits for colds etc, cut missed appointments. Introduce a 'ceiling' for those with chronic illnesses.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be an outlier? The NHS does not need to charge. It urgently needs reform, not of its economic model but of how it operates and what it covers. There are some treatments it shouldn’t provide at all.

And Sunak just shouted the same three things, telling what have independently been established to be lies, about Labour 🤷‍♀️

I am quite disturbed that there are people whose core ethos aligns with the current crop of Westminster conservatives. I can only hope that they want to change the party from within and go back to the centre ground. I do understand voting for a good and responsive local MP, but even there I would not wish to vote for an MP who sheepishly votes with their government every time, no matter how draconian, excessive or just plain unworkable the legislation being passed.

The Conservatives have failed us. No way to pretend otherwise. Most of us accept that. We are staying as members, pay the annual fee next week. Why you ask? I ask myself that as well. I believe in Free Enterprise, freedom of speech and capitalism. I also think we should have stronger regulations and stronger Regulators for the monopolies such as water. There should be personal liability for individual directors who could be sent to prison for severe infringements. Regulators should have the power of investigation. Not have to wait for a complaint from elsewhere before they act.