That's what my fiancée says - that people are too ashamed to admit to voting Tory - yet I'm working in a team of 6 with two people proudly stating that they voted Tory. Apparently the last 5 years of misery, cuts, frozen wages, high taxes, high cost of living and attacks on the NHS, the poor, disabled, weak and vulnerable haven't happened and the environment hasn't been ignored with trespassing laws changed just so companies can conduct dangerous fracking under our houses without our permission, or in some cases knowledge!. But still the Sun (note not the Scottish Sun), Sky, Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express and Channel 5 all say it's great - so it must be, which is why so many people must have voted for the rich to get richer... Ohh and as a totally unconnected issue the Leveson enquiry recommendations have been totally ignored, and the press are set to get unprecedented freedoms, with a greater monopoly of the press/communications sectors...
Well they did happen, and it seems most remember which party was actually the cause of it happening, and it wasn't the Tories, LD, UKIP, SNP, BNP, UUD, Sein Fein or the DUP. It was Labour, just like it was in the 70's. Give the tories another 5-10 years then we should have enough money to let Labour give it all away again.
Labour caused the banking crisis? The Tories would've done things differently, of course. They wanted even less regulation, so the fallout would've been even worse. The one advantage that this election will bring is that things are going to hit rock bottom for a lot of people, so they'll do something about it. Hopefully a few will realise how badly they're being mugged off by the media. Unfortunately it'll probably result in another Plan B for the tossers, like New Labour was.
Stayed up all night to watch that absolute shambles. What a farce. I think there are a number of reasons why the Tories got re-elected and somehow got even more seats than they did five years ago. 1) My lecturer showed us the statistics that 7 or 8 out of the 11 major British newspapers are owned by the Conservatives. This clearly does have an effect on people's views when they see Tory propaganda. 2) You always hear Cameron speaking about the 2 million jobs he has created since 2010 and how we have one of the fastest growing economies ever and how it is their austerity measures which have worked. People see this and think "oh, he's doing a good job!" without actually contextualising the figures. Average earnings have fallen by 5.7% and there has been a dramatic increase in zero-hour contracts/poorly paid apprenticeships. People don't see that side of it, though. 3) 'Tactical votes' from the far-right e.g. UKIP who knew they wouldn't get into power due to FPTP so would rather pander to a party who their views are most closely aligned with. Which are the Conservatives. There are an awful lot of ex-Tories in UKIP. 4) Labour have to take some responsibility as well. Miliband started to pander to the interests of the right and Miliband's economic policies were Tory-lite. Tories said there would have to be cuts. Labour said there would need to be cuts. But there doesn't have to be any cuts. Stimulus is always a better option than austerity. And a lot of the leading economists would tell you this. 5) Miliband ruling out any coalition with the SNP effectively ruined any chances he had of getting votes from Scotland. Granted the forecasts didn't expect it to be so bad but the fact remains he lost a lot of votes in Scotland when he repeatedly, on Question Time and in the Leaders' Debates, ruled out any coalition with them. Although I guess this was a double-edged sword because a lot of people in England didn't want a Labour-SNP coalition. Personally I think it is an absolute disaster that the Tories have been re-elected. This was the most important election for ages and we're going to be ****ed over. Our generation and the upcoming generation will have no future. NHS will be continue to be sold off to private providers, tuition fees will be raised even more, there will be £12bn cuts to welfare including an alleged tax on disability benefits and there will be even more people living in poverty because they will do nothing to handle the housing crisis.
Totally agree. I'd rather a party that will look at solving problems now, than leave my kids with an economy that would be even more ****ed up than labour left it previously.
Well said, I couldn't have said it better. On another point - I remember just how bad it was when I was very young and the devastation that Thatcher caused, and how it took 20 years to begin to over come the reckless damage she caused to Wales, and how in one short term the Tories rolled back all that hard work and began to return us to that awful 80s Thatcher created for us - and now with the second term they can finish the job...
