And He's Off - David Cameron's Speech

[LadyBlaBlah]

Has anyone seen the young Tories in the crowd/being interviewed?

I thought William Hague at 16 was bad

What a despicable idea. Not only are the poor / those on benefits to blame, somehow, for their predicament. But they should on top of that feel grateful towards those who hand them the peanuts they live on.

There's nothing more horrid than giving something (in this case, as Expat said, a gift that is given out of moral obligation, ie something given as a duty) & then wagging your finger at the person who's received your gift & saying 'you should be grateful for my generosity!!'

Women, and particularly working women, seem misunderstood and utterly unrepresented within this party's policies.

I am therefore considering become some kind of outlaw a la Robin Hood, and doing over first class carriages on trains and things like that, redistributing my pickings to other public sector workers attempting to live on less than £100 a week after going to work costs are taken into account. Any ladies care to join me? After all, it no longer seems to be illegal to rob people. Or have I misunderstood things?

It's particularly disgraceful to demand gratitude when the person giving whatever it is they have given hasn't really sacrificed / suffered at all in giving the gift. How mean-spirited. What a bleak view of society.

Speaking as one of the few Tory MNetters still willing to don the metaphorical hardhat and engage on 'All Tories Are Bastards' style threads.... can I just distance myself from Xenia and her rather strange, 'slightly to the right of Atilla the Hun' definition of a caring society? The phrase 'the deserving poor' should go the way of the polio virus.

Can't be bothered to listen to the tories had enough of them in the 80's & 90's when they tried to tell us that BSE ridden beef was safe to eat for humans. 240+ dead to date from the human form of BSE and still more dying today from this manmade disease. I do not trust the tories when they blatantly lied to the general public over what was and still is a very serious health issue. I'll just remind you of a quote from the Guardian magazine back in 2001 "BSE the most cynical act of biological warfare ever waged against a civilian population by a western government" (the tories of course).

The lack of gratitude to the hard workers of the UK by those who depend on our beneficence is indicative of the problems we need to solve -the sense of entitlement, the view I live therefore I get provided for by the state. That type of socialist mentality needs to be stamped out. We are all lucky and grateful surely for whatever the state and other tax payers provide for us. I am amazed most people don't think that. Have we turned so much into rights without responsibilities or seeing the state as huge provider?

But people don't always have a choice Xenia.

And if, for the sake of argument, someone doesn't have a choice. Should they still be grateful, in your view?

There is nothing worse than demanding gratitude by the way. Gratitude should be freely felt/given, or not at all.

I am really grateful that you go to work Xenia. It is so nice that you do not let people die

I'm with Boffin

This is the first time I have felt so really really misrepresented. We need some women

The state should provide for those things that our out of our control like ill health, disability, forced redundancy.To then ask these people to be forever beholden to those lucky yes lucky enough not to be in one of those groups is a bloody insult and divisive in teh extreme.This is not about society at all it is about keeping certain people in their place

Yes, I'm grateful I have clean water to drink and that I have what state provision I use. What happened to gratitude or is the left all about rights without obligations?

I feel much better represented because the conservatives represent much better the values of women and men who work hard and are left to get on with. We are getting sensbile aboltion of silly socialist rules and regulations, health and safety and the like and the great repeal bill of many silly laws labour brought in. It all feels so good.

It's got nothing to do with giving or gratitude. It's just a universal insurance system that looks as if it needs a bit of reform so that it's not too risky to embark on a job. Why moralise about it?

Feeling grateful is not the same thing as feeling one has responsibilities. The two are very different indeed.

I know, that bloody health and safety eh?

Let them die. It is the profit that counts

Lets have more oil spills, more train crashes, more car accidents, some old fashioned food contamination

Most of the rhetoric about h & s is simply generally imbeciles misunderstanding regulation billed as over regulation by the meedia.

Xenia, are you bonkers? They are hardly going to touch the Health and Safety culture, they are only muttering about it. Yet they are indirectly decimating the income of many women who have studied what even you would call sensible subjects and chosen sensible careers, all in the name of setting a spurious example of some kind to wider society. The consequences will be very grave for equality and women's rights in general. I think we could all do a lot worse than wear black armbands or something.

What Xenia is saying is not too different to what the socialists said

work or lose your home

they are all in it together, that's why Alan Milburn works with the coalition. Don't believe the hype.

LOL at the thought of Alan Milburn being a socialist

Just listening to Cameron on TV. It is surprising, but he is not a good speaker. He speaks much too fast, doesn't emphasize the points. His joke about "don't mention the score" was pathetic as well. Whoever wrote that should get a rollicking.

He is a socialist, though (Alan Milburn). Anyone in Labour is. I'm with claig on that one .

RainbowRainbow, none of them are socialists, not a single one of them. Blair was a Tory, admirer of Thatcher. Brown, Miliband and all the rest of them are not socialists. The whole thing is a charade. That's why some of their ex top people, like Milburn, who they tried to hype up as a successor to Blair, but who was so ineffectual that he had to retire to supposedly "spend time with his family", have been invited back to put a socialist gloss on the coalition's policies.

Big Society probably means the Big Coalition, which includes the phony socialists in the Labour party.

I'm surprised about the gratitude issue. So what do people feel grateful for? I would have good health, clean water, a roof over my head. Are people grateful for nothing and if they are grateful for some things why should they not feel grateful for state provision and for those who work much harder than others to fund the lives of the poor. If the poor aren't even grateful I might as well pack up shop and work in Hungary (flat tax 16%) or Zug.

I'm not sure why someone earning 44k is considered to be rich. Perhaps, it is a lot of money for those who live in an area where housing, council tax etc is reasonable or those who live in council houses and consquently don't have to pay the sky high property prices, council tax etc...

Altough I'm not over the moon about the cuts which will hurt a lot of people or the loss of child benefit I appreciate these measures may be necessary. But I do object to being refered to as "middle class" or "the rich" because I'm not feeling very rich at the moment!

I wonder if the conservatives would have gone for the child benefit cuts if the Labour Leadership would have gone the other way, after all it was not in the manifesto. DC must be pleased with that result!

vesela, they are socialists by name, but not by nature. They fool the socialist voters by offering them some socialist policies, but what they really do is follow Thatcher's agenda all along. They did nothing to undo the anti-union legislation, and they never will do.

If you earn what only 15% of people in the UK earn you are rich in a relative sense surely.

All in it together? When will we see him and Osborne hand over some of their family fortune?

Claig - we finally agree on something! I do think there are some (many) genuine socialists in the Labour party. But Blair, Milburn and the like certainly aren't amongst them.