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An open letter to everyone who voted Conservative

557 replies

blacksunday · 10/05/2015 07:19

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.

OP posts:
claig · 16/05/2015 13:27

A good article in the Daily Mail on this topic. I am glad the author mentioms the joke that is so often invited onto the metropolitan BBC, Canon Giles Fraser. He also mentions the quintessential BBC and Guardian luvvie Charlie Brooker. I am surprised that Labour's party political broadcasts didn't feature those two right-on luvvies.

"The incredible sulk: All week, the Left have been frothing with fury that their fellow Britons could be so wicked and stupid as to vote in the Tories. Nothing better shows their contempt for ordinary people...
...
the reaction in some quarters to the General Election result strikes me as not merely disproportionate, but deluded — if not deranged.

Take, for example, the Anglican canon Giles Fraser, darling of the metropolitan chattering classes.

Four years ago, he resigned as chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral in protest at plans to remove forcibly the anti-capitalist protesters who had set up a ‘shanty town’ camp outside, saying he could not support the possibility of ‘violence in the name of the Church’.

‘Right now I feel ashamed to be English,’ began his column for The Guardian last weekend. ‘Ashamed to belong to a country that has clearly identified itself as insular, self-absorbed and apparently caring so little for the most vulnerable people among us.’
...
‘I’ve instinctively hated the Tories since birth,’ comedian Charlie Brooker once wrote in (you guessed it) The Guardian.

‘If there was an election tomorrow, and the only two choices were the Nazis or the Tories, I’d vote Tory with an extremely heavy heart.’

It would be easy to dismiss this as exaggerated posturing for melodramatic effect. But the fact is that in some areas of our national life — especially the universities and parts of the media — such views are regarded as mainstream.

One anecdote tells a wider story. A friend who teaches at Cambridge once told me he is afraid to admit to his colleagues that he reads The Times, lest they dismiss him as a brainwashed lackey of Rupert Murdoch. Instead, he pretends to read The Guardian, even though he can’t abide it.

This is not so much an issue of conscious bias as it is a case of what the American writer William H. Whyte once called ‘groupthink’: an intellectual conformity which is all the more insidious because it is so unconscious.
...
For there is, of course, another Britain. This is the country that the vast majority of people inhabit — a country very far removed from the gloomy Orwellian dystopia portrayed by Mr Miliband and his admirers, or by those BBC journalists who love to paint our country in the worst possible light.

This is the Britain of the silent majority — a decent, tolerant but quietly conservative bunch, horrified by the antics of the anarchists, scornful of the entreaties of demagogues such as Russell Brand, and much more interested in bread-and-butter issues than in the smug sixth-form pretensions of the former Labour leader and his Oxbridge chums.

What Left-wing intellectuals can never get into their heads is that most people are simply not very interested in party politics. They have much better things to worry about.

Yet it was a mark of Mr Miliband’s utter detachment from social and political reality that he and his allies were sucked into the echo chamber of Twitter, which is inevitably dominated by students, Westminster journalists and jumped-up B-list celebrities who think they’re as clever as the lines that are written for them.

[[For there is, of course, another Britain. This is the country that the vast majority of people inhabit — a country very far removed from the gloomy Orwellian dystopia portrayed by Mr Miliband and his admirers, or by those BBC journalists who love to paint our country in the worst possible light.

This is the Britain of the silent majority — a decent, tolerant but quietly conservative bunch, horrified by the antics of the anarchists, scornful of the entreaties of demagogues such as Russell Brand, and much more interested in bread-and-butter issues than in the smug sixth-form pretensions of the former Labour leader and his Oxbridge chums.

What Left-wing intellectuals can never get into their heads is that most people are simply not very interested in party politics. They have much better things to worry about.

Yet it was a mark of Mr Miliband’s utter detachment from social and political reality that he and his allies were sucked into the echo chamber of Twitter, which is inevitably dominated by students, Westminster journalists and jumped-up B-list celebrities who think they’re as clever as the lines that are written for them.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3083976/The-incredible-sulk-week-Left-frothing-fury-fellow-Britons-wicked-stupid-vote-Tories-better-shows-contempt-ordinary-people.html

We are run by a bien pensant group of teenage think tank twitterati from Oxbridge and London who think ordinary people are Tory scum for voting for common sense and an end to their politically correct groupthink preaching. The BBC and their W1A thinking are right behind them. But this time, the voters told them where to get off.

