TORIES

[Eilatan]

if they get in:

They'll end HIPS so my husband will loose his job
He's actually a teacher but can't get work cos the last time they were in they brought in 'cover supervisors' ...unqualified people who are doing our jobs
They do away with the 15 hours nursery care...all we do is wait for our little un to be 3 so we can just break even each month... but no doubt these evil so and sos will take it away to pay for the w(b)ankers ineptitude
I expect they do away with the trust funds too
Teachers wages will be frozen ...
Over 60s cold weather payments? Ha! last time they were in Edwina Currie advised them to knit woolly gloves!
Any tiny power the unions have been able to claw back will go...
We'll be back to teaching kids that homosexuality is wrong and if a piece of literature wasn't written by someone dead, white and male it isn't worth reading
...if they get in I'm jacking it all in... going to sell the house and live in a caravan... no way am I working on Maggie's farm again!

Don't be fooled by all that caring for the family rubbish. All those c care for is making their own kind richer.

PLEASE don't vote for them.

Lowenergylightbulb- The surveillance state has been around far longer than Labour, from a Foucauldian perspective (I am subjective, I love Foucault!).

I am a single parent and was on benefits this time 3 years ago. University has not been financially punitive for me. I recieve maintainence loans, parents learning allowance, and access to Exeter bursary! It means university is possible, which is amazing and I am so glad it has been possible.

There's something wrong with our electoral system.

The Labour party gets in and trashes the economy. Then when it all looks as though the country is going bust, we panic and elect the Tories, who promptly slash and burn. Then when we've had enough slashing and burning and the economy is doing well, we elect the Labour party.

All too depressing.

The Labour Party did not trash the economy, that is a global thing.

Well I'm not sure about that. There was a global recession to be sure but the overspending made life an awful lot worse.

Very true, Manatee. It's a cheap shot to suggest that it was Blair and Brown alone who trashed the economy!

Going back several pages, I'd suggest that many ex-industrial northern tows are STILL suffering the after effects of Thatcherism.

My main fear re the Tories is how so very few of them have any experience of real people living real lives; sorry, but Eton does NOT give you that!

I'd definitely vote Labour IF Labour would 'grass roots' more. I want to see the financial industry hauled in, I want to see tax breaks given to big companies whose wage discrepancy between the top 10% of earners is no more that !0 times that of the bottom 20% of the workers in that company.

I believe 'Broken Britain' would be fixed a lot quicker if real strides were made towards equality: It is frankly ridiculous that a family with a single wage earner working full time could STILL be in poverty. Tax income over say £50k pa at 50% rising to 90% for those on £250k. No one needs that sort of money. Few deserve it and taxing at this level might fund realistic minimum wages. I believe much of our societal problems are caused by poverty. Families break up as a result, the hopelessness it engenders increases the risks of domestic violence, abuse etc etc. Give the low paid workers back their dignity- like the workers in the industrial cities of the north used to have...

This isn't a condemnation of single mums here- but I think the pressures that break families apart would be lessened a lot if daily existence wasn't such a struggle for so many people.

Yes, but Quattro- who DID the overspending? We, the people!

Did I miss something? When was it my turn to dictate government spending? Was I out the day someone came to give me a stack of "government money" to spend as I liked?

If you raise taxes to 90%, or much higher than they already are, many of the wealthiest will leave, along with their already huge tax bills, and the companies that employ them. The country was crippled in the seventies by this sort of disastrous policy. That sort of tax hammering provides no incentive to anyone to work hard and succeed. And public services will suffer enormously as a result, because the high earners are no longer around to pour tax pounds into them. And who is anyone to say who "deserves" the money they earn? Labour is quite deservedly in the poop because they have mismanaged the economy - we are in the worst economic position of the developed economies - and taken us into two wars we can justify neither morally nor economically.

I don't think that is entirely true. We spend more on the welfare state than we receive in tax revenues. I think the figures for 2009/10 are £140.5 billion in gross income tax receipts. Social security benefits are projected to be £164.7 billion.

Whichever way you cut it, that is unsustainable.

Yes, I agree there has always been some form of surveillance on the populace; and in some cases it is entirely justified. However, it is beginning to get intrusive. I think Contactpoint is unnecessary; I see no reason why the data of anyone should be on there past 18, as it supposedly a database about children. The data on your children will be kept until they are 24. The use of Terrorism legislation to enable Local Authorities to spy on people is over the top. Enforcing completion of the census and some of the questions therein is also intrusive.

The above was at Manatee - the computer is on a go slow.

I would like to see anybody other than the Labour party in power.
I am fed up with being told how to live my life by hippocrites and liars.

Taxing rich people heavily is a self defeating policy.
Who will bother trying to get rich if they have to give all their money to the government, who in turn gives it to lazy lay abouts on benefits?
I dont mean people who have fallen on hard times, or single mums. I mean the lazy shits who have never done a days work in their lives because the state has enabled them to do nothing.

