UK: Who will you vote for?
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- kingkong0
lowimpact, I get you dont like the tories, but in a democracy I think people have the right to vote for whomever they choose.
How I will vote...By Stephen Fry
It’s none of your business. How you will vote is none of my business. This country cannot proceed along any lines that make sense or promise hope unless we can all get along no matter how we vote and unless we respect the primacy of the secret ballot. Having said which, open and free discussion of the people, parties and policies up for consideration is all part of democracy too.
I kind of wish people would let people vote for who they like without being judged.
http://www.stephenfry.com/2010/0…- I think it's generally agreed that people who vote Tory are self-interested cunts.********
- I think it's generally agreed that people who vote Tory are self-interested cunts.
- jysta0
Lib Dem - no income tax below £10,000
- lowimpakt0
KingKong - absolutely. I fully support the ability of anyone to vote for whever they want to vote for whether it be labour, tories, BNP, UKIP or whoever.
I just think we need to argue/debate more and challenge the rhetoric/theory and policies of all parties.
To me the Tories are liars. The fact that the party itself doesn't believe in the position David Cameron is pushing, on a number of issues such as the environment, speaks volumes.
- lowimpakt0
and debate is healthy.
e.g. i totally respect Raf even though I think he speaks through his hole all the time.
- kingkong0
Every party is a dichotomy. thats why no votes will be the biggest block in this election. Politicians are low grade 3rd rate people. My MP used to run the local Mothercare warehouse for fucksake.
'Fairness for all' with Labour and charging tuition fees and invading 2 countries...
I think its fair to say that the tories 'maybe' liars; we'll have to see.
Labour are proven liars, hook line and bloody sinker.I'll take my chances with something different thanks.
- lowimpakt0
fair enough. can you convince me of why to vote tory other than you don't like what Tony Blair did?
- kingkong0
No because as the article says above, and it's something I strongly believe in, is it's not my place to persuade you its the politicians.
Not the press, the news, your mate or your dad but the people you're actually voting for.
I have made my decision, you clearly have made yours, and im guessing that the internet and some faceless bloke on a forum will not change your mind.
am i right or am i right?
- Why are you writing as a Tory apologist, if you're not trying to influence anyone's vote. By stating yr not trying to influence, you're being as disingenuous as the rest of them.********
- you're being as disingenuous as the rest of them.********
- Why are you writing as a Tory apologist, if you're not trying to influence anyone's vote. By stating yr not trying to influence, you're being as disingenuous as the rest of them.
- lowimpakt0
?? fair enough but I disagree with Stephen Fry.
- kingkong0
Let’s agree to disagree
For a Labour voter to hate a Tory voter or vice versa is for us all to stumble into the revolting and nonsensical little-endian big-endian madness that Swift pilloried in Gulliver’s Travels. Let me say here and now and beg you to believe that some of the people in the world I most love, reverence, adore, admire and respect will be voting Conservative on Thursday. I grew up a Tory, I spent my childhood summers at Conservative fêtes and whist drives and dinner dances. I thought anyone who voted Liberal, let alone Labour, was creepy weird and horrifying. At some point the wind changed. The wind’s name was Margaret Thatcher, but we won’t go into ancient history. All the vices I once attributed to Labour — vulgarity, meanness of spirit, lack of warmth, sympathy or lightness of touch — I now attributed to the Conservatives. I went so far as to join the Labour Party, to write speeches, or parts of speeches, for Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, all of whom I met and liked. Mind you, I met and liked John Major and plenty of Tories too. I’m a whore when it comes to meeting and liking people. It is most annoying to have one’s prejudices overturned by real life. However one thing has remained constant in my political affiliations, and that is a deep contempt and fear of tribalism.
- lowimpakt0
you have to admit though, cameron is a toff.
:)
- He's so deeply unconvincing .. incredibly smarmy. He doesn't really care about the majority - it's an act.********
- He's so deeply unconvincing .. incredibly smarmy. He doesn't really care about the majority - it's an act.
- kingkong0
But it's not rationality that drives my disdain, it's a negative tribalism. Tories, like Labour, exist only as a political and electoral category. I was raised in the Labour tribe. But over the last 15 years that tribe left me, or rather showed such disdain for me that I felt I had to leave. They did terrible things I did not want to be associated with. I grew to loathe them, too. But there was lament in my loathing. I wanted them to be better. I thought they could be better. I never had much time for the Liberals. By which I mean I never gave them much thought. I didn't want a new tribe, and somehow they never seemed tribal enough. I wanted my old tribe back. This isolation came with regret. Labour left me tribeless. The only way I could define myself electorally was by what I was not. And I am not a Tory.
- The Tories are the same as they've always been .. do not forget what they did to the country the last time they were in.********
- in charge.********
- The Tories are the same as they've always been .. do not forget what they did to the country the last time they were in.
