The Tories are gonna get in, it's inevitable do you care? Is there an upside?

[TheDullWitch]

Oh why not have the election NOW. Let the buggers get in, show their true colours, become universally loathed, then get kicked out after one term. Come on, let's get on with it!

Si it has worked then. NuLab have bought your vote.

fembear - that was a really childish response to a complicated personal situation there...how can you label proper support as 'vote buying'?

I am one of those people who wonders what the fuss really is all about in this country at the moment as I do remember how difficult things were for my parents in the 80s and they are easier beyond all recognition now.

I'm not sure the Tories will get in. Did anyone see that programme on the Bullingdon Boys at Oxford last night? A group he was a member of? He's an Eton toff who was only pictured yesterday quaffing from champagne just after announcing the huge cuts that would come if they were elected.

He's an Eton toff and I'm not sure that too many of the British public would stand for him being elected.

If they were to get in, we'd be screwed. My dh has had to take a pay cut from £8ph to £7.03. We get by because of the family tax credits. We have one holiday a year, we don't have sky TV, nothing in our house is new and we walk everywhere to save on petrol. Yet we just get by. Under them we'd have to downsize our rented property into a 2bed and have the kids share a room again. And we can kiss goodbye any chance of ever getting a mortgage.

I do actually applaud the Tories on some things. The scroungers embarrass me. I'm working class but those people are in a class of their own. Round here where we live atm both sets of parents stay at home all day living off benefits. The dads are usually on incapacity benefit because of a bad back or stress or whatever, yet you see them doing DIY on the house.

Yes it is demeaning to have to prove that you actually are incapacitated, but how else do we stop people from taking the piss?

However, what the government should do but never will, is take a pay freeze themselves.

giantwickerstacks - back in the '80s my mum was able to get a big council house right where she wanted it.

Due to the selling off of council houses, there are few left now and the waiting list is around 5 years. So we, like many others, have to pay a fortune for privately rented houses.

My childhood home was ours, we painted the walls, decorated, put up shelves, it was our home. My children don't have a home, we can't paint the walls or even put up their posters with blu-tack. The agents come around every 3 months to check on the house. It isn't our home and never will be and this reflects badly on our kids, they'll never feel settled and happy here.

I'm now in my 30s and my dh in his 40s, our chances of getting a mortgage just get slimmer and slimmer, esp as he's had to take a pay cut.

Things are very hard for a lot of us atm.

Sorry but can someone explain to me what happens to the benefit system if they get in?
I need my giro to get my fags

I remember reading an interview in the FT with David Cameron when he first took over. Now, the FT is not the Guardian, and the interviewer said that basically, DC is very much old school tory, felt the whole way through the interview that DC was looking down on him and basically, he's a posh twat. You never get the feeling he's being honest - the first few months he was in, he was like a political focus group's fantasy come to life. Not a real person.

I tried to look at their policies on their website before - very wishy washy, and you couldn't search (so look up something you're particularly concerned about, say working tax credits). You have to trawl through all their waffle and "we're so awesome" PR before finding anything. I've tried looking again (but their website crashed my internet. Not impressed) and they said they plan on replacing failing schools with Academies. Um, didn't Labour originally come up with that?

Now, I'm not all Yay! Labour! by any stretch of the imagination, but at the moment they're looking the least of a whole reem of evils.

FB ajrdly, don't vote for them LOL

Just like TC's

All of their money stuff seems to effect us a lot. Around £50,000 income for a household of 2 adults and 2 children (and a loafing teenage brother)doesn't seem to go far in London. Cutting out tax credits would be disastrous. I wonder if anyone will benefit?

I'm also concerned about their knowledge of international affairs. Under "foreign policies", they say "attempts by Iran to acquire nuclear weapons". Not attempts, they have acquired and they're also building nuclear weapons. Idiots.

I migt vote Labour this time though.

More becuase of other peoples non-policies than other ones though

I eman says scrap TC's.... what will they be replaced with?

A living wage- how will that be funded?Where will the jobs come from?

No replaement- so how will people cope, becuase rents / food rpices etc have riosen in line with family income, of which TC is often a part.

The benefit system would have to reform at cost as CTC now encompasses the parts of JSA for children, and also some disability paymnets.

But you know, thinking like that isn't the same as having ones vote bought; I am and have always been very politically aware. If I did think one prty would increase my chances of keeping ds1 with me- hell yes! What sort of Mother would I be otherwise?
That's neither immoral not renders me unthinking, just loving.

Tax Credits are the best thing that ever happened to us. It means we get by without struggling too much, without them we really would struggle.

They encourage parents to work by giving them an incentive to do so and gives low wage earners an additional boost.

They also enabled me to work by paying for my childcare. The Tories wouldn't do that. They'd just tell me that if I didn't work I'd get no benefits (not that I'm claiming any atm) and no doubt they'd penalise me even further if I didn't accept some part time cleaning job at Asda, for which I'd spend my wages on childcare for my kids, because they wouldn't pay those either.

