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.

"Wiggly I think you'll find that those who are working with families and authorising vouchers are the 'frontline'"

yes but if she's issued only 5 vouchers then her evidence is anecdotal, compared to data from a survey of all the major food banks, would you not say?

Totally incorrect blacksunday See here

As wiggly points out, there is a difference between vote share and percentage of population who voted for a party.

The Tories got 36% of the total vote share.

However, 24% of the population voted for them.

Apologies OP and wiggly, you only called a fifth to a quarter of the population sociopaths/stupid.

Ffs, I am apologising because I got the number of people you insulted incorrect!!

What I meant was: over a third of the voting population.

When I was a child all the rough areas had Vote Labour signs in the windows and all the nice places had Vote Conservative
Also, this was true when I was growing up, and I found the same applied this year too. And all the places in between, the little independent cottages by the side of the road, farm entrances on the county lanes - had either Lib Dem or Green support posters. Same as it ever was.

Don't overegg it. It's not like the majority of the public voted for the Tories.

Less than 25% did. The Tories didn't even win a majority of the vote share.

Sorry - this was poorly phrased. I meant that those who voted and voted Tory didn't obtain 50% of the votes.

banana you are twisting my words again. Are you deliberately misunderstanding me or just not bothering to read all of my post?

Please, try actually reading my post when I explained I wasn't calling anyone stupid, I was saying people in general are easily manipulated by forces like the media, and the Tory campaign of propaganda sems to have worked.

The Tory propaganda is just that, propaganda

What about Labour's propaganda?

Is that something else other than propaganda?

Well, too bad if you're insulted.

Tory policies are going to bring misery and sometimes death to a great number of people in the UK in the next five years.

Death is a lot more offensive than name calling.

Well, perhaps we should be addressing why there wasn't a bigger turnout then.

Looks like we are still stupid sociopaths then Banana

I just don't get it. Someone I work with is a Labour voter through and through. Him and I have reasoned discussions and if anyone could make me change to Labour it would be him. He talks sense. Also, of the 5 in our family, 3 of us voted for different parties (Labour/Con/Green). We debate, we talk, we reason. Yet the OP started this ridiculous thread and I just can't work out what she hopes to achieve because calling a huge swathe of the population stupid sociopaths is hardly going to make me listen is it.

OP

To be honest, I wanted another Tory/LibDem coalition because that is basically "Tory Light".

My closest friends all voted Conservative. Some of them are economists by trade.

The reason none of us wanted Labour to get anywhere close to government is simple: the economy. Without a good economy, we would not have the money to spend on all the things you think are so important. There would be no money going towards benefits, tax credits, nor the NHS.

Labour's version on how the economy should pan out under their watch just did not make sense. That's all. The only way they would have gotten more money into the system is by borrowing. Again.

You know what happens to many families on pay day loans, right?

Coffecake, if you're so into reasoned debate, I'm very curious as to what you can say in response to this:

"Tory policies are going to bring misery and sometimes death to a great number of people in the UK in the next five years."

Do you accept that?

I spent almost twenty years in education , in some of the toughest schools, in prisons, and special schools in the South East.

It is why I am a dyed in the blood, true blue Tory and will never, ever vote Labour.

Labour consigned a generation to the scrap heap . A generation of decent people trapped on benefits in expensive housing because HB was a blank cheque to LL and pushed out of traditional work by high cost of living, benefits that made work unviable , immigration and a culture of state dependancy.

And now, finally, they are reaping what they have sown .

Personally, I don't really care anymore. We're stuck with the Tories for 5 years now - barring enough riots in the streets to oust them.

We'll see the state of the UK after five years.

Perhaps we won't be in the EU and Scotland will break away.

Then England can live out it's little-Englander fantasies, isolated from the rest of the world. Without those bloody foreigners.

Wiggly I am not twisting your words, I am trying to express how UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING OFFENSIVE you are being.

I am well read, with a mind of my own. There are many like me. Millions of people in Britain have their own minds, beliefs and priorities. We voted.

I and the millions of others like me find it offensive that people like you infer that we 'swallow propaganda' and are 'taken in by the media', and if we are not those poor mindless sheeples then we clearly must be sociopaths.

Ffs.

No, horsemaid. Low pay makes work unviable.

Wiggly your words or someone else's?

"Labour's version on how the economy should pan out under their watch just did not make sense. That's all. The only way they would have gotten more money into the system is by borrowing."

Right. So, are you aware that the Tories have borrowed more in 5 years than Labour did in 13?

Ah, so now they aren't stupid, just that everyone who voted tory have swallowed the press propagander. Sigh.

If everyone was just as enlightened as you wiggly, and only read the non partisan guardian. Hey.

