Tell me why you are voting conservative this time

[Lilovoter]

Some of my reasons are:

• I want a smaller state
• I want a society that encourages aspiration
• Gordon Brown is odious and he and his team lack credibility and real backbone. They are frighteningly good at spin though!!!
• I want Labout out of government and a fresh start for Britain. I do not want a Liberal/Labour coalition.

Hard to tell which party you are referring to?

Ah well I don't see it as having been 'stung enough'.

I see it as being lucky enough to have a nice life and therefore not begrudging those who are less lucky than us being given a few breaks.

Think that just about sums it up really.

I come from a single parent family. I know what it is like to be poor. It's not very nice.

I am voting Tory because:

• I am more worried about the national debt and the long-term future of Britain than the short-term future. They have gone further in painful cuts than other parties - freezing public sector pay, cutting top-end public sector pensions, raising retirement age from 65 to 66, cutting child tax credits and child trust funds for families earning over £50k, etc.
• I like their strategy towards encouraging economic growth. They will keep National Insurance down, will cut corporation tax, and will give a tax holiday to the first few employees of startups.
• I think their schools policy is genuinely transformative and brilliant. It is basically Tony Blair's idea - but the Brownites in Labour wouldn't let Blair take on the teaching unions. The Conservatives would have no such compunctions.
• I like their dedication to transparency, publishing all government contracts and all government spending online.
• They will scrap ID cards and the ID database.
• I like the idea of elected police commissioners, who will be forced to concentrate on low-level crime like anti-social behaviour, burglary, and drug addiction rather than "sexy" crimes like counter-terrorism.
• I like their approach to professionals throughout the public sector - cut the red tape, forget dictating PROCESSES, and measure RESULTS instead.
• By applying electoral pressure in the 2001 election, William Hague kept us out of the Euro - otherwise we would be like Greece now.
• I support their stance on Europe. In the EU but very sceptical, wanting less federalism.
• I really love their green energy initiative where you get a company like Tesco to loan you £6k to insulate/double glaze your home, saving huge amounts on energy bills - but they are repaid by taking a proportion of the saving of the energy bills over the years.
• I like their national citizenship scheme for young people, and am very impressed that instead of just talking about it, they set up a charity to do pilot projects which are already running.
• They have many ex-military people as MPs, and will do a better job in Afghanistan, and in looking after the military.
• Cameron is a natural leader and communicator.

Those are my "positive reasons" - but of course, the main reason for voting Conservative is negative: to get rid of Gordon Brown!

The Tories are not perfect. I hate the idea of legalising foxhunting. They have bigoted idiots like Chris Grayling, who are fortunately a dying breed. I don't like their immigration proposals. I don't like the inheritance tax cut, even if it would only cost peanuts in public sector spending terms.

But no-one is perfect. They are so much better than Labour.

HoochieMommaLurve,
"I'd rather chew off a limb than ever vote for that bunch of hypocritical, out of touch, fat-cat-loving, erm, people."

so it's the Tories or the Liberals for you

My family have been massively stung by the Labour Party, by that I mean my extended family which consists of a fairly eclectic bunch.

I loathe what TB, Gb and co have done to this country and to my loved ones, I loathe the fact that my hard working parents cannot afford to retire at well past the age of 65, I loathe that my husband scrimped and saved to buy business premises that are taxed by way of business rates out of all proportion, I loathe that they have turned a blind eye to high frequency trading by the biggest banks after shoring them up with tax payers funds, i loathe the fact that the vat people sent the head of treasury to hound my dh over their mistake. I loathe the tax enquiry that added stress after stress to us during our ds's treatment for leukaemia. I loathe the fact that we cannot move house because stamp duty is prohibitive now. I loathe the fact that my in laws are so aware of their burden to us they are spending fortunes with financial consultants so that everything they worked for doesn't go in to GB's self made deficit.

I cannot wait to vote out the conceited Hitlers who allow drugs to be available in Scotland and Wales but not England.

I do agree that DC is v. clever

I do wonder why he persists with things like inheritance tax and the tax break for married couples they surely can't be big vote winners and I suspect changing his mind might be.

Probably so he is not seen to be going back on his word.

Although the married couples tax allowance isn't worth the admin costs!. I have high hopes for inheritance tax though, it was never meat to catch out "ordinary people".

I should say I quite like a lot of Liberal Democrat policy as well, though I dislike a lot too.

I am slowly being won over to the idea of Proportional Representation - though it doesn't work well for European elections. Any replacement system must let you vote for individuals standing locally rather than just a party though.

I like the idea of locally elected NHS chiefs, for the same sort of reason that I like the Tory plans for locally elected police commissioners.

Their education plans are basically the same as the Tories, with the pupil premiums - but with extra money. They do have more focus on early years though.

They have some good proposals on cleaning up lobbying etc in politics.

However, a lot of their policy falls apart straight away. They don't get scrutinised as much as Labour or the Tories, and it shows.

An example is their road to rail proposal last week - sounded brilliant, but was taken apart in seconds on the Today programme last week.

Their immigration policy is ridiculous - how will they check which parts of Britain the immigrants are going to?

Their sums don't add up. Of course, no party's sums add up, but the Lib Dems are the worst of the big three. They are promising a £700 income tax cut costing £20bn or so, funded by a mansion tax which will only bring in £1bn, and the rest from "closing loopholes", whatever that means.

