Conservative Manifesto

STB, yes it was Inside Out London. x

The problem we have in our town Gracesgran is that no other party however big or small would stand a cat in hells chance against the Labour party. They are guaranteed a win. This is not only a safe seat but a bloomin' "set in stone seat" for Labour. I have just read that the Lib Dems have pulled out leaving us with Labour, Conservatives and UKIP.

Its all the "you vote for me and I'll vote for you" that makes me sick.

Not sure what can be done about it. Most of the elderly people in the town live in local authority housing. They worked in the mines and shipyards and are still "living" in the 1930's -40's. Local Labour squad even pick up the elderly voters and "escort" them to the polling stations.

Voting for a small party in a general election is a waste of a vote. The time for protest votes is in by-elections and local elections - even EU elections.
If all else fails decide which of the major parties you would least likely to be in power for 5 years (and it will be a full 5 years) - and vote for the other one.

In many areas 3 year old children are in school-based nursery classes half days.

Gillybob, all parties take the elderly to the polling booths if there is no other way of them getting there. How can the elderly still be living in the 30s and 40s? Many of them born in that period bought or rented their first houses in the 60s. Most people born in the 20s are dead.
You really should not exaggerate to make your point. You do not like Labour? Vote Tory. There have to be some Labour enclaves to make up for the Tory ones down south.

I remember as a child in a politically active family ( quelle surprise) at election times that offering a lift in a car was a huge incentive as so few people had the experience of ever being in a car. The Conservatives usually had more cars on offer so an important tactic was to pretend to be a Conservative supporter so as to tie up one of their cars bring taken to the polling station to vote Labour

I am not convinced by any particular party, just less convinced by some. Driving around quite a bit of North Devon today, I saw one Labour, and one Lib Dem poster, a couple of UKIP posters and quite a few Conservative ones in the big agricultural areas. Just an observation of local trends.

I really don't think a lot of people read the various manifestos, but just pick the points of which they approve out of their newspaper of choice, be it right, left, or middle of the road or just plain mad which will be biased in the direction that they favour anyway. So their choice of party will be an integral part of their life choices.

(The OP, I notice, isn't actually joining in the discussion - just stirring it up a little....)

Durhamjen you can be so nasty when you want to be. I accept that you and I disagree on many issues and I know you can't stand anyone who disagrees with you but I will not be told what I do and don't like (the Labour Party or the conservatives) I don't know why I am bothering to explain myself to a "know it all" but for the record, from being an active member of the Labour Party I now find myself considering not voting at all in the next election. I did not mention the 20's at all. However my grandma was born in 1916, she is always picked up by the Labour Party and taken to place her cross in the (labour) box.

The point I was making is that the town in which I live has a very high proportion of elderly people born in the 30s and 40's. It was a heavy industry town and those elderly people still remember the hardships of their young working lives. Likewise most of those people still live in council houses and the Labour Party does very well by not doing anything at all.

......and please do not accuse me of exaggerating !

Oh for crying out loud why am I wasting good sleep?

That was quite unnecessary, gillybob.
There is nothing I said that is not true. You were talking about people still living in the past, the 30s and 40s. Now you say you meant born in the 30s and 40s, which is what I was suggesting.

My mother in law is in a home, with dementia, so will not get a vote. She was born in 1922 and lived in pit villages all her life. She was driven to vote by those with cars, voted Labour, and got Alan Beith for her MP. It works both ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ultKvnw2h3Q&feature=youtu.be

This is a long film about what has happened to the NHS, all filmed by doctors. Thought I'd put it in here for anyone who thinks the NHS is safe in Tory hands.

Your reply to gillybob was unfair, durhamjen.

I notice you haven't responded to my post on the Green Manifesto thread. It seems that you are allowed to exaggerate to make your point, but no one who holds a different view to yours is.

some of you are such hypocrites, you are pretending you care for the less well off when you are smug and secure in your own homes with no financial worries. I see it like it is, why should the road sweeper not buy his own home?, he may not have a high wage but he may have a partner with a wage that can mean they can afford to buy if they wish.

It isn't just about the 'poor', its about aspirations to better oneself.

Many people who live in housing ass. homes may be thrilled with the thought of owning their home, some may not, but its an option. They will build more homes and until they build homes that are equal to those on the open market there will be a stigma about social renting.

As William Shakespere said 'If you prick us do we not bleed'. (going back to school I remember this quote).Therefore do people in social housing not feel embarrassed and undervalued by having to live in a home that is obviously social rented or are they not supposed to have finer feelings ?
Many council houses are designed to be just basic, the gardens have no privacy, windows looking into the neighbours house. Kitchens that are the same as the whole street. kids play out until all hours, neighbours fight and shout and if you complain they get revenge in all sorts of ways.

Its easy to see which posters live in secure private homes, they have never lived in a ghetto. Try it.

What would happen to those who need to rent if ALL council houses were bought by their tenants - and local authorities could not afford to build others to replace them?

It could happen (OK not likely, but possible) The taxpayers and council tax payers whose money built those homes would have paid for houses which were now in the private sector and being sold on for profit. People who needed to rent would have to go to private landlords.

The money to rebuild for rent would have to come from somewhere (if they were still not allowed to use the selling money to rebuild - and if they had sold them cheaply it may not have covered new builds anyway)

I wonder who from?

Ethel - firstly, it is not hypocritical to live in your own home with no financial worries and at the same time care about those less well off. A great deal of social progress has come about from the better off wanting to improve social and economic conditions for disadvantaged people. Secondly, the housing problem is incredibly complex. In the UK we have created a situation ( unlike many other European countries) where owner occupation is seen as the gaol. Over the years, rent regulation and security of tenure went in the privately rented market, right to buy came in, house building did not keep up with demand, economic conditions, job opportunities varied enormously across the UK. Some people will never be able to buy so what they need us secure affordable rented homes - they won't get this in the private market so HA homes are essential. Selling off HA will only exacerbate the lot of those who can never buy

G2 - "owner occupation is seen as the gaol" - yes, imprisoned in a mortgage!

