Conservative Manifesto Launch

[anastaisia]

read it here

shall we pick this one to pieces too...

I'm finding the preamble disturbing.

"A country is at its best when the bonds between people are strong and when the sense of national purpose is clear... Real change comes when the people are inspired and mobilised, when millions of us are fired up to play a part in the nation?s future.

Collective strength will overpower our problems..."

Oh - I quite liked the intro - very JFK!! At least it's different from Labour and I think it is what they honestly believe.

Also very HSM - 'We're All In this Together' oh dear!

don't know, jackstarbright - I also shudder at the thought of David Cameron's "army of 5,000 professional community organisers."

Loads and loads of images. It's quite hard to find them eat amongst the smiling people happier under the Conservatives.

I've only seen two pictures of people so far...

but some very strange wartime propaganda-y-looking typefaces in the graphics.

And picture on page 4 (?) is clear - we're all cogs in the machine.

Weird.

Glancing through the parts that are important to me, there's actually quite a bit I like which suprises me.

I know I want anyone but Labour because of the home education/civil liberties stuff, and I'll probably vote Lib Dem who are more likely to win here - but at a first look I don't hate this.

Arrgghh!! "broken britain" rears it's ugly head again.

A prize for the first person who can tell me what this means

"develop a measure of well-being that
encapsulates the social value of state action." (p38)

retro-Communist type graphics, even.

Sorry, should be looking at the words rather than the graphics, but was just a quick look because have to go out now.

Am I just stupid?

I'm really not sure what they are proposing.

I was watching News 24 in the background and it seemed to me that they were saying that whatever you wanted in your local environment you'd have to have a vote on it with your neighbours.

Would we be able to do anything? Surely everyone would be interested in their own point of view and you'd get into a sort of stand-off situation.

Wouldn't everything grind to a halt?

What was all that stuff about charities and businesses running schools?

Maybe I heard it wrong but it all sounded really alarming.

My DS just said it sounded like Dr Who where you'd have to all vote individually on everything.

Am slightly sniggering at the "New York policing as an example of dropping crime rates". Did they not read Freakonomics?

lol, I skipped past all the intro and pictures right to the sections on things I care about - government reform, education etc

Like the idea of local councils having more power and less targets (p75/6)

Like the civil liberties pages (p79/80) except for suggestion to repeal the hunting act - But it would be free vote so people could start working on their MPs to vote to keep it.

Like some of the changing politics ideas about public involvement and more free votes (how many more though?), increasing use of technology and things (page 65ish) Especially like promise to ensure proper time for debate and scruntity of new Bills as was horrified at the way debates just ran out of time when I started watching parliamentary TV for the Children, Schools and Families Bill and instead of saying 'this is clearly an issue that needs more discussion' they go 'right, time up lets vote now'.

ack. Am sick of these buzz words. Broken Britain for one. And if I hear a Tory say the words "Jobs tax" again I might have to cut my ears off.

Actually (sad ex-maths teacher emoticon here) there were 131 pages of which 38 were full page graphics (some very badly formatted may I add) and 17 title pages or blank pages. I make that around about 60% content, 40% windowdressing.

anastaisia,

You seem to have read this in some detail, I'm guessing you're something political/into politics.

Maybe you can help me to understand what they are saying.

You say that local councils get more power and fewer targets - so is it only local councils who can decide what happens locally?

Fox-hunting again - surely that's a joke does it really say that they would start it again?

sorry, I can't say I've read it in detail - I really just skipped through the bits that matter to me to see if they matched things that MPs have been saying in the run up to the launch. I'm interested because of the home ed stuff that just went on but wasn't especially political until then.

They say they'll review the hunting act - but I know there are lots of tory supporters against it - whole campaign group - so a free vote would stand a good chance of keeping it banned.

Not sure if its only local councils who would make decisions - there are mentions of allowing local people/groups to bid to take over services currently funded and provided by the state. I think that if done right (and I know that's a big if) that could be a really good move. Will read it more next time I need a break from my essay and see if I've read it right.

Thanks anastaisia.

I had only heard the launch on T.V. and it was a bit confusing - it seemed to be saying that we would all be voting in referendums and organising petitions.

It gave me images of chaos - although my DS thought the whole Dr Who 'real public vote' implication was hysterically funny.

Horrified at the idea of reviewing Fox-hunting though.

When will they give up on hunting, it took such alot of parlimentary time while they argued and time wasted to stop the original ban going through and now they want to dig the whole thing up again when there are so many more improtant issues, grrrrrrr.

They're lacking a big idea, maybe that's why they're not further ahead in the polls. It always used to be much clearer with the Tories didn't it: cut taxes, minimise expenditure on public services, privatise everything and promote business and entrepreneurship. Now they have to pretend to like the health service and state education and hate banks it's all a bit more woolly. They're still on about cutting taxes though and I just don't know where they're going to get the money from.

Fox hunting thing at least shows their true colours: individuals pursuing their own thing (especially business people and people living in the country) should be allowed to get on with it and damn everyone and everything that gets in the way, down with regulation!

I just saw a BBC broadcast about the Conservative Manifesto with a poster about David Cameron saying something about us all having to run the schools and hospitals.

So I'm not the only one with these worries about what they are saying am I?

I can't understand what they are saying either. A lot of it doesn't seem to make sense.
I do like labour usually but think they have gone on for too long - but seriously I cannot get to grip with what this lot are proposing...

SweetGrapes why have Labour gone on too long? Are we all so used to changing Governments every two or three parliaments that we feel we have to?

Interesting that they're no longer proposing a bonfire of the quangos but will now abolish quangos that ?do not perform a technical function or a function that requires political impartiality, or act independently to establish facts?. What does that mean?

Also they're committing to keeping SATS at KS2 (and making them 'more rigorous' whatever that means), and to keeping league tables. So all those who thought these things would disappear under the Tories and our children would be stress-free have a re-think.

On another note, I'm intrigued by the whole starting your own school thing. Who has the time or energy to do that in addition to their usual line of work? And please explain to me why some group of concerned parents running a school would improve standards.