Consider this.....please???......I'm worried for our future

[LakeDistrictLardArse]

It appears most people have the view that all parties are pretty much the same and lets face it we don?t really trust any of them that much.

However there does seem to be an overriding difference between the three parties that stands out a mile and that has a huge impact on us all i.e. it appears that only the Conservatives believes that we should have freedom and that the state should not control our lives, for example:

1. That the state should not take more and more of our hard earned money and decide how it is spent (and very often spend it far less efficiently than us)
2. That the state should not be allowed to tell us what we can or cannot do every minute of the day (and then ironically not deal very well with crime).
3. That the state should not tie us all up in ever increasing red tape and legislation whether you are a business, a teacher, a medical professional, a Police officer etc. etc.
4. That the state should not take it upon themselves to give away our sovereignty and rights to Europe without asking us first (and lets not forget the many who died in wars fighting for our rights and sovereignty).
5. The list goes on and on.

If the above is important to us it appears that the Conservatives are the only choice.
We know what Labour are about in terms of the state (we have seen it in practice for 13 years) and it looks like the Liberals are no different (just hopefully a lot nicer, cleaner and charming about it). PS I am not a troll btw just in case you were wondering

actually it was Lutyens not Heathen. She was sticking up for another sensible Tory.

Bumper - John Stewart was quite interesting on this on the Daily Show the other day - he suggests that we're presented with a false dichotomy - tyranny vs anarchy at the extremes, but essentially - govt spending assumed to be poorly done by the right, but what's wrong with aiming for competent govt intervention? I'm not expressing myself very clearly, but all governments have to have some spending responsibilities; if an incoming (right wing, say) govt thinks it's competent and responsible enough to manage defence spending, why can't it also be expected to competently manage other spending?

Simplistic, I know, but it is something that puzzles me about a lot of right wing commentary.

Swedes is fab - I wish she was on these threads.

"By rosieroseanna Wed 28-Apr-10 18:52:12
I am 100% voting Tory but there is no point discussing the Conservatives here as it is such a pro Lib Dem forum you'll get a bashing lol!"

Er, cough cough!! I think you'll find that according to justine's polls we are a pretty perfect electoral split.

At the start of the campaign (1st Feb) our split was:

Lab 25.1
Con 23.2
Lib Dem 25.4
Green 5.5
Other 6.6
Don't know 14.2

Yes there has been a recent swing to the lib dems but only since the 16th April.

Which begs the question, where ARE all the Tories on mumsnet - are they ashamed to stand up and be counted? This is a real question btw, not a snide one - I am always surprised how many people admit to voting labour and how few admit to voting conservative - even in years when the the Tories won.

Do you think it's because voting labour is seen as altruistic and selfless (if you are a middle-class upper earner) where as voting Tory is perceived as being somehow less laudable?

(just to nail my own colours to the mast, I am a dyed in the wool leftie and the only time I have voted anything other than labour was the election directly after the Iraq war, when I voted lib dem in protest)

I agree - in my MN world - the Tories are way behind.

It is either that the polls are deliberately distorted to try and make people follow the crowd ( think YouGov owned by News International) OR that it is the demographic of MN that distorts the voting.

I may be speaking out of turn here but what the hell......MN has a high % of educated people and maybe just maybe they see through the shite and prefer fairness as opposed to privilege and unfairness.

"It is either that the polls are deliberately distorted to try and make people follow the crowd ( think YouGov owned by News International) OR that it is the demographic of MN that distorts the voting."

But the MN 2009 census showed the same equal split in MN voters, about 17% labour, 16% tory and 16% lib dem, and the rest either other parties or not knowing/saying.

This was taken BEFORE any of this "mumsnet election" nonsense was started.

So clearly there are a lot of Tories on mumsnet - at least equal to the number of lib dem voters, and yet they are not posting as much - or at least I don't perceive that they are. Why not?

That's a good point Habbibu. I keep meaning to watch Jon Stewart, he is funny, but I just find him a little 'shouty'

Oh, you have to get over that. He was really good. I'll see if I can find the clip.

You get used v. quickly - then like me, you suddenly start doing things like him. I keep swirling bits of paper around my desk for no good reason.

y y Young Visitor - this exactly my point too re silent conservative voters. Especially as that gap then filled with the v. v. v. right wing. Is odd.

I don't know, theyoungvisiter, of MNers who I could recall and say, yes, X is voting for this party; it's probably evenly split between the main three. oh, and I can recall two greens, two UKIP and of course a BNP .

But on the site there is a broad commitment to liberal principles, I think, hence if you jump into/start a thread with pretty right-wing stuff, you had better be ready to defend your opinions, and back them up with fact.

In fact, I read an article by Johann Hari the other day saying the lefty liberal POV is more common in Britain than you would think from the press etc. So maybe MN is just representative of society at large.

100times - I thought you made really good points further down.

Just had a thought - maybe it's not that the far right posters are filling the gap.

Maybe the normal middle-right posters are being put off by the strident far right posters - worrying that if they express moderate right-wing views they'll be seen as aligning themselves with the wacko camp?

Heathen - yes, that's probably true. I am sure there are a lot of "liberal" posters who might actually tick the blue box when it comes down to it - and maybe I am assuming their left/liberal views on MN correlate to a left wing vote, when that may not be true.