As for the vote share, with our current system of FPTP that means tory got a majority, the same system where labour managed to gain power using similar vote share, now if you think PR would be any better the coalition would still be tory but with UKIP.

Wiggly Secondly, my point was that I believe the population are generally misinformed, not sociopaths. The Tory propaganda is just that, propaganda, and people seem to have swallowed it, for now at least.

No I am misinformed and I didn't swallow any propaganda, I understand the issues and made my choice based on that. I also don't think anyone who claims benefits are scum or want people to die or want the NHS privatised. I would be happy to pay more tax to support disabled people and people in poverty. I do think that sometimes people do need financial incentives to get away from a cycle of benefits although they are a small minority. I would never want to be on benefits and don't in any way envy people who are or think they have a great life with big TV's etc, even if they think they are better off on benefits I think they would be so much better off working even if the state spent the same amount of money as they receive in benefits to subsidise this work. I believe that the NHS will not be privatised by the conservatives and that welfare will not be removed. I may be proved wrong but I still made an informed decision.

Have you ever considered that you are also being swayed by left wing propaganda or are only the thick people who vote tories open to propaganda. The main problem is that I can see the issues with foodbanks, welfare cuts, spare room subsidy etc and don't agree with everything the conservatives do but it seems you can only see one side of things.

Coffee they are the OP's, but I have written similar on other threads.

What is your response?

My response is of course that I don't agree. What did you expect?

Well you cared enough to start this mawkish thread OP.

And big-up to the rioting thugs too! Yeah! Oust the Tory scum!

But don't you worry your pretty little heads about what you are costing the country during and after the thuggery and vandalism - money the country can ill afford.

Viva la revolution! Etc etc etc…

banana have you read [[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/british-public-wrong-about-nearly-everything-survey-shows-8697821.html this link]? I take it you haven't.

I'm sorry you find it offensive that people are easily manipulated, but it's the truth, I'm not making it up! (I'm curious, how do you account for the advertising industry otherwise, are they all just pouring their billions spent on it down a drain?!)

I'll post some the article here so you don't have to leave the site. This is the kind of thing I mean. (Or do you this the Royal Statistical Society are not reporting fact but are actually being offensive and calling everyone stupid too? )

"A new survey for the Royal Statistical Society and King's College London shows public opinion is repeatedly off the mark on issues including crime, benefit fraud and immigration.

The research, carried out by Ipsos Mori from a phone survey of 1,015 people aged 16 to 75, lists ten misconceptions held by the British public. Among the biggest misconceptions are:

• Benefit fraud: the public think that £24 of every £100 of benefits is fraudulently claimed. Official estimates are that just 70 pence in every £100 is fraudulent - so the public conception is out by a factor of 34.

• Immigration: some 31 per cent of the population is thought to consist of recent immigrants, when the figure is actually 13 per cent. Even including illegal immigrants, the figure is only about 15 per cent. On the issue of ethnicity, black and Asian people are thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, when the figure is closer to 11 per cent.

• Crime: some 58 per cent of people do not believe crime is falling, when the Crime Survey for England and Wales shows that incidents of crime were 19 per cent lower in 2012 than in 2006/07 and 53 per cent lower than in 1995. Some 51 per cent think violent crime is rising, when it has fallen from almost 2.5 million incidents in 2006/07 to under 2 million in 2012.

- Teen pregnancy is thought to be 25 times higher than the official estimates: 15 per cent of of girls under 16 are thought to become pregnant every year, when official figures say the amount is closer to 0.6 per cent.

Among the other surprising figures are that 26 per cent of people think foreign aid is in the top three items the Government spends money on (it actually makes up just 1.1 per cent of expenditure), and that 29 per cent of people think more is spent on Jobseekers' Allowance than pensions.

In fact we spend 15 times more on pensions - £4.9 billion on JSA vs £74.2 billion on pensions.

Hetan Shah, executive director of the Royal Statistical Society, said: "Our data poses real challenges for policymakers. How can you develop good policy when public perceptions can be so out of kilter with the evidence?

"We need to see three things happen. First, politicians need to be better at talking about the real state of affairs of the country, rather than spinning the numbers. Secondly, the media has to try and genuinely illuminate issues, rather than use statistics to sensationalise.

"And finally we need better teaching of statistical literacy in schools, so that people get more comfortable in understanding evidence."

Bobby Duffy, the managing director of Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute, said: "A lack of trust in government information is also very evident in other questions in the survey - so 'myth-busting' is likely to prove a challenge on many of these issues. But it is still useful to understand where people get their facts most wrong."

I can't be arsed to read it all tbh.

coffeecakeandgin yes, I expected you'd say that.

What I'm more interest in is this ...

What if you had irrefutable evidence that Tory policy does indeed cause misery and sometimes death to a great number of people in the UK"

... would that change your views on voting for them?