An open letter to everyone who voted Conservative

[blacksunday]

To everyone who voted conservative yesterday,

I hope you’re happy. Actually that’s a lie, I really don’t. But before you sit smugly down and give yourself a big pat on the back I’d like to ask you a few questions.

Do you think you haven’t benefitted from the system you are currently trying to break down? As a child, did you ever go to hospital? Have you had an education? Did you ever use a library? Have you ever been on a bus? If so, you have benefited from a system which subsidises facilities with taxes. And now you have, you are willing to take it away from everyone after you. Correct me if I’m wrong but that doesn’t seem very fair. You cannot have socialism and a support system when you need it but then be unwilling to support it for other people.

Now if you are someone who has used the private sector more than public services then I also want to know a few things. If you went to private school, or used private medical care as a child, did you pay for it yourself? Now I’m not asking if your parents paid for it, but you personally. I’m guessing the answer is no. So can you genuinely say you worked hard to get these privileges? No baby earns the right to an education. No child works hard to be born into a particular family who can afford healthcare. So why do you think one person is more deserving than another? If you value working hard and getting on how can you see this as fair? Do you really want to live in a world where children are deemed more worthy of education and healthcare based on what family they come from?

If you are someone who uses a lot of private, who are you? Are you one of the 1% who are currently getting richer? If so, are you ok with the fact that your benefit is someone else’s misery, someone’s poverty, someone’s lack of care? Are you ok with the fact that while you got a pay rise 900,000 people had to go to food banks because they literally didn’t have enough money to feed themselves to survive? Do you really believe that you work harder than these people?

If you aren’t one of these few people benefitting from this system then why have you voted for it? Conservatives use rhetoric of working hard and fairness but this is simply not the reality. If you start life without a lot, to get out of that is hard. “Success” stories are pinned up to show that if you work hard you get somewhere. But they are stories because they are anomalies. To come from a background of little education or money and to get a career you want is not the common way, and you can’t do it without a benefit system. We do not live in a system where if you work hard you get somewhere, the system the conservatives are creating means that if you start off well off you stay that way. Because someone who goes to a private school with tiny class sizes and one on one help does not have to work as hard as someone at an underachieving state school with over worked underpaid staff and huge classes. They just don’t.

Now if you are either one of these types of people you have to question whether you really do believe in what you have voted for. Because in voting conservative you are saying you are happy with the last 5 years. You are endorsing food banks. You are endorsing cutting care for the elderly and the mentally ill. You are endorsing a party where over half the MPs voted against gay marriage. You are saying yes to the NHS being privatised. You are saying you are happy with people being put off education based not on ability or passion but by money. You are saying yes to victimising the poor and disabled and scapegoating people based on where they come from. You are saying that you are ok with the incredible inequality in our country today and you are saying you want more of it.

I do not wish poverty on anyone. It is a cruel and harsh life. But what I do wish for you is that you at least experience it. If not first hand, that you witness the harsh trapping reality that is poverty. The gruelling cycle that doesn’t allow a parent to feed their children. That doesn’t allow for parents to feed themselves. And that you see that this is people who are working. People with jobs. And if they aren’t I hope you see that a life on benefits is not the picnic people make it out to be. Nobody wants to be on benefits. Maybe if you see this you will see what you have voted for.

And if you are ok with all of this then you make me sick. I can’t put it any other way. I am so ashamed to come from a country where this is apparently what the majority think. That the majority of people are too selfish to accept any form of tax rise to support those in our society who need help makes me so incredibly sad. Truly you should be ashamed of yourself that you can so heartlessly put yourself first and not see the consequences. I hope that in the next 5 years you fully appreciate what you did yesterday. I hope you know what you have supported and I hope one day you feel guilty. Because I am scared of what the next 5 years will bring and you should be too.

GingerCuddleMonster, the election isn't a game. It's not about being a sore loser - people who didn't vote for winning party aren't losers, they are simply people who don't agree with the Conservative party. Some people are deeply concerned and desperately worried about their future and the future of certain sections of society in the next 5 years. What can a Conservative supporter say to those people who are concerned to reassure them?

I agree that name calling and insults is never productive. And vandalism is mindless and stupid in any circumstance.

Gosh thanks for that Horse

I was making the point in reply to shelly
That in actually 63% of the population hadn't voted for Tory.

No need to spit your dummy at me

Sorry Twat it's just that there has been so much grizzling from sore losers on that point and it's now rather tedious.

Is there any chance that the references to sore losers could stop... It's not a game, people feel strongly about it because it's about people's lives and futures.

But I did want to dispel the myth that more people wanted a conservatives government then not.

That's fair enough, but what I was meaning was that FB, Twitter and MN seem to be frequented more by people with left-wing views and who are very willing to air those views.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, of course, but thinking that what one reads on social media is the view of a broad cross section of the public is naive.