Worrying about cuts to health and education really misses the point about the situation we're in.

Our public debt is so enormous, that institutions will soon stop lending to us on such generous terms. That will result in the chancellor hiking up interest rates to make the UK a more attractive proposition for lenders. The result of that - a wave of repossesions, unemployment skyrocketing, the cost of borrowing for businesses shooting up, the pound gaining strength just when we need to rebuild our export base. All ending with a much, much worse depression than we have now.

Unfortunately, the majority of voters don't understand the economic realities. There WILL be cuts to all public services, whoever gets in. There WILL be widespread pain, whoever gets in.

But unless the debt problem is resolved, we are, in a word, f**ked.

The thing is, they haven't ever said they are scrapping tax credits. They have said they will cut them for high earners, so people who earn over 50k per household, where they don't see them as necessary. They can't/won't abolish the tax credits system overnight despite what the sensationalist headlines will have you believe.

I know this is less important than helping people to make ends meet, but tax credits have helped me take a full year's maternity leave twice (and planning to for the next one due this month). Given the Tories love of the family (evidenced by their being the ones to abolish married couples allowance as a proper tax benefit ) this seems right up their street.

The kind of thing that has really pissed me off is hearing Osborne say they have plans to remove inheritance tax for all but millionaires - just a different type of vote buying surely, as was the selling off of council houses last time round. Is it ok to "buy" the votes of the middle classes, but not people who really need help in making ends meet?

I though you didn't get tax credits if you earn over 50k. Our household income last year was 48 (after bonus) and so we have to repay as the year before income was 39. Our household income is from one salary, perhaps if it was from two it would be slightly different. Either way you can't just based tax credits on salary thresholds, to make them fair you have to look at income and dependents if not geographical area.

A family with one child and an income of £50k living in the north-west will be much better off than a family with and income of £50k and 5 children living in the south-east for example. If the tories think a £50k income makes you a 'high-earner' why are they complaining about their MP's salaries which are, at the very basic level, much higher than £50k?

manfrom - taking cuts on public services and in our own pockets would be fair enough, if our government led by example. But hearing this from an Eton boy quaffing champagne hardly makes it better.

I agree with pay freezes for those in the top professions - the lowest wage earners, we've had our pay cut. Can you understand that? We weren't earning a right lot to begin with and now that's been cut. Many of us are just thankful that we still have jobs. So when I hear doctors on £40k pa moaning about their pay freezes my sympathy runs dry, did they not think that the recession would affect them?

I think the pay freeze should go further and I think the government should pledge to freeze their own pay.

It's about time this recession affected more than just the poorest.

I don't think you do get tax credits if you earn £50k or more.

It depwnds doesn't it- on number of children etc?

It's a staggerrd cut off

It is indeed true that they have not said they will cut TC's for those earning under £50k; I am suspicious they would but thats not a fact, just a feeiing.

manfrom I think it'sperfectly possible to accept that cuts have to be amde whilst debating ferosiously where they come from, and protecting health /education / socialservices etc is a valid debating point.

I think doctors deserve the money they are on by and large. Being a doctor takes a lot of training, commitment and financial outlay and is hard, thankless work on the whole.

I thin that's mainly true CK.

Yes they do, but they aren't getting a pay cut are they? They are getting a pay freeze.

I'm sorry but the cuts have to come from somewhere and I'd rather it came from the pockets of GPs and senior staff than nurses.

My dh works very very hard, he's up at 6am every morning and he's not back until 6pm, he used to do overtime too, till they cut it. He was underpaid at what he was on, and to have that cut back even further is a slap in the face.

Everyone deserves a decent wage, but we're in the middle of a dire recession and sacrifices have to be made. I'm not particularly happy about having to pay for other peoples mistakes when we weren't the ones taking out 100% mortgages or going on fancy holidays pay for by the credit card, but there you go, life ain't fair.

they have said in their policies that they're going to allow for parents to share up 12 months maternity/paternity leave between them, which is good. they've also said they're going to extend the right to flexible working for parents of children under 18. That's something.

Well it is, but the roblemswith fw aresevere- suchas companies can refuse (how could that be otherwise?) and ime of late thosewho haveit are preferred for redundancy.....

there'sa lot of complicatedstuff needsironing out.....

I asked dcwhat the policies on DLA andCA are to be told that they were undecided. How could that be a vote winner?

Are you typing one-handed?

Bleh - interesting the FT picked up that impression. I think that is absolutely right and am confused that people seem so drawn in by DC - and GO is even worse. I read an article by, I think, a food writer in The Sunday Times. Apparently he was going to meet DC at his house to talk Sun. lunches or some such, and he was in a taxi and as they pulled up DC got really shirty with the taxi driver re. where he was parking whilst the journo got out - and then on realising the journo was there came over all 'media' DC. The journo wasn't impressed.