In most of Europe, renting is the norm.

Why would a roadsweeper want to saddle him/herself with a mortgage and lose Housing Benefit?

As long as we have large wage differentials there will be a difference in what people can afford. And our housing policies need to reflect that and provide rented accommodation at a reasonable rent for those who would benefit from that. It is quite wrong to sell off these social housing units and leave the less well-off stranded, while the property developers make a killing.

I live in my own owned home, as do my children. Without going into details, I have lived on Broadwater Farm Tottenham at a very significant time. ( google it!)

I am still against the selling off of social housing! I don't think I'm a hypocrite!

Etheltbags, you claim that when HA houses are sold, more will be built but this has not been the experience of the past three decades when local authorities were not allowed by the government to use the proceeds from the sale of council properties to build new houses. No wonder that there is now a crisis in availability of suitable housing for young families which the current government has sought to solve by imposing the infamous 'bedroom tax' in order to chase people from their homes to make room for families who needed the space. Has this worked? No! It has created misery and resentment on the part of long-standing tenants. You also imply that social properties are not 'homes that are equal to those on the open market'. It's been my experience that houses built to exacting standards by local authorities are often superior in quality to houses thrown up in haste by property developers on owner-occupier estates. And they very often have larger gardens.

Of course a road sweeper should buy his/her own home if he or she wants to and is able to ethelbags1 and as a matter of fact I would imagine that this "roadsweeper" is probably in a much better financial position than many. Infact my sisters, best friends mum was a local authority road sweeper. She lives in a very nice village, in a very nice house and has quite a good local authority pension too.

My DS, DiL and 3 DGC live in an ex council house on a large estate. My parents live in an adapted bungalow on the edge of the same estate. My DS and DiL did buy their house privately but it was all they could afford (£70,000 if I remember correctly). Tbh if I won the lottery or suddenly came into some money the first thing I would do would be to get them off that estate.

My DH and I have run our own small (micro) business for many years. Times have been very hard and we have struggled to keep afloat and keep people in jobs. DH and I live in a very modest 2 bedroomed terraced home having downsized considerably in order to put the money into keeping the business going. We have been at risk of complete financial ruin on more than one occasion. We no longer have any pensions or savings and each earn considerably less than the people we employ. I am neither "secure" or "smug" and do have many financial worries. Not least that DH is 63 years old and is working himself to death with no retirement in site. I was a Labour voter all my life, infact I was a party member. However I voted conservative at the last election (there I have said it) as I was becoming concerned at the public sector spending free fall by successive Labour governments and seeing first hand how our Labour town councillors back scratch each other makes me sick.

I don't know how (or even if) I will vote at the coming election. I almost wish there were a monster raving looney standing in our town just so I could protest vote. It wouldn't matter anyway. Labour are guaranteed a hefty majority.

Apologies for the long ranting post. I am just upset that people jump to conclusions about each other.

Are posters saying that some people deliberately keep themselves on lower income in order to be able to claim benefits of one sort and another?

No.

gilly, I know exactly where you are coming from. The area I live in is ex mining area and it has been a safe Labour seat since the stone age.
Durhamjen it is not polite to accuse someone of exaggerating and then immediately do it yourself.

oh ethel get that chip off your shoulder. Nobody, apart from you, has ever suggested on here that people living in HA properties are somehow 'lower class' ( your expression, not mine) than people who live in owner occupied homes. Many people in the private sector with the associated insecurity of tenure desperately want a HA home which will give them security. Also, the building regulations governing HA properties are very stringent, and new build HA properties very often have more amenity space, bigger bedrooms etc than those built for private sale. I still maintain that selling Housing Association stock without replacing it will be a disaster, leaving many people stuck in the private rented sector which is of varying quality and has little security of tenure.

The stigma is not about living in a council house. It is about living in an area that is notorious for the amount of crime and anti-social behaviour - and that is true of a lot of inner-city areas which are privately rented too. It is not the houses, or who built them.

There are housing estates that are full of pleasant houses inhabited by people you would be pleased to have as friends, and there are estates where you wouldn't walk alone. Until I married and we scraped together the money for a deposit and a mortgage, I lived in estates - most of them good ones, but I know how an area can go downhill.

It is the occupants who make them into no-go slums or peaceful neighbourhoods. There are some people who would make a wilderness of Eden if they were lucky enough to live there. They are by no means the majority, but a few of them in an estate make life hell for others, and those who can manage to get out do. That leaves empty properties which are filled by either unsuspecting good tenants, who get out as well if they can afford to, or by another batch of the unsociable few. One estate we were in was excellent - it is now infamous.

The snowball effect means that good tenants avoid an estate with a bad name, and so bad ones gravitate there. It doesn't take an official "decision" to label it a sink estate and send bad tenants there - the good ones vote with their feet, if they can.

Another problem is that so many of the former council houses are now owned by private landlords. I lost count of the number of drug dealers evicted by the council, who simply moved back on to the same road in a private rented property and continued to create havoc.

A family member was living in a housing ass. house and had passed whatever the criteria to buy the house. He asked if he could do this and the housing ass. told him that they preferred to keep the house he was living in within their stock but we willing to invest £X in any house he wished to buy. This meant he could buy a house he really liked and where he wanted to live. The association has retained a stake in his house and should he sell will have their stake returned to them. Seems the best solution for all - once he moved there was no delay for another family on the housing list having a new home.