And I could never vote for a party which wants to take us into the Euro.

daysoftheweek, I think it's about principle. The Tories don't believe that the state has the right to such a large chunk of what people have worked all their lives to gain. The state has constantly got its hands in our pockets, and the Tories want to cut it back for all people, rich and poor alike. The amount of money that the country loses by his inheritance tax policies is not vety large, and it is the principle that people deserve what they work for that is worth fighting for.

Especially as the Euro is currently unsustainable in at least 4 countries who need to set their own interest rates!

In the grand scheme of things the tax policies are small and whats the problem?

The married couples allowance
Support marriage and families. Give those families a bit more choice about whether one or both of them work. Less famliy breakdown, more children from the families on lower incomes with better opportuniites.
Only those families on lowest incomes will benefit. I think we need to support those couples who are prepared to make a contractual committment to each other whether civil partnership or marriage.

Inheritance tax. It needs to be more generous, it has not kept pace with inflation. It should be more relevant. Why should the assets of your average punter who has accumulated assets and paid tax throughtout their life, be taxed on death? It causes real hardship e.g. when a child lives with a parent who dies they may have to sell their home to pay the tax bill.

And the conservatives are going to stop people who have saved for their pensions being forced to by an annuity when they are 75.

FARK! Ed Balls as Leader..................falls off perch in the manner of a dead parrot!

The upcoming Balls vs Miliband Labour implosion is just one more reason to vote Conservative

Agreed. Ed Balls not good news.

Put this on the married couples thread but think it is worth repeating labour are so good at covering up when they mess up and we are so used to turning a blind eye. But when it is the conservatives the media hound them and it is THE story.

Remember GB wanted to abolish the childcare voucher scheme. For many people this is worth between £800 and £1800 a year. He was forced to backdown. Somehow as usual he managed to do so and save face. Remember the income tax fiasco he had to back down on....

I always vote Tory. I believe in low state intervention and more freedom of choice. I believe in aspiration and rewards for hard work.

Current Govt have made mistakes but Tory reflect of low state intervention would not have averted the likely depression 18 mths ago.

PS Clearly remarks about Etonians and Scots are light hearted as neither has anything to do with ability to govern etc.?

It is interesting to watch big business/wall street kick Brown and Obama now that they are feeling confident again after the economy has been bailed out by the "socialists" they don't want intervention! Defenders of Goldman Sachs bonuses point out that GS didn't take govt money. Leaves me wandering what would have happened to GS if a few more banks had failed! Short memories!

...current Govt have made mistakes but Tory reflect reflex of low state intervention...

The thing is, there are so many differences between the parties. DC is a decent, likeable guy and GB a sincere public servant. Core values of the parties is one of the few things that distinguish them.

TDiddy, Brown and Obama work for big business/Wall Street, they are puppets. Wall Street put Obama in power, look at his real funding. Obama did what he was told and handed over tax payers' money to Wall Street. The tax payers didn't notice because they have been taught that the socialists love them and care for them. Wall Street didn't want big bad Bush etc. to hand over the loot to Wall Street, because the public might have woken up since they see Bush as the opposite of Obama and the caring socialists.

The socialists want to keep the people down, dumb them down, in education and in all other spheres. You won't find Mandelson and the other champagne socialists visiting any crime-ridden sink estates where vulnerable people are tormented by gangs of thugs, you'll find Mandelson on a yacht off of Corfu back-slapping with his big business/Wall Street pals, quaffing their champagne, and listening carefully to what they want. You'll find them trying to curry favour with Murdoch, who uses them when he needs them and then cuts them loose, something they desperately try to prevent.

Goldman Sachs always comes up trumps, whoever is supposedly in charge.

claig - don't want to digress from main thread but you are joking, aren't you? Obama rescued Wall Street because he was trying to avert the impending global meltdown. He is prepared to confront big business interest e.g. on Healthcare where it is right to do so. He hasn't spent much time pointing out the mess that he inherited eg. two wars and a depression but you should give him some credit for holding it all together and doing so well in just a year.

Brown working for big business is also very amusing but I will leave this one alone. I work in the City and I can tell you that DC will be best for us, no question; but I am trying to think wider than self interest.

if you work in the City then you will know that Henry Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary was a Goldman boy, ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs. Obama gave the banks whatever they wanted but wasn't prepared to do the same for Gemeral Motors. He had to plead with Paulson to help GM out.
business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article5119805.ece

Then Treasury Secretary Geithner has close links with Goldman Sachs
finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/161374/Tim-Geithner-Too-Close-to-Goldman-Sachs-to-Be-Treasury- Secretary-Critic-Says?tickers=GS,C,BAC,XLF,MS,JPM,%5EDJI

and it was the Republicans who were holding up the bail out of the banks because they thought, like the majority of the public, that this was daylight robbery of the taxpayers. They were in favour, as was the public, of letting some of the banks fail, and rescuing General Motors, a company at the heart of America's economy.

The City did very well under Brown, carries on awarding itself bonuses, and will do just as well if not better under Cameron.

Frankly, I'm amazed that anyone (other than those who are part of Brown's enormous client state) would even consider voting Labour.