why don't more women join Labour party?

[tabbymoomoo]

I would love to know why women Typically vote tory? conservatives ideology goes againist equality, when equality is a fundamental value of the labour party.

We should all be voting for labour because they are the founders of; the two weeks of referral for all
atients with breast problems,opened surestart centres,flexible
working for parents,national minimum wage,working tax credit,9 months paid maternity,Free nursery provision,fairer pension system.
for women,funded 36 Sexual Assault Referral Centres and
expanded the number of domestic violence
courts,96 women
with more women MPs then the other political parties put together,NHS,£370 million to deliver
improved short break services for families with
disabled children, Human rights.
The list goes on and on.

Also the current coalition cuts will hit women three times as hard as men, even though they earned and own less than men.
look at the things being cut: child benefit,housing benefit, health in pregnancy,tax credits,surestart,free swimming for under 16's and more. This will directly effect women.
it would be interesting to know your views.

I think that increasing teachers pay was maybe to attract people with different skills for example, business women from top jobs that might go for better paid jobs in other fields as it would be too bigger pay decrease otherwise.

I never said average income was £60K i wish. i think it's actually around £30k. thats not much if you live in london for example.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1293121/Average-annual-salary-drops-2-600-just-months.html.

if you earn the average of £30k for example VAT raise means your going to lose just over £400 a year. i think considering all the other cuts. thats alot to lose.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/10373992

Red Ed, himself says the Labour Party "got it wrong" on Iraq, Immigration, Civil liberties and the "City". Can you tell me why anyone, let alone women would want to join the Labour party? This party ruined this country and has left us with massive debts. This party has left this country paralysed culturally, economically,and our standing in the world has fallen due to the Iraq war. I believe anyone voting for such a load of reprobates in Westminster must need sectioning!. How much more pain do you want?

LOL complimentary - we'll see what mess the Tories leave us in in 4 years time. AGAIN

Well i've just joined Labour.

And I do appear to be a woman.

I joined becuase I am very disinclined to believe that as someone largely benefit dependant (carer, working DH on a low wage, disabled child who will have no choice but to claim for life but for invisible disability that cannot be accurately assessed by a visitng DLA bod) the Tories give a flying fuck about what happens to us.

Actually it's far more than that- ideological beliefs, best match when nbo exaft one to be amde etc.... but what me join, as opposed to support Labour is what I personally perceive as the Tory threat to my son's long term welfare. I'm trying to change my reliance: short of a cure for breain damage, ds3 won't get that chance.

complimentary: Iraq was wrong but because of alliances with usa I suspect with was sadly evitable (my sister is a solider I don't agree with the war) Labour had changes that were being passed regarding immigration to make tighter controls. but yes too late.

The large budget deficit is a result of the international financial crisis; this would have happened whoever was in power and is just propaganda to undermined Labour. the information is out there www.leftfootforward.org evidence-based political blogging.

you talk of pain, what about those who because the 2 week cancer referral promise (Labour) that has been scraped will suffer? the conservatives have scrapped this and the 18 week gp referral pledge. the hospitals are being privatized, what for them who can't afford to just go private?

what about people who may need the police? Police 'could lose 40,000 frontline jobs. they have to find cuts of nearly 40%.

The Tories want to help some married couples but cut help for kids. Most families with kids won't benefit at all from the Tories plans. Yet they are cutting child tax credits, the child trust fund and Sure Start child benefit. How can that be good for families in Britain? David Cameron has shown the Tories haven't changed ? they won't help kids, and their plans are unfair, irresponsible, out of touch and out of date. the marriage allowance would not benefit widows, women whose husbands leave them and remarry, or households were both husband and wife work. hardly progressive.

We should as women be voting for Labour because they are the founders of; the two weeks of referral for all patients with breast problems, opened sure start centres, flexible
working for parents, national minimum wage, working tax credit, 9 months paid maternity, Free nursery provision, fairer pension system.
for women, funded 36 Sexual Assault Referral Centers and
expanded the number of domestic violence courts, 96 MPs more then the other political parties put together, the NHS, £370 million to deliver
improved short break services for families with disabled children, Human rights.
The list goes on and on.

Also the current coalition cuts will hit women three times as hard as men, even though they earned and own less than men.
look at the things being cut: child benefit, housing benefit, health in pregnancy, tax credits, surestart, free swimming for under 16's and more. This will directly effect women.

If I did need support for mental health or any other vulnerability for that matter I wouldn?t be able to find it as support services are disappearing in their droves as the government have cut communities and local government budget by 50% over the next 2yrs.

