I might vote Tory but that doesn't make me a bad person

A wouldn't go amiss.

That was to trisher not Ana.

I actually had a conversation with a Conservative candidate in which he admitted supporting the privatisation of services in the NHS. Something he wasn't widely publicising.

Unfortunately jo1book, given the nature of social media and the number of followers people such as Lily Allen and Russell Brand accrue, not only does it give them an inflated sense of their own importance, it also seems to give creedence to the ill conceived drivel they spew out.

trisher has apologised.
I respect trisher's decision- I am sure that she had all sorts of reasons for thinking it.
I didn't take mine lightly - that is why I finally decided in the day.
I am also not saying who I voted for - except I wouldn't vote for UKIP if they were the only choice!
I just think that other people are to be equally respected and it not be assumed they are stupid, easily conned, rich and privileged , uncaring etc.
We all had the same information, we just come to different conclusions - we are better off for it. A set of unthinking clones would be dreadful!

Thanks jbf a real response and reason. I don't mind if people say they think the policies benefit them and their families what I really object to is this "We are doing this because the poor will benefit eventually." Poverty is some thing that blights lives now

That is one conservative candidate trisher.

Oh don't big it up Leticia.

My last word on this.
www.facebook.com/HuffPostUKComedy/videos/583661645070684/?fref=nf

Soutra - I will be back later this afternoon.

The election result has made Russell Brand look very silly indeed.

It didn't take the election result to make RB look very silly indeed - he dies that all by himself

does ( sighs)

This is how I do links. There are probably different ways, and better ways, but this is all I know.

Find the article or whatever you want to link. At the top of the page is the http://www. bit. Put your cursor at the end of that long line. Press left click. The whole line should go blue. The whole line must go blue, not just part of it.
Then press the Ctrl button. Keep it down and press the normal letter c button on the keyboard.

Now you can go onto the gransnet board and go to post as normal. Press the Ctrl button. Keep it down and press the normal letter v button on the keyboard.
The link should then come up.

I think that celebrities start to think that they are at the centre of things. The internet and Facebook/twitter certainly doesnt help in that respect.
RB I dont think helped Ed Miliband.

At least they don't seem to want to enter politics; now that would be scary!

Really, jo1book? Double Oscar winner, Glenda Jackson, has had 23 distinguished years as MP. Perhaps she wouldn't call herself a celebrity since that term has been devalued in recent years by nonentities famous for being famous.

I think you're right soon, celebrities do think they are at the centre of the universe. Aided abd abetted by the media of course - and some of the public who lap it all up! Eg Stephen Fry had 7.8 million followers on twitter and RB has about 9 million.

Twitter is a good name for it (are they all twits?)

Glenda Jackson was An Actress not just a sleb.

What an interesting discussion! I wish I'd had a few of your thoughts to hand when I took on two rather vicious left-wingers on Facebook! (Stupid thing to do. It left me feeling bruised and defensive.)

As others have said, we vote as we see fit, depending on many, many factors and the information we have to hand, and of course our own circumstances. Like many others, I voted Conservative. Isn't it strange that by admitting that I feel I have alienated so many people!

In my case I had a very raw deal served up by the last Labour Government in my time of need. People seemed to have forgotten that Blair also tried to save money by employing minions to get people off incapacity and disability benefits. Needing financial help for a very short period of my life when I'd hit rock bottom, become very ill and had to put an end to a career spanning thirty years was a miserable time for me and my (then) young family. I was treated with contempt, even at a tribunal and more or less told to 'find a job' even though I'd recently been given ill health retirement from my post (hospital consultants, my GP and the occupational health doctor who interviewed me and examined me, many times, agreed, over a consultation period of months, that I was sick and that continuing to work would be detrimental to my health) I had paid taxes and NI for decades and gave up work reluctantly, as I was sole bread-winner.

I relied on the generosity of family and friends to help me pay the bills and mend my broken boiler etc , in the years I couldn't work. I was well and truly skint, paying a mortgage and having children still in education. (I started job-hunting again and returned to work at the age of 59, when well enough.)

I'll never forget that frightening and awful time in my life and sadly, I'll never be a Labour voter again, even though I am from a working class background. It seemed to me at that time there were several kinds of 'poor' as well, and my "temporarily fallen on hard times" (very hard times) exempted me from a range of benefits, and indeed sympathy, because I had been prudent all my working life and paid my own way, always. I wasn't recognised as being needy enough.

Anyway....rant about 'caring' Labour over, but our outlook IS coloured by experience, and as others have said, I almost became a social pariah in some parts for voicing the opinion that Cameron had got lots right during his term of office. Much of it isn't right, but I think that can be said for most PMs at the end of their time at Number Ten.

Thank goodness for democracy, eh?

annodomini, I wouldn't put Glenda Jackson in the same category as the other lightweights mentioned she was/is of a different calibre altogether not only in her talent as an actress, but also as a politician and she didn't embark on that second career in the age of social media looking for instant gratification.

Great post Day6.

I don't think you'll have alienated anyone on this thread!

good post Day6 and welcome to the forum, hope you will stay.

Good post Day6.

I think that the trouble with politics is that a lot of us forget things very quickly. When details of how a particular party acted when in power, fade unless you have personal memories of what aspects were like.

I dont think that prudence is rewarded. Abd it is not encouraged by the Labour party.

Someone said today, on a BBC interview from Scotland, that people forget that it was Labour who introduced PPIis in the NHS. That they were the ones who started selling off bits of the NHS first?

Like you, I had a basinful of soclalism when I worked. But watch yourself, extreme politics, like Thrush has a habit of coming back to irritate you.