General Election: Who the hell am I going to vote for???

In Liverpool we have had 58% cuts via this government so I could never vote conservative now. I just wish they had a different leader in the Labour party I cannot say I warmed to Ed. I hope with the right backing from decent they can be a little more caring to the ordinary person than some of the heartless stuff which has gone on recently.

 

I won't retire when I'm 65 or 67 no matter what the pensionable age is.. Can't sit still for long enough..

But I have paid in big style to this country and trust me I do mean big. The promise was that I would get a pension when 65 comes around. Now it's 67 yet I must have missed the letter in the post informing of my rebate. Bitter ? Well no I really couldn't care ..

If I vote I may vote labour ? Why ? Cos I dislike the torys with a passion. I am sorry but they set records in how many promises they can break and how many lies can be told ..

HaHa it made me laugh today when old call me Dave said we must not vote tactically as it may cost him number 10.... Really ? I blooming hope so !

 

I would rather pay a bit more tax and keep the services we need. Police, fire brigade, ambulance, NHS, Army, Navy, and Air force. Social services that met peoples needs. I am not sure I would buy a private pension or in my case superannuation the government pension. It stops you getting help when you need it. My family has not done well in state pensions 3 out of 4 grandparents died within weeks of their 60th birthdays, the 4th my nan Lasted to 65. My dad died Christmas 2013 only 68 years so did not get much of his pension mum gets virtually nothing because she had a married woman's stamp and she is only 67 now. Dad died due to asbestos so he got a little compensation so mum has to pay for everything and does not get any help her money will run out in two to three years. Dads brother died at 65 years.
My own life expectancy is said to be about 60 years ( I am 52 now) so I have two more years of insurance left at a very high premium then they won't insure my life. I pay huge amounts of money for insurance for a holiday I went away at Christmas just to Austria and it cost £300 to insure myself for 1 week.
Imagine what I would have to pay if the NHS start to charge. I never had a problem paying tax in all my working years. We had lots paying a little and the services where available. Not like now everyone earning so little they don't pay tax.
My nephew has a zero hour contract he works 14 hour days but when he wants a holiday he gets no holiday pay he is not entitled to any holidays on a zero hour contract. If he says he has an appointment so cannot do the 14 hours he needs an hour off his employer says ok then wont give him any hours for two weeks or more out of spite. He is 24 and lives with his mum because he cannot be sure he will have the hours to pay rent or a mortgage.
I thought the 80's where bad I am so glad not to be a kid starting out now.
The banking crisis seams to be the one thing that destroyed everybody's economy. I wonder how many years and how many governments it will take to get us back to the life we enjoyed before, without seeking to destroy the lives of ordinary people and the vulnerable of society.

 

I agree,marie131963 but I always thought we were living a dream back in the early 90s.
Good ole Tony and Gordon was getting us all living on credit,(not me I may add), house prices were rising through the roof, to help feed the feel good factor.
Everyone was jumping on the buy to rent bandwagon.

Even a pregnant fish like me could see that all that credit just couldn't last.

When the bubble burst ole Tony was off like a shot, left poor old Gordon to take the can back.
And like an idiot he stepped into Tony's shoes just when it all went wrong.

So vote Labour, not on your Nelly, their track record says it all.

 

Back in the days of the Tory government then.

If Thatch had considered the knock-on effect of selling two million council houses at bargain basement prices the housing boom of the nineties and noughties would not have been so extreme. As larger numbers of these former tenants died it was the value in their estates that helped kick it all off.

 

Until 1975 mortgages for a couple were generally based on one income. After August '75 women gained the right to return to their jobs after maternity leave and within 3 years mortgages were based on both incomes (usually all of one and half of the other), suddenly couples could borrow more and that's when house prices started to rocket. There was a huge boom at the end of the 70s start of the 80s which started before the right to buy came in but the right to buy fueled it further.