If they scrap tax credits, Surestart and stop the fantastic early years learn through play/Positive Discipline/child-lead learning stuff...then I would be very scared.

The thing is ronshar nobody knows how to target the lazy shits without affecting the genuine hard timers do that?

if they did,its a wagon they'd all jump on pretty quickly.

The choices forwelfare are:acceptsomefalse /lazy claimsand go with protecting those most in need,or target it heavil at the risk of damaging those most in need.

It really is a straight choice, and of coourse yours to make- but it is that simple.

Alternatively crack down on the false claimants; have a joined up system that flags up fraud. We lose £15 billion per annum in public sector fraud, and that includes benefit fraud.

How do you do that without negatively affecting the genuines ST?

The people with the greatest wealth have the best tax advice to allow them to use one of a number of legal loopholes to avoid paying tax.

By checking and cross checking forms; ensuring there aren't multiple claims under different names at the same address. Greater liaison between central and local government. I know someone who got full housing benefit and council tax benefit, even though they had left the Armed Forces with a pension and a lump sum. I stood by a supervisors desk and pointed this out to both HB and CTB and got told it wasn't worth the hassle of pursuing, even though it was blatant fraud. I knew what he had done for a living as he worked with my Dad; I knew his rank, and could show what the pension tables were for the Forces.

It is the small try-ons as well. Someone once tried to claim they were the only person living at an address for Community Charge and that the owner was exempt as he was at sea. Unfortunately for them, it was my house they'd bought with a mortgage in joint names, so I knew they were both there. They got sharp shrift. It all adds up.

With a debt in the trillions, the country can't afford to lose that kind of money. £15 billion could do quite a lot.

Marriage tax benefits and IH tax benefits both put me off voting Tory.

Not a Labour supporter by any means but they seem a slightly less incompetent choice than the Conservatives.

Crikey what a depressing thought.

scaryteacher you're obviously very passionate about the Tories, are you on the payroll?

I WON'T be voting for David Cameron and his posh friends. I'll be voting Labour as I have always done in general elections.

For a whole host of reasons I would rather walk on glass than vote Tory - ugh.....

Whoever wins the next election is going to have to make big cuts in public spending. The Bank of England has already put a shot across the bows by writing an open letter to GB telling him that he needs to make these cuts. Obviously, he's not going to make them now because he's got an election to fight, but afterwards, be sure that he will. He has to. The country is in a lot of debt and needs to get out of it.

GB didnt cause the meltdown but during the financial boom he expanded government spending to a level which is unsustainable during the economcy we are likely to experience in the next decade.

As a result a lot of public services which were expanded when bankers were all getting £1m bonuses and giving £400k of that to the treasury are going to bite the dust. It doesnt matter who the government is. We've been on a spending binge for a decade and now we've got the credit card bill.

ElephantsAndMiasmas - are you for real? Did I really just read "took the State's wage and used it to send her kids to private school"? I though that we lived in a free society whereby individuals are entitled to spend their money as they see fit. You embody the prescriptive, bossy, nannying ideals of socialism that frankly tertify me. How dare you presume to tell another MNers how to spend her money. She earnt it and she has the right to spend it as she chooses.

This thread is hilarious! I never realised MN had so many right wing users - ha!!

Scary you are obviously really really good at your job. Don't you think it's time you got yourself to bed, you don't want to be tired and grumpy in front of your class now do you?

Nope, not on the payroll, but I think that the Tories could do better than the present government, especially in Defence which is one of my main areas of interest; along with doing something about rural poverty; reducing the deficit and bringing back smaller government. They will hopefully iron out the inequalities in state education funding. They may also have a reasonable debate on Europe and crack down on fraud and immigration.

I think there is state intrusion into too many areas of our lives and that it has to stop.

Agree with you on state intrusion scary, especially on marriage tax

Had to think twice about posting on this thread. I am definately Labour, and post on Labourlist from time to time. Have also been popping in here for a few months, because I think it is interesting.

ElephantsAndMiasmas to me seems to have a fairly realistic idea of what is likely to happen if we do get a conservative government.

It will begin with the small invisible cuts to people who are pretty powerless, and no one will notice.

I have already seen it starting to happen. Our county council turned conservative in June. I have just heard about a whole lot of discretionary allowances to carers being cut.

I am at the moment at the start of trying to put together charts that do compare the proposals of the different parties. It is actually quite a tough job to do it. I always try to be as fair as I can on this, because I believe people should have accurate information to vote on.

The trouble is that with Labour we are getting a lot of highly detailed evidence based proposals, based on research, and pilot schemes, where as with the Conservatives they are still giving very little detail.

In many cases this is because what they seem to be proposing is "nothing".

There are many things that they are simply proposing not to do, on the assumption that it will be done either by the private sector, or by volunteers .They I think naively believe that this army of volunteers will emerge to create "the Big Society".