Stop being a bloody sore loser then!!! Quit grizzling, lick your wounds and do something proactive instead of whining about how unfair it is the evil tories won!!

How on earth do you know, Horsemadbird, that people aren't doing that as well? Why on earth aren't people allowed to talk about it on a discussion forum?

And, for the record, I don't think that Conservatives are evil - just wrong, imo. It's also not unfair that they won, just disappointing and worrying, imo.

Regarding people dying whilst claiming for incapacity benefit etc...

I work in Social Care. Every week cases are closed because the person has, sadly, died. Very often people who are ill, die.

I laughed at your post Cherries

Laughing about people dying (for whatever reason)... that's nice, fiveacres.

Just seen this meme elsewhere, made me laugh so thought I would share it here!

"Actually if we look at it this way 63.1% of the voting public didn't vote for or want the Torys."

And around 70% didn't want Labour. 80%, if you count those who didn't care sufficiently to vote at all.

Well point is that if most people oppose the Tories their opposition must be a lot more organized. Labour could not articulate an opposition that included enough people.

In the last decade or so when some working class people have voiced their concerns about immigration they have effectively been told to FO and so enough of them have left the Labour fold that the UKIP is now in third place in terms of votes.

Labour could have really used some of those millions. Labour says it is the party of ordinary working people and then absolutely refused to even have a serious debate about their concerns.

It makes no logical sense to say people who do not vote Labour are "brainwashed" when those very same people are saying "I have concerns that the national party or even the national media refuse to discuss". It shows that people are being talked at and not listened to.

If you call yourself a leader and look around and nobody's there, you are not a leader you are just going for a walk.

The statistics for the last few decades suggest that the Tory share of the vote was fairly average and this site www.ukpolitical.info/2010.htm makes a good read for those who keep pointing out that they ONLY had 36% of the vote. If you had done your research you would know that the last successful Labour government had less than this. As for proportional representation the Tories would probably have teamed up with UKIP.
I suspect if you are in the group who have just voted for the first time it must come as a shock that democracy doesn't always work out how you expect it to. But throwing the toys out of your pram will not make people change their mind about their own ideals.
Democracy allows us to be free thinkers and free speakers.

Or would you have been happier with PR which would have given us a UKIP/Con coalition?

If people knew that their vote mattered the result would have been very different, there would have been a much bigger green vote for a start. So many people voted tactically instead of for the party they wanted to.

I think that if we had a PR system in place that people would perhaps vote differently, as their vote would count. So there would be a shift in tactical voting and the results wouldn't map onto what would happen under FPTP.

Both willdoitinaminute and lumpy make great points.

Oh I have truly had enough of smug Labourites putting my voting choices down as 'I couldn't possibly know what it's like to be poor' etc. You want to know what it is like to be poor?

Living in a house with no heat apart from an open fire in the living room.

An outside toilet and no hot running water. A bath in front of the fire once a week with water boiled on the hob and a bath at Nan's in between as she had a bathroom.

In the winter the bedroom wall being so damp that the eiderdown (which it was in those days) went from girly pink to black with mould down one side.

In the coldest part of the winter, lifting chunks of ice off of the wallpaper INSIDE the bedroom.

Your father having to work a three day week the small factory he worked in couldn't keep going because the bloody unions (not the one in his factory) had, once again, gone on strike. This was in the 1970s.

Your mum having to do two jobs because of dad's three day week.

But because your parents worked instead of sitting on their arses you couldn't get free school meals, couldn't get housing benefit, couldn't get bugger all. Mum didn't get child allowance for me because in those days it was 2nd plus kids that got the allowance - to encourage bigger families after the 2nd world war.

But you know what you do get? A massive distrust and dislike of unions and the Labour party in general. A huge sense of pride in your family's resilience and a sense of self worth which meant that, on leaving school with 3 O levels at 16, you realised you needed more. You needed to get out of council housing, needed to get a job that would buffer you because - labour or conservative - no one owed you a living and no one bloody cared. Got a job, worked a 40 hour plus week, studied at night school, studied at the OU - paid for the lot yourself, no subsidy, no grant, no help from mum and dad because they had nothing to give except encouragement and a work ethic.

And it's funny how Labour rant about selfish Conservatives when they are propped up by the most selfish group of people ever. The unions. I once asked a train driver I met at a party how he felt about me having to travel for 3 hours each way to work instead of an hour on the days he was on strike for better conditions FOR HIM and more money FOR HIM. He shrugged and told me he didn't give a toss. Sums it up. Unions didn't give a shit about the other poor sods who lost jobs because their industrial action caused a knock on effect. As long as the miners, power plant workers, bus/train drivers could feed their kids, the rest of the kids in the country could starve. But they soon rattled the buckets when they couldn't put food on their table - my money stayed in my pockets (callous conservative you see).