 

Yeah, I think I might have got my timing a bit off there


I think its about time people stopped blaming Thatcher for all the ills of the country today, its been 30 odd years or more, and quite a few different governments that have had the chance to alter things, but have they?

The council house sale, was something I benefited from, but as I said once before, the main problem with the sell off was that the money was not used to build more.



The buy to rent in my opinion was the biggest reason for house prices rising through the roof back then.

Property is looked upon as an investment, and any government that presides over a period of house prices falling is unlikely to get voted back in, remember negative equity and all the repossessions.

My house is somewhere to live, I dont care if the price goes up or down.

 

But huge decisions have long term effects. Likewise her deregulation of the banking industry. Or the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. Her legacy is now being looked upon as tainted.

I agree.

I agree again to a very large part.

 

You are right to say DLA is changing to PIP. BUT It has also changed the criteria to claim on the distance from 50 to 25 metres and whether you can do it with walking sticks and crutches which will makes it much harder to claim. It takes no notice of varied conditions where the beginning of the day you may be able to walk the 50 metre but later in the day not be able to walk the 25 metre. I use my DLA for my car I would be housebound without it, I use crutches so I may not qualify for pip now. I am supposed to use a wheel chair but so far I refuse unless I cannot walk at all. It is like giving up and I am still fighting. The care part of DLA I use for my carers which I employ two while my husband works. ( If I lose my benefit those two girls will also lose there jobs and the country will lose their tax and national insurance which goes back in the system. )

Personally I don't read the papers at all. I watch little news. I don't trust any of the political parties, they are all liars. However The conservatives are brutal, I went through the 80's when Maggie was wicked. I had to pay over a £1000 poll tax, my mum and dad did too and my sister, my brother was too young. so they go £4000 poll tax for a council house, in a very poor area of Liverpool that even now is considered an urban priority area. We had the miners strikes , riots, power cuts. Liverpool was destroyed by the conservatives just like now they cut our funding and took less off the conservative and affluent councils. We threw out labour in Liverpool then for a while they where militant and not good either but we had the Liberals for a few years and I quite liked them.

I hate being ill and I never imagined I would end up with MS a heart condition plus other conditions which makes me too sick to work now. These days I wonder if I will loose my benefit, be housebound and my family will be hungry, then loose my house because I might not be able to make the mortgage payment. I only have two years left. The conservatives refuse to say where the cuts are but they are going to be in the next two years and we have seen how cut throat they are with the poor and they feather the nests of the wealth and business community.

I really believe they are picking on the sick and vulnerable and making the public despise them as then no one will leap to their defence. It does not matter that the likes of myself had two jobs for most of my life, I have done loads of voluntary service, from when I was 14. served my country and yet I am made to feel worthless and a burden on society and if not that I am told I am a scrounger.

I would give anything to have my strength back. I would be back to work in a flash I loved work. I agree Ed would be my last choice for Labour, what where they thinking, but I think he is a better choice than David Cameron. I do hope the Liberal Democrats get votes on the Don't Knows/ protest vote as I do feel they can calm whichever party is in power.

My worry is that the vote is so fragmented the conservatives stay in power by default just like last time. Either way better to vote for who you believe is right for you, your family and friends so that the result is made of people voting and not by a low turn out and huge numbers not voting then complaining.
My vote is in so I am done.

 

This is exactly how it should be based

Its what i had to do for my Atos assessment. i happened to wake up for it having an amazing ME day so i did 5 star jumps which made me very sick I could barely walk and lay down for the whole assessment so that he could see what I was like on most days not the once in a blue moon good days.

You cant base what someone can do on their good days it always has to be what the rest of the days are like and their worse. thats the advice everytime for people ME filling out any of the forms always do it based on your worse days never ever on your good days because they will take that as normal and base level




In a way im kind of stuck as a voter because of my situation. Obviously i complete understand being sick and on benefits. I live on less than i would get on benefits now and apparently live off an income that is the income of the bottom 3% of this country and i am aparently in poverty.