I don't know why most people vote the way they do.

But I do get fucked off with hectoring types telling me how they think I should vote and talking as if this is something I had not clearly thought about until they rocked up.

I don't know, perhaps the on-message wanky lecturing tone is not really working?

FWIW - re milk snatcher - I was a school child in the 70s and could not have been more fucked over by the politicians, teachers and unions if they had done it on purpose.

It never stopped me voting Labour as it goes but if it was a choice between teaching strikes, great fuck off comps where I was told to just spell how I liked and then 3 days week meaning most of us had no money for frivolous shit like shoes and no electricity or bin collection... you could have had the milk.

HTHs

I meant 96 women mps

pagwach - that's how I've felt this past year in the Labour party.
Every time anyone raised any concerns we just got the hectorinng on message stuff. Bla, bla, bla.

Try to talk about borrowing and you get...global financial crisis, bla, bla, bla.
Point out that borrowing was rising sharply before the bailouts and you get...tree frog blink... Global financial crisis bla,bla,bla.

Ask about cuts, the war, detention without trial...and you get...do you want the tories to get in?

I would need Labour to make a full and grovelling apology over:

Iraq
Debt
Big brother like attitude to civil liberties

If I was to ever contemplate voting for them again.

tabby - lib dems say their aim it to take the tax allowance up to 10k and they announced an increase in the allowance towards that fig.

maybe not everyone wants to get married but the stats show this is best for children.

i'm not qualified to really talk about all the benefits you describe as the labour gov has never helped me one jot and I've never benefited from any of these that you mention.

many mothers round here will only work for 20 hours a week because they lose benefits if they work longer - is that the child tax credit one?

I wonder what percentage of the electorate vote for themselves and which for their perception of the "greater good"?

tabbymoomoo, you are correct, the labour party did do a lot for women and for children and indeed men.

something i have thought of and which I have not noticed from anyone else is that despite all these cuts to benefits/services to families/women/children, is that the CSA amounts are not changing. is it that no one cares? The coalition are not saying we will cut tax credits/housing benefits etc but will push up the percentage of a non resident parents contribution to maintenance. they are leaving the csa alone it seems, whilst cutting everything else. And, as I understand it, most of the csa dealings are male absent parents. poor children.

dreamingofsun, you can work 30+ hours and be entitled to tax credits. also, I think employees benefit from part tinme workers as they have to pay them less holiday pay etc-I mean... it is more profitable for them.

I didn't know you had dsylexia - and as you claim you were at school at the time the free milk was cut (i.e 1970), I'm not sure that you would have been picked up as having dyslexia at the time. I was at school then as well as it certainly wasn't as well known as it is now, 40 years on. As I didn't know when I posted that you had dyslexia, and as I don't have esp to see into your mind, I don't think that counts as bullying.

I think calling someone 'milk snatcher' is personal and distasteful, as well as inaccurate, when it was actually a measure that saved £20 million some of which was redirected to primary schools; and was a measure forced by spending cuts as a Labour govt had left the cupboard bare and a Tory govt had to sort it all out again. Now, why does that sound familiar?

I don't see why the excess borrowing can all be blamed on the bankers. Surely those who were doing the borrowing should have worked out what they could afford to repay and acted accordingly. The bankers are not wholly at fault here. As I have pointed out before, the Labour govt were overspending way before any financial crisis came into view; that was apparant from the number of stealth taxes and the freeze on tax thresholds that pushed many of the 'hardworking families' that Labour so loved to say they supported into the higher rate tax bands.

Families have not changed much since 1997; if you want a child, you make damn sure you can afford it on your salaries first and without needing state handouts. Believe it or not, people coped without tax credits and managed to pay nursery bills and the mortgage without needing tax credits to do so. As I lived 3.5 hours away from my son's grandparents, I had no help with childcare, hence I know about paying child care bills and the mortgage.

'If by highlighting SOME you?re implying I don?t work your very wrong.' No, read what I wrote. I said that some (i.e. not all) people choose not to work as a lifestyle choice. I was careful to put some as I know that some posters on here aren't in employment as they are carers, or are disabled, and I don't want to upset them.