CultureSucksDownWords · 16/05/2015 13:40

You know people can actually follow a link and read the content from source? Why the need to copy and paste vast tracts into your posts?

LumpySpacedPrincess · 16/05/2015 13:48

So disabled people who are scared are "contemptuous"....? Riiiight.

claig · 16/05/2015 13:49

Because most people don't bother clicking on outside articles and don't have time to read entire thousand word articles and since I think that lots of journalists make very good points that shine a light on issues, I try to include the best points they make directly within posts in order to prompt discussion on these points.

CultureSucksDownWords · 16/05/2015 13:52

You could try summarising and using the most relevant quotes, rather than a text dump of the whole lot. I think most people wouldn't read such a long post or just skim it if they do. It's like wading through treacle.

claig · 16/05/2015 13:55

I haven't dumped the whole lot. I have read the whole lot and quoted the best bits to save anyone else the time if they can't read the whole thing. If you want to skip it, then that's OK. I hardly think that reading a Daily Mail article is like "wading through treacle", it's not the Labour manifesto.

claig · 16/05/2015 13:56

It is salient points by a historian and top Daily Mail journalist, not the writing on the Edstone.

claig · 16/05/2015 14:00

It makes a lot of good points about our teenage Oxbridge bien pensant progressive poseurs and penseurs amd makes more sense than the hieroglyphics on the elusive Edstone.

CultureSucksDownWords · 16/05/2015 14:05

You've pasted the same bit twice in that long post as well, which you haven't spotted.

I don't care what the source of the text is, in a long post like that anything would become hard to read. Perhaps it's worse because I'm on the mobile app which doesn't lend itself well to long posts.

claig · 16/05/2015 14:09

'which you haven't spotted'

I did spot it. I made a mistake in the posting. I apologise.

Yes it makes the post long, but the whole thread is far longer amd I think that the points it makes are very relevant to the disdain in which some of our left wing metropolitan intelligentsia hold ordinary people. If you can read the whole thing, then I think it is worth it, if you only get time to skim the quotes that I have posted, then I think that is also useful to understand how non-left voters see things. If you think it is rubbish, then that is OK too.

CultureSucksDownWords · 16/05/2015 14:18

Not all non-left voters think the same thing. The opinions in the article are representative of the author and what they think the readership of the DM want to read. They don't represent the opinions of every non left voter.

claig · 16/05/2015 14:22

No they don't represent them all, but I think they represent a lot more than the Labour leadership think. The more free speech, the more diversity of opinion the better in order to end the teenage groupthink of our conformist political class that does not serve the best interests of the people.

As the Daily Mail journalist so rightly said

"This is not so much an issue of conscious bias as it is a case of what the American writer William H. Whyte once called ‘groupthink’: an intellectual conformity which is all the more insidious because it is so unconscious."

claig · 16/05/2015 14:27

In this election, the public broke their groupthink and laughed at it. They said that the leftwing emperor had no clothes. Now the leftwing emperor's devoted acolytes are abusing the people and calling them uncaring Tory scum for having dared to vote against them.

CultureSucksDownWords · 16/05/2015 14:29

It sounds dangerously like you're saying that anyone who doesn't agree with you, or worse actually supports the Labour Party, are by definition guilty of this "groupthink" and are brainwashed. I'm sure that's not what you meant though.

Why are the Tory party exempt from the charge of being out of touch Oxbridge elite?

claig · 16/05/2015 14:39

No I have said that the teenage groupthink is the thinking of our Oxbridge metropolitan political class who use the media and BBC etc in order to try and frighten and scaremonger the people that the "Tory scum" are uncaring and will scrap the NHS and make people suffer poverty because they don't care about them.

In my opinion, the groupthink is the W1A BBC, Canon Giles Fraser and the leftwing metropolitan intelligentsia.

'Why are the Tory party exempt from the charge of being out of touch Oxbridge elite?'