I don't think MN is representative of society at large. Labour is very well represented on here, but it is doing badly in the country at large. The mood of the country is now for change, which is why Labour is on the back foot. The biggest selling newspapers are right-wing i.e. the Sun and the Daily Mail. The Independent got into financial trouble and was bought out by a Russian billionaire.

OOOOoooh, it's been so exciting reading a contentious thread.

Thank you OP (for all your views with which I disagree).

And huzzah for free speech!

"even if I think they're deluded, with all due respect..."

"me and Heathen were very nice about you earlier in the thread. We're dead nice and fair and just us liberals...actually it was Lutyens not Heathen. She was sticking up for another sensible Tory."

It's so nice to be thought of as a deluded, but sensible tory... I think. .

I believe the reason we can have these sensible debates is because like it or not all three parties are basically Liberals in 'thinking' with the odd off their trolly policy thrown in for good measure.

I can't embrace Europe or the single currency, so the lib dems are out, I can't embrace I.D cards and Big Brother so Labours out and although there are some problems with the conservatives policies that I can pick on (and I do) they are against the above so their the lesser of three evils for me.

Whichever party gets in were all doomed compared to what we've had over the boom time because we went bust.

But, claig, if you look at the MN poll, above, Cons on 23% isn't actually off the mark WRT wider society if you allow for the demographic that we are generally young(-ish ) women.

Saw poll at weekend saying Con support was 27% among women, so if you split pensioners/working age, you'd probably get around, well, 23% for the MN demographic.

But that's only 1 in 4 posters (obv), so if 3 out of 4 people posting on your thread disagree with you, you're going to feel like a minority. Well, you will be a minority...

yes you're right when you put it like that. But I don't really believe the national polls. If you speak to people in real life, you find out how little support Labour really has. Even life-long Labour supporters like Mrs. Duffy say that they are now ashamed to say they are Labour, and that was before she found out what GBH said about her.

I think the Tories on here probably don't like to comment because they know they are in the monority of active posters and will receive some abuse from MNers who think that they are more caring people because they support Labour. Many people do not know what the real negatives of Labour are, they are influenced by what they see on the left-leaning BBC, they see Labour as caring and representative of the common people. GBH showed today that they are no such thing.

I am a Tory; have voted Tory since I could first vote in 1984 and will do so again this time. I am counted as a service voter so have arranged for my mum to vote for me as my proxy.

I am with Atlantis re: Europe and the Euro (you wouldn't believe the prices here in euroland); I am anti and very sceptical about large data bases and what the information is sued for; and believe that the Tories are the only party who can manage a joined up defence and foreign policy.

I cried when Blair got in in 1997, and am really hoping for a Tory majority this time. I don't think the UK can afford another 5 years of Labour.

Hmm. Maybe I should take it back.

claig says: ' If you speak to people in real life, you find out how little support Labour really has'

and then 'Many people do not know what the real negatives of Labour are, they are influenced by what they see on the left-leaning BBC'

Perhaps the centre right dialogue really has just been reduced to petty point-scoring and insubstantial generalities and mild paranoia?

Which might also account for why they've failed so significantly - and worryingly - to be a decent opposition for so so long.

ahundredtimes, dream on in your safe bubble. It's not point-scoring, get out more, speak to more people. Ask any friends who are Labour canvassers, they'll tell you the truth.

Negatives of labour:

Inequality in education funding for rural areas
Systemic underfunding of defence
Intrusive databases
Lack of security of data on said databases
Selling gold
Hugely over complicated tax system
Creation and inflation of 'client' state from public sector non-jobs
Raising indirect taxes whilst promising not to raise income tax (letters of the law liars)
Going into two wars when underfunding and under equipping the Forces
Destruction of the rural Post Offices

Is that enough, or does my list count as petty point scoring and insubstantial generalities?

Let's not forget ratifying the treaty without holding the 'promised' referendum in the manifesto ( and please lets not insult anyone's intelligence by claiming the treaty was substantially different from the constituion ).

Lets also not forget that the opt out's that so many other countries fought very hard for were waved aside by Labour.

And yes, i'm going to go 'there' and say that when other countries decided to put a cap on immigration Labour did not resulting in mass immigration that we could not afford in terms of infrastructure. And by opening our borders to certain countries without checking who was coming in has lead to organised crime including people trafficing, child abuse and women being used in the sex trade (not to mention the fact that we have convicted (in their own country) murderers, rapists, paedophiles and other criminals unchecked amoung us.

If other EU countries had the foresight to see what was going to happen and protect themselves I find it pretty amazing that our government did not posess such forward thinking.

"Many people do not know what the real negatives of Labour are, they are influenced by what they see on the left-leaning BBC, they see Labour as caring and representative of the common people."

[Splutter!]

Come on! How would you like it if I said that Tory supporters had no idea what the Tory part stood for, and were and influenced by the false picture painted in the right-wing press?

Please, give people a little credit for independent thought and understanding. Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn't mean they've been somehow bamboozled by the wicked reds under the desks at the beeb.

"Perhaps the centre right dialogue really has just been reduced to petty point-scoring and insubstantial generalities and mild paranoia"

Bravo.

See above from Atlantis and I.

If you were a politician and you had to take money from some people and give money (through tax breaks and services) to others who would you take it from?

If you want to give more money to people at the upper end of income then you should vote Tory if you want life to be easier for everyone who is less well off then you should NEVER vote Tory.