True, I'd rather a party that was solving problems, instead we've got he Torries stagnating the economy at a time when other countries economies are growing due to fiscal stimuls and investment. We'll have a government whose ethos is look after yourself and the 'haves' while the country whithers... All the time blaming the global economic recession on Labour while disabled people starve, house repossessions go through the roof, and people can't afford to feed their families. But hey, I'm alright Jack...
Apparently most of England and Wales agree with me though, that it is best whilst in debt to reduce spending rather than borrow more.
The Tories have doubled the debt and the Chancellor has borrowed waaaaay more than he forecasted. You can't hide the facts. Austerity has not worked.
You can use the media to deceive the electorate about those facts, though. Seems to work pretty well.
Yup as can be seen by mass support of tge snp in scotland by the Scottish Sun and other tabloids leading to a snp whitewash and labour disaster there. And a significant pro-tory campaign by the sun, mail, telegraph, times, metro, sky and channel 5 news and express supporting ukip in england and wales leading to significant gains for tories and ukip down south (with ukip in votes at least if not seats).
Ahh of course, silly me i must have missed the significant reduction in debt in the past 5 years, the increased consumer spending, the reduced borrowing and thriving economy. How could i have missed the tory successes over the last 5 years...
Unfortunately the overspill of the debt from Labour to Tories existed. I read somewhere our deficit has dropped from 150billion to around 70 billion. Sounds good to me, it means we are haemmoraging 80 million pounds less, which means we are 80million pounds better off (obviously we are still losing money every year which is bad). Unfortunately, when you take out contracts that last for years and employ thousands of people to make our public sector fat, that loss hangs around for a while (and if you want to get rid you have to pay up front costs). As for the bank causing the recession, of course they did but we couldn't spend to stimulate our economy because labour spent all the money during the good years. To spend even more now is going for broke. We may ride it out in which case fair play or we could end up like Greece and then we'd be ****ed for a long time. I guess theres a few gamblers in the room here. Cuts had to be made and had to be made from somewhere. Whilst i don't agree that the rich are getting off relatively lightly (tax evasion, how about a mansion tax), i do agree we shouldn't be spending even more which is the labour way.
The Tories were never going to get any votes in Scotland, so what's the next best thing? Destroy the vote for any other party that's also competing in the rest of the UK. please log in to view this image Overspill of the debt? Do you think that the Tories would have prevented the banking crisis? You do realise that Cameron endorsed less regulation for the lending market, right?
SNP - 1.45m votes, 4.7% share of the vote, 55 MPs UKIP - 3.88m votes, 12.9% share of the vote, 1 MP The gap between who gets the votes and who gets the power is ridiculous. Labour - 9.34m votes, 30.4% share of the vote (only 2.35 times the UKIP vote), 232 seats (232 times more seats than UKIP) UKIP and the Greens between them have five million voters but only two seats in Westminster. Surely this has to spur debate about proportional representation?
You do realise that the Tories had an even more disproportionate vote/seat ratio than Labour, right? 34244 per seat to 40290. The Liberal/SNP comparison is also quite an odd one. 1m more votes, 48 less seats. Ulster Unionists to UKIP? 114,935 to 3,881,129. Twice as many MPs! Plaid Cymru? 181,694 for 3. Those that didn't vote could've won the election for anyone, outnumbering any of the other parties with millions to spare. Things could change. They won't.
The issue is that people aren't educated enough about most of the other electoral systems [of which there are many]. The AV referendum in 2011 - how many people that voted can say they knew what AV was? And let's not forget how low the voter turnout was for that... If we're going to discuss whether we need to change from FPTP to a PR system, we need to educate the public on the alternatives first and foremost.
Yep the whole system leads to completely disproportionate representation. I was going to list even more of the parties but there were endless possibilities
Which is what should happen in the buildup to a referendum. The public should be given the information about what each decision means. It should be about giving the people an informed choice rather than trying to persuade them into voting the way the main parties want. Money for campaigns leading up to a referendum and the media coverage for both sides of the discussion should be regulated and even.