- kingkong0
class is an awful motivation to vote one way or another
- kingkong0
I don't hate them because they're rich. I grew up among working-class people and now know a fair number of rich ones, too. I see no more inherent moral quality among those who have little money than those who have lots. The fact that Cameron went to Eton is irrelevant. He had no choice in the matter. I hate him because he supports the rich and wants people who go to Eton to enjoy even more breaks than they already have.
- lowimpakt0
David Cameron is so reassuringly Tory that he still backs Philippa Stroud, the tory loon that thinks prayer can "cure" homosexuals of their "demons"
- kingkong0
Why write load of words when the Times kind of summed up where I am this morning:
"...which is a problem, when it comes to analysing this election. Because I think the key to Thursday’s outcome — the difference between the Tories falling short of an overall majority and winning comfortably — lies with people struggling with a deep, tribal, inherited, often class-based loyalty.
You may remember those posters: “I’ve never voted Tory before, but.” The Conservatives put those up because they realised that, among undecided voters, an extraordinary number said that while they were thoroughly disillusioned with Labour, they had never voted Conservative before. Now, they said, they were on the brink of backing David Cameron. And then, again and again, they added this: “My grandad would roll in his grave.”
Many pollsters assume — and adjust their polls accordingly — that a disproportionate number of these undecided voters will return to their past voting behaviour rather than following the trend. This has helped to make polls more accurate in the past. The result largely depends on whether that assumption holds good this time.
So, annoyingly, this election will be determined by people fighting a tribal urge that I’ve never felt and can’t completely relate to. The best I can offer is this: once I considered myself on the centre Left, and I don’t any more. And once I, too, had “never voted Tory”, but in the end I didn’t find it very difficult at all.
Being on the centre Left was very comfortable. I thought Margaret Thatcher’s rhetoric jarring, I found the Tory triumphalism of the 1980s distasteful (sometimes wrongly — I used to think that all those flags and Land of Hope and Glory were sinister, but when I finally attended a Tory conference it was more like Seaside Special), it made life a great deal easier at dinner parties. The centre Left, too, seemed the right place for a social liberal. Naturally on guard for the merest hint of racism, I also believed that gay rights was among the most important issues for my generation.
Beyond this, I found the certainty of the Tories off-putting. I have always recoiled from people whose eyes shine with ideological fervour. My parents’ experience, imprisoned by fascists and communists, made me an instinctive moderate, suspicious of grand schemes and those who think they have found the key to the happiness of mankind. It’s true that such certainty could be found on the Left too, and I didn’t like that either. But it seemed to suffuse the Conservative Party at that time.
But there was a problem. One I found more and more difficult to ignore. It just seemed that again and again, the Right was more, well, right. The economic policies coming out of the Left ranged from the disastrous to the silly. The unions, basically a destructive force, were accorded too much respect and given too much power. The Left seemed incapable of understanding the need for a strong defence policy. So in 1992 I became a Conservative.
Some of this Tony Blair could see and put right. I liked his social liberalism, I thought him often moderate and reasonable, I shared his Atlanticism, and (I duck for cover here) I found him rather charismatic, and still do. But I am not at all surprised that his new Labour project is ending in failure. Because while he changed much about Labour, there are things he couldn’t change.
Like every Labour government, this one has spent too much. On every single occasion — honestly, every time — the party has been in office for more than nine months, there has been a huge economic crisis, made worse by its public spending. Underpinning this mistake are two wrong-headed ideas that are deeply (indeed, almost unconsciously) held on the Left.
The first (understandable but incorrect) is that it is cruel to say no to requests for spending and to interest groups. The second is that for every problem there must be a government response. I am a pragmatic person. I don’t have some abstract, ideological aversion to ever spending taxpayers’ money. But surely Labour has now tested this approach to destruction."
- The Time is owned by Murdoch .. he's desperate for the Tories to get in - his 40% of the media has proved this.********
- *times********
- Isn't it funny how that article didn't even mention the Liberals?? Murdoch has done nothing to woo them .. he didn't even send reporters to their conference.********
- send and reporters to their conference. If the Liberals get in, he's fucked.********
- The Time is owned by Murdoch .. he's desperate for the Tories to get in - his 40% of the media has proved this.
- trooperbill0
you people really trust Brown? Didnt we get Tonys speel about 'no more boom and bust' which yes has seen a long period of growth but at the cost of a stupid amount of national debt. when things were good Gordo should have made hey while the sun shines, not kept spending like an insane person. the comments made last week were the last straw. why should we vote for someone who has nothing but contempt for the common person.
vote lib dem, least then we'll get a vote on the euro.
- I actually do trust brown - I think he's rubbish on camera, but I think he's got integrity. Inflation has been low - so have interest rates .. that's what he was referring to.********
- rates - that's what he was referring to. He's had a lot of bad luck.********
- I agree .. voting Lib Dem********
- I actually do trust brown - I think he's rubbish on camera, but I think he's got integrity. Inflation has been low - so have interest rates .. that's what he was referring to.