The are not which is why I vote UKIP. The Tory elite are less out of touch than Labour because their philosophy is closer aligned to the philosophy of most people, but they are a product of the same Oxbridge mentality and groupthink that believes in hugging hoodies, preaching to people and imposing minimum alcohol pricing on them "for their own good". They have a similar patrician, Etonian, Oxbridge disregard and disrespect for ordinary people, but less so than the leftwing teenage elite.

claig · 16/05/2015 14:52

Lynton Crosby is spot on about Miliband and this is I what mean about our teenage elite

"And what about Mr Miliband as a candidate?

“He really was a sort of first year politics graduate who thought he had the answers to the world’s problems - who’d done a year of the course and it was just that other people hadn’t been as smart as him in the past to implement the policies that he believed in."

And he is also right about our political pundits, BBC and all the rest.

"Most went to Oxbridge, talk only to themselves and last time they met a punter was when they picked up their dry cleaning."

Have our hoodie hugging Tory elite got no one in England to help them see the truth, are they too clever to read our Daily Mail, why do they need a clever Australian to help them win and beat the teenage team?

claig · 16/05/2015 14:55

And here is the politician who has burst their Oxbridge teenage bubble and put the wind up our entire elite simply by speaking common sense, something that will gain many more votes over the coming years

“The people of Doncaster, and a large swathe of Northern constituencies are utterly fed up with the seminar room, teenage politics of the modern Labour Party and they are increasingly turning to UKIP to provide a real alternative,” Mr Farage added.

www.thestar.co.uk/news/ukip-s-nigel-farage-says-party-can-oust-ed-miliband-and-win-doncaster-seats-1-6944560

sourdrawers · 16/05/2015 15:07

I reckon Isitmebut and claig are actually the same person.

I reckon so too LumpySpaced! Their posts have a very similar same right-wing tone and they both seem to be very ready with the Tory Party HQ/ The Spectator / Daily Mail statistics and links on hand. Plus they both seem to be talking to themselves. Long may that continue...

claig · 16/05/2015 15:11

Isitmebut supports Cameron and the modernisers, I support the People's Army and Farage.

Isitmebut dislikes UKIP. I don't mind the Tories, but much prefer UKIP.

Isitmebut is for Cameron, I'm for common sense.

Isitmebut · 16/05/2015 15:30

Ha ha ha ha .... typical left-whingers, when confronted with Labour's record and the facts on the anti Conservative or free market scare stories, 'go personal'.

If someone seems to have a grasp of the facts, they are 'politicians', when looking at the record/ignorance of key issues and the recent intake, the last person I'd be is a politician.

Claig and I 'are one and the same', lol, still it fills the voids on the board of informed challenges, of the facts you want to read.

P.S. Claig, please don't speak for me, especially with the stupid labels you use e.g. 'modernisers', especially as time and time again I've shown you that the core Conservative ideology i.e. what drives a sustainable economy, the size of government should be what it NEEDS to be not an employment fest, citizens keep more of their own money, defense, education, law and order etc etc - are still in place.

claig · 16/05/2015 15:39

'Claig, please don't speak for me'

I wouldn't try to, I can't get my head around some of that twaddle - it is modernising, misguided and missing a trick.

MoominKoalaAndMiniMoom · 16/05/2015 16:03

The 'People's Army'

Hmm, shades of EDL/Britain First there...

claig · 16/05/2015 16:10

Are the Tartan Army, the Barmy Army or Dad's Army anything to do with the EDL/Britain First?

The People's Army is a laugh, it represents the people against the Establishment and the metropolitan elite.

Isitmebut · 16/05/2015 19:20

Claig .. the difference between me and you, is that I have my own opinions and use a link and highlights to qualify them - you have to regurgitate whole opinions of others, in full.

You are a complete fraud, telling the board that you used to vote Conservative until 2010 - while spewing pre Soviet Union era class and privilege mantras - get your story/cover straight, dear.

claig · 16/05/2015 19:30

'you have to regurgitate whole opinions of others, in full.'

You're just sore because I don't regurgitate your "opinions".

'while spewing pre Soviet Union era class and privilege mantras'

I say the things the People's Army say, nothing to do with progressive communists. I'm not a progressive Tory moderniser, I'm People's Army and you are a Cameroonie lefty.