Im not in poverty, Im very comfortable but then I dont spend a lot of money as I dont really go out lol

Anyway im kind of in Limbo. Im not sick enough to qualify for benefits but Im not well enough to work for an employer. Now i can do work and I can lift fairly heavy stuff and I could do lots of jobs but not for any employer. Unfortunately when i do work I have to break constantly so I work for half an hour max if its manual labour cause I cant let my heart race or i work for an hour max if its not manual because then concentration starts to go. I would then need a break for an hour in a quiet darkened room to rest before doing more

There is no employer that would cater for that. Which is why i work as self employed from home so I can manage my activity and rest, I probably work 4-6 hours a day but those 6 hours are so spaced out with rest

So for me personally the economy is the biggest issue the way i see it is if we get the economy moving and growing and healthy and we reduce the debt then we will have more money for the NHS and benefit etc and we will have more jobs.

I want people to have more money so that then they will have more money to spend on the stuff I make but without a healthy economy that wont happen.

Now i said how zero hours contracts would help someone like me in getting back into the world of work outside my home but they would also benefit me as a possible future employer.

if my shops got big enough that i could not crochet fast enough to meet the orders I would have to consider taking someone on. I wouldn't be able to afford to give someone a part time or full time job but possible a zero hours contract for when i have lots of orders or perhaps someone who contracts me their crocheting services for when orders are high. Then if the business keeps growing i would eventually be able to perhaps take on someone in a set hours position.

Everyone always seems to just look at it as big business and super rich people taking advantage of employees but that isnt necessairly the case there are lots of stuff in between.

Im not sure why the whole focus is on zero hours contracts because there are some way worse jobs that are not benefiting people. For example self employed contract workers who work for companies. Yes they get regualar hours but not necessarily any pay. So for example the job is to pick up and drive cars around the country for a company. You get to work everyday and you get paid but you have to pay for all your travel costs inbetween the collecting of the cars. So you can start with a car from say manchester that then you have to drive to reading but then your next pick up is in swansea. You then have to pay for that travel which eats into any momey you earn. Depending on what route they calculate and where the drop off and pick ups are you can either earn money that day, earn nothing at all or have spent more than you have earned. Also obviously there is no sick pay or holiday pay either

Now that for most people is a waste of time but a lot of retired people do it because they get cheaper fares and can use the buses for free so they dont spend as much inbetween.

So we currently have these forms of employment i believe

Full Time
Flexi Time
Part time
Zero hours
Agency
Self employed contractors
Self employed

Feel free to add any i have missed. Each one of these benefits a part of society and certain job types and each one of these doesnt benefit a part of society and certain job types. There are positivies and negatives for employees and employers on all these job types

We will never have a world where everything is perfect for everyone but we do have a world where we have more choices than ever before and more ways we can help our selves.

Like how amazing is the internet. it makes it easier for people to make their hobby into a carrer to start up their own business or to work from home if needed for companies. Who ever thought people just talking about stuff in a video on the internet would ever become a really lucrative career and fair play to those who have made it a sucess

We have so many more options than we have ever had in the past to make jobs and careers work for us around different lifestyles. We have so much choice when it comes to everything and I think that is a good thing altho maybe not in supermarkets as sometimes i think I really dont need this many choices of bread or nuts etc

 

There are also several forms of unpaid work which involves receiving some sort of payment (eg travel expenses, meal allowances etc) and training schemes and work placements. The best training /work placements cost an employer because of the time spent in training but I acknowledge that not all employers give more than they take.

 

Mrs T, works for the local council, has a supervisor with adults with learning difficulties. they have had there budget cut and the property were she works is being privatized.
They are fetching in more complex cases, then the council get more money, some are violent, bed bound, can't feed themselves, she's already been sexually assalted, by a man she went to observe, for care. I wanted to go round and kick his head in, she wouldn't let me. The Police won't do anything.
Where is it going to end.
I've been down to her offices and seen her manager and told them if she gets hurt or worse I will be down again, and it won't be pretty