Can I ask.....how are Home edders going to be voting on may 6th?........

[becaroo]

.......I have been a life long labour voter. No longer.

I will be voting lib dem on may 6th. Just cant bring myself to vote tory and I was very impressed with Nick Clegg when I heard him speak on the radio last week.

The lib dems are for registration of home edders (which personally I have no problem with) but have refuted the Badman Report and want to make more funds/resources available to HE families.

Anyone else?

Frankly, I don't think any of them are to be trusted.
They promise, and don't deliver.

Why would Nick Clegg be any different?

reading the HE mailing lists - many of them are very anti labour after the Badman Report - not sure there is a agreement on what they will vote for. i guess they are as diverse an electorate as any other group.

Personally I hate anyone voting on a single issue - no matter how much you feel about that single issue - there are so many other issues to consider too.

Thats an interesting comment about incomes Riven - I listened to "thinking allowed" on radio 4 last week aobut HE and the woman who had done the study being discussed was adamant that most Heing families were middle class....that doesnt apply to us and doesnt include many other Hers I have met!

I dont like the idea that people think HE is only for the middle and upper classes.....I realise historically that was so (governesses, tutors and so on), but surely not any longer?

I like the Lib dem manifesto, but as you say marjorie what they promise and what they do are 2 different things! Why cant the manifesto be legally binding????? i.e. they have to keep at least 70% of their manifesto pledges?

I am such a dreamer, arent I???

Well, I'm not middle class. Live in social housing - always have done. 7 kids.
I manage to HE grandson on my pension, plus Child Benefit.
Labour are also trying to take our Bus passes away.
I'll kill anyone who tries to take my bus pass away from me. It's a godsend for us if we want to go anywhere on the bus.
At the moment, Lib Dem don't look too bad, but I want to see the colour of their money before I buy.

I will be voting SNP. I don't trust any of the other major parties. Labour and Tories in Scotland are a nightmare and the Scottish Lib Dems abandoned one of their flagship policies rather than work with the SNP. WHere else would you find all 3 major parties working together against a democratically elected, although minority, government? They make my flesh crawl.

I'm not middle class either. Social housing, 5 kids, one way below average income, living in one of the most deprived areas of the country. Major parties don't give a stuff about people like us, particularly as 3 of my kids have Aspergers. I don't think that they are much interested in anything north of the border to be honest. ALl you here them speak about are issues which are already devolved.

Labour. Have been moaning about NuLab since May 1997- but now I find the alternatives make me shudder

If I vote Tory- then yes, maybe they will leave HE alone. But I don't fancy everyone else's chances of accessing state education, healthcare, housing etc etc.

As for Lib Dems- I find in LAs they are much less fluffy than they like to imply. Our local authority is Tory run in everything but name, imo. They have closed/flogged off everything that wasn't nailed down...

I did one of those online quizzes which summmarises the policies without telling you which party they belong to. And for every policy, there were three parties which were all pretty much identical. Then there was one party that you thought "that has to be the conservatives".

Only... the right wing party was in fact UKIP and the three all-in-a-row were lib-lab-con. I really believe that socialists/anyone who has previously identified themselves as a lib dem or labour voter can vote conservative with a clear conscience. It's people who really ARE conservatives who are agonising about whether to vote conservative to get labour out, or UKIP because they are actually conservative...

I'll try to find the quiz again

Here is is: here

I'm rolling in wealth, me.

Ouch, my nose just grew so fast it bumped into the monitor.

Ommm
Im going to have a look at that link

Im contemplating voting Plaid - which again sorry Riven, wont be much use to you!

See, Riven, the thing is that you need to move up here and then you could vote SNP!

If I lived in England and a candidate was standing, I would vote Green. As I say, the main 3 parties make me feel ill. After experiencing their behaviour in Holyrood and the way the supposedly Scottish arms of the parties are just Westminster puppets (witness Labour working WITH the Tories to thwart SNP proposals and the Lib-Dems ditching their local income tax policy, a main vote winner here, because it was also an SNP promise), I could never vote for any of them. And I remember what all those years of Tory government did to Scotland and to vulnerable people all over the UK.

I have to admit, though, that my SNP vote is pretty much a wasted vote because we have one of the safest Labour seats in Britain. Our MP was returned at the last election with more votes than all the others added together, in spite of a wildly changed demographic (all the nice, new private estates for affluent folk from the city) and a massive boundary change to add in more affluent areas and cut out some of the more deprived areas.

Interesting comment you made, Ommm, regarding conservatives who can't decide whether to vote Tory to get rid of the current atrocious government, or to vote UKIP because that is the only truly conservative party. The incredibly frustrating thing about the system is that by voting for any of the three main parties you are getting pretty much the same thing, and personally I feel like the politicians are so far removed from what I actually want and believe in as a constituent, that I can't see myself as represented in the House of Commons at all. It's amazing to me how many people have said they are planning to vote BNP purely because they are SO TIRED of all the rubbish going on with immigration policies, sex education policies, etc etc. I could never vote for them because they are racist, etc, but I understand just how disgruntled so many Brits feel right now about being told that they are anti-immigration when they are not. The issue is not the integration of our "native" society with immigrants from other countries, it is the resentment that we have toward the government for not putting better controls on both immigrants coming in, and on those people claiming benefits and housing which they are not entitled to. I feel the only other party talking sense on a lot of big issues is UKIP. Furthermore, I fear that if LibDem gets in they will hand us over to the EU lock, stock and barrel. But I have another problem. The MP in my constituency in Conservative, and has done a really pretty decent job as long as he's been here, and I know that he is very likely to be voted in again. Because my vote only counts for my county, if I vote for UKIP, I know for a fact it will have no effect on the likelihood of getting a UKIP MP in the House because that won't happen in my county. So I may as well vote Conservative to keep the lesser of three evils in power in this county. Sigh

I have come across people who completely hate the lib dem policies but will vote lib dem, on principle, until we get proportional representation.

I think, if we got the right sort of PR, that electoral reform could be the wonderful thing we get out of a hung parliament.

I think the Green party might have a policy to give Home Edders tax breaks?

It would be nice if they could get in

we have a choice of the main 3 and I'm voting Lib Dem.

It's a very safe Labour seat (surrounded by idiots, clearly) and the last mp won with 93% of the vote

I'm voting Lib because I cannot abide Labour and if my vote isn't going to 'count' then I'll vote for someone who won't make me pay any tax on my part-time salary.

I'm also making a mental note to move ;)

As it's such a safe seat, the other advantage of voting LibDem is that it adds to the amount of popular vote gained by them - if there is a hung parliament, they'll have more clout with a bigger share of the vote even if it does not translate into seats.

I'm not technically as Home Edder, as DS is only 2 I don't have much choice , but I'd usually vote Green if there's one standing.
There isn't, but I think I'd be voting Lib Dem regardless in this election. It just seems like they might have a chance.