I have to agree with Pag when she says that hectoring lectures about how we should vote are irritating. We did all this before the election and I had hoped all the politrolls had gone away. Evidently not, as you repeat the same lines again and again. I think you are on a hiding to nothing here, and the way in which you preach as if we are all stupid and can't think for ourselves is downright insulting. Please desist.

working more hours above 20 will not lose benefits, it is the fact that by working more you are paid more so lose benefits that way

scaryteacher- I disagree, I think families have changed since 1997- more cohabitees/unmarried mothers, more home ownership, longer council housing waiting lists, nursery fees have increased much more then average incomes, much higher house prices
-people didnt 'cope' without tax credits they just didnt work

I worked and coped without tax credits. The majority of my pay went on nursery fees (£400+ per month). In 1995 when I had ds, many cohabited, (I did in 1986), unmarried mothers were nothing new (several girls I was at school with were single mums in the early 80s), but the amount of support they receive has grown greatly; home ownership was standard, many people had bought when the rates dropped in 1993, and yes, house prices may have grown, but interest rates had dropped substantially.

People did cope without tax credits; it meant that you had to cut your cloth accordingly, but you did it, and kept working, so I don't buy your argument at all.

The only change since 1997 is that people have got used to treating tax credits as regular income. Reducing these payments therefore makes an impact. I've often thought (cynically possibly) that Labour deliberately wanted to increase the number of people on some kind of 'benefit' purely to spread this dependency. If we'd never had tax credits, we wouldn't miss them.

I wouldn't vote Labour as I'm not stupid.

No, but damned rude and bigoted!

You know, alot of us on MN ahd our kids pre tax credits; there's an ssumption we did not.

The only benefits I am interested enough that I would switch my vote for would be ones that help children like my ds3- those who are too severely disabled to work. Would anyone have an issue with that? yet the big bodies such as the NAS truly beleive these to be under threat. And we certainly know SSD provision etc is- one or two councils aready investigating privatisation of that service: barmy. It's such a basic. if I am not ehre and someone chooses ds3 doesn;t match a profile then he won;t eat and will die. he currently doesn;t match the profile btw. And neitehr does ds1 for anything, despite being both diagnosed with ASC and bullemia at ten.

That comment to Abr1de may come over as a personal attacl. But even so, I certainly felt insulted by the comment I was responsing to! I am categorically not stupid, there's nothing stupid in wanting to ensure your child is safe when you pass.

The figures quoted earlier by DDSM show that women to do not typically vote Tory. Decades ago it was indeed the case that women were less likely to vote in working class areas - hence women were under represented among Labour voters.

That said, the whole question smacks of something that really grates on me. Labour seem to have an attitude that they own the votes of women, ethnic minorities, immigrants, people with disabilities, the working class, public sector workers.

Indeed, the attitude that came across at the last election from Labour politicians loud and clear was that anyone they deemed to be somehow oppressed by rich white men (i.e Tory Toffs) should as of right vote for Labour and that people in those categories of voters have no brain and should just vote as a group because they are told to.

It is an incredibly condescending and arrogant attitude that I think in this election lost them a lot of votes.

Does this boil down to how much, as women, we want/expect someone else to look after us? The Labour message has always sounded to me - once you've stripped away the flummeries - 'let us look after everything'. And I'm sure this is an attractive proposition to many but to me it sounds suffocating and old-fashioned. As an independent woman I prefer the Tory ethos of 'we think you can look after yourself'. Riskier but more free.

Clearly, in today's centrist political climate there's a lot of crossover and much of the difference between the parties is subtle. But that's fundamentally why I don't vote Labour and possibly others as well.

agree chil - and the bit that really annoys me with labour is the 'hand all your money over' which prefixes the 'and we'll look after you' statement.

I honestly believe that I would be stupid to vote for them. If you don't like that, then fair enough. I didn't say that you were stupid, I don't even know who you are.

We don't vote Labour, because we vote for the good of the community and the country, not just for ourselves.

Yes, Labour, do offer benefits and bribes to people in the hope of getting their votes. If they didn't do this, nobody would vote for them, because their policies on their own do not appeal to teh majority and never will. That's why their newspapers like the Daily Mirror and the Guardian sell far less than the opposition newspapers. they use spinners and weavers to fool the public, but fortunately they can't fool all the people all of the time, as they found out in the election.

We don't vote for them, because we understand what their true underlying aims and motives are, the ones behind the bribes. We are not fooled by Greeks bearing gifts, we can spot their Trojan Horse a mile off. We've seen what they did, we know what "straight kinda guys" they are. We are not stupid enough to be taken in by their "education, education, education" mantra ever again.

They know it too, they know we are onto them, they know we have sussed their game. That's why they have had yet another rebranding propaganda exercise. This time they've disguised themselves as "progressives". But their spin doctors have patronised and underestimated us yet again.

Even Hazel Blears said that they had done "wicked and malicious" things. We knew that. We are, for once, in full agreement with Hazel. That's why we don't vote for them.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11436800