So, vote Labour? With their support for the unions. Not a chance. Never. I have walked to school in London through bin bags piled up higher than me. I have seen my parents eat nothing to feed us kids. I have had to get up at the crack of dawn and struggle to work so some train driver can sit on his arse for the day to prove his/her union is stronger than the bosses so they can get a pay rise. Lucky them, I had to pay out extra to get home on those days. All brought about by unions - and Labour is union backed so my vote will never go towards giving them more power. I disliked Blair but may well have voted for someone similar to him as he refused to get into bed with the unions. Red Ed was the opposite - therefore no vote from me.

My dad did whatever he could to put food on our table - no benefits. Mum worked two jobs when dad's factory went on a three day week. When I was made redundant I did temp work - anything to keep the bills paid and keep off of benefits. Benefits are there as a lifeline. They were never designed to 'pay' you to stay at home. They are badly designed and need overhauling. They should be high enough to not need subsidising with housing benefit or council tax benefit or any other add on benefit, just like wages should be.

And I know about benefits. My mum now gets state pension and pension credit. Stupid. Pay her a proper pension and cut the credit! She gets housing benefit as a 'subsidy'. Just pay the right amount of pension and she'll pay her bloody rent! She has alzheimers. Can you imagine how complicated it is for her to understand she gets pension, pension credit, housing benefit, supporting people payment and council tax credit? Just pay the woman a proper pension and remove the rest. She doesn't need nannying. She can pay her rent with the proper pension. But successive governments have assumed poorer people will fritter their money away so housing benefit goes straight to the council etc. It's insulting. But that is the Labour way - nannying people through rather than giving them a good main benefit and that's it so that work looks appealing but if you have to stay on benefits you can still live.

I have also seen the NHS at its best and also at its most wasteful. My mum, as I have said, has alzheimers. My son has a congenital condition. Both of them get the best care possible - in fact it has got better in the past five years (possible coincidence I know and I am not saying it's any government's achievement) but the last appointment I took my mum to had us sitting in a clinic for an hour waiting for a consultant. He took one look at my mum's notes, said 'well, it looks like your operation was fine so we don't need to see you' and with that we left! A receptionist, two nurses and a consultant were in that clinic. Pick up the sodding phone and tell us that. Waste, waste, waste! How much were that group paid? Ridiculous! So that sort of thing needs to be reigned in if the NHS is to survive obviously.

Where there are jobs people should be working if they are able and where there are no jobs or people can't work for illness/disability the benefits system should be enough to keep people's heads above water. I agree with that. Just because I vote Conservative does not mean I don't agree with helping our most vulnerable.

But I cannot support a party that is in the pockets of the unions and which whacks you with tax increases if you dare to drag yourself further up the wages ladder or - God forbid - work your way into 'middle classes' whatever that is! When the Labour party changes it's act, I may change my voting decisions. Until then I will look after my own, just like my family has always had to.

And if, OP, you're happy with the Labour party being in the pockets of the unions then in your words 'you make me sick'. Your party's voters decided not to vote. The Conservative party voters got off their backsides. We won. Get over it. See you in five years.

You do realise that not only the left vote tactically or not at all in a safe opposition seat.

there would have been a much bigger green vote for a start

Possibly, but we don't know that as there are so many possible reasons for each vote cast.

One of my friends planned to vote green (don't know if she did) as she wants to add to the pressure on the main parties to take more notice of green (small g) issues and her favoured party had no chance of winning the seat where she is anyway.

Would she gave voted Green if that vote made it more likely that their fiscal policies would be brought to bear? I don't know but, knowing her views on the economy, I doubt it.

And in any case, PR would have meant that the vote for her otherwise favoured party wouldn't have been wasted so I would guess that they would have got her vote.

Yes, of course people from all political persuasions will vote tactically under FPTP. That's what I meant in fact, that tactical voting would become much much less (if not disappear) and so election results may well look very different.

Like Esmum07, I grew up without an inside toilet, without central heating, ice on the inside of windows and not enough money. Part of my job entails visiting homes and discussing stuff including benefits. I have worked in areas of deprivation. The benefits system under Labour had become ridiculous. It took way the culture of support to those most in need and became a culture of why should we work? the state should support us. Benefits are there for the most in need. Not people who just can't be bothered to work which it had become.

The Tories came out with a marginally smaller % of the vote compared to 2010 so that leaves approximately 63% who did not vote for them.
They won 100 more seats than Labour with 11,300,000 (approx) which was only 2 million more than Labour.
The turn out was less than 70% which was disappointing.
With this in mind the electoral system needs a major overhaul

The other way round... 30 odd % decided not to bother voting against them...they didn't vote for anybody - not for Labour either ...

The Tories have a majority because people could not be arsed to oppose them.