Non voter

You really have and everyone else will pay the consequences of letting the likes of Farage in instead

Deleted User said:

going off in the huff

That's really juvenile and insulting. I haven't 'gone off in a huff'.

Sorry for the tone earlier Lotus .

Caught me at a bad time.

Hopefully my post about Reform’s manifesto will demonstrate why I have such contempt for them.

Sometimes evils are so great that you have to side with something that’s less bad.

And Reform and Trump really are evil. Not misguided or from a different political tradition, evil.

A, I have respect for your views but I am only putting forward alternative ideas for debate, I'm not attacking you personally. Please let's keep it calm and polite.

I have no idea if the democrats were better or worse than Trump, as I don't live in the USA and don't follow their politics. I think all politicians have their own agenda and I believe that for most of them it's not an altruistic one.

For most of my life I voted Labour but I no longer feel they represent my values enough for me to vote for them. I didn't agree with all the policies of the Tories or Reform or Liberal democrats either though, which is why I couldn't vote at the last GE.

I am at home today because of strong winds that come with a Red Warning weather alert. That is one of the reasons that carbon reduction targets and green subsidies need to stay. One doesn’t have to look far to see the impact of climate change on others - wildfires, floods, droughts, famine. The dignity and diversity of every human being matters and that is something I look for in the actions and attitudes of politicians. Without human dignity, society is on a slippery slope. 

Some highlights from Reform’s manifesto:

Tax

• Increase basic tax threshold to £20k and higher tax threshold to £70k.
• Increase inheritance tax threshold.
• Tax exempt NHS workers.
• Reduce corporation tax.
• Raise VAT threshold.
• Tax relief for private schools.

How much do you think this would cost and what would be the impact on government spending on services? It’s an uncosted fantasy that would result in massive spending cuts. Purely a carrot designed to fool people into voting for them.

NHS

• Require people to have additional insurance to fund the NHS but provide tax relief on it. Happy with that?

Benefits

• Completely remove unemployment benefits after 4 months

Environment

• Remove carbon reduction targets
• Scrap green subsidies

Culture

• Fine universities for “political bias”
• Make school curriculum “patriotic”
• Ban teaching of “gender ideology” and “critical race theory”
• Abolish all diversity,  equality and inclusion roles and regulations

Other

• Leave European Convention on Human Rights
• Quit the World Health Organisation

In a society that has lost its moral compass, harsh actions based on the truth and based on reality are required to restore the standards of morality back to acceptable levels - this is the very reason why I am staunchly uncompromising in my absolute beliefs away from deceptive “democracy” that are not in the best interests of the poor and vulnerable in our society and which only enable the abusive upper classes to become even more so 

There is a theme of support for the poor and vulnerable throughout this thread.

Wow, just wow. Not even going there.

That sounds exactly like someone claiming the democrats were as bad as Trump.

It was the Tories that created this mess. They’ve been in power for over a decade FGS. And Reform is the party where all the Tories who thought Brexit wasn’t extreme enough went. 

Nigel Farage FGS 

Please advise what policies of the Tory and Reform parties are worse than Labour? I think they're all as bad as each other. The reform party wanted to raise the personal tax allowance to 20K which would have helped millions of poor people. The Tories said they would raise it a bit for pensioners. Labour kept it frozen, and took away the fuel allowance for most.

Well said Fire monkey. I totally agree.

No one is saying we’re happy about it.

What we are saying is that there is no better option available and going off in the huff and not voting will mean a Tory/Reform government which would be vastly worse.

It’s just realism.

Ideally I'd support a political party to the left of a Starmer led Labour but not a Corbynite,unelectable,perpetual protest party.  It disturbs and worries me  that some on this thread are giving clear indications that  they have no problem with Labour's intended actions against the disabled and/or vulnerable. The idea that it can be deemed acceptable, because of the damage caused by 14 years of Tory ineptitude, horrifies me. Have we really sunk so low, as a nation,  that punishing those less fortunate for the behaviour of those far more fortunate is regarded as morally acceptable?

Your poor Mum. I can appreciate why she didn’t vote. I have been thinking if there would ever be a situation when I mightn’t vote. I think if all the political candidates stood for something similar that was going to cause harm, I wouldn’t vote. Otherwise, I think for now I will keep on voting, although it can be difficult to weigh up the positives and negatives of each candidate and make an informed choice, especially when some politicians do not know how to go about doing the thing they promised they would do or they lie about their intention to do something.

We have PR for the Senedd elections, but not for any others, they made all the devolved assemblies PR because they thought it would stop one party controlling things, well that worked out well, the SNP have been in control of the Scottish Parliament and Labout have been in charge of the Senedd for years. I don't like domination by one party, whoever they are.

I think we do need a shake up of how politics is done in Britain, I think what we have now is a mess with to many people feeling unrepresented, both nationally and locally. Many think that having more independents would help, I disagree, I didn't used too, but living with a council that seem to be nearly all independents, I've gone off the idea, there seems to be even less scrutiny and accountablility. They all send out one leaflet each and the rest is online, apparently, we are an elderly population, many people here don't use online stuff or social media, so how do they get to know who's who and what they stand for? I did talk to one bloke who put a leaflet through my door, it was the usual guff that you get from all politicians. When I asked him about things like Wylva 2 and the proposed destruction of Penrhos Country Park, he just started going on about jobs and practically had a fit when I said that I know nobody who wants the Park ripped up and that the jobs will be low paid, insecure and seasonal and asked how many local people are nuclear engineerig experts, let alone have the capacity to build and manage such a huge project? There are local vested interests being represented by so called local independent candidates.

Last election, for the first time, my 90 year old Mum didn't vote, she couldn't see one candidate who didn't have as many negatives as positives, let alone any who had more positives than negatives.

I think there are two words to describe the above diatribe, clinically barking!

Are you all right? 

Over the last few days more and more people have been posting on LinkedIn that they would never normally talk about politics on a platform meant for professional and career issues, and where they are clearly associated with their employer, but that given what has happened in the US, they can no longer stay silent. 

That’s it’s time we stopped politely ignoring extremist comments and the fools, idiots and nut cases that spread and support them. We need to stop being tolerant of fascists and criminals.

They of course will have no problem with us exercising our right to absolute free speech.

That, apart from the Christian angle, is what they have in Iran. The majority of Iranians do not seem particularly happy with it. Let's hope your dystopia never comes to pass.

IrishInManchesterUK said:

the only solution is a Millitary dictatorship government (the most transparent form of government there is) with no one milltary leader taking overall power and having a permanent national state of emergency, permanent martial law via Millitary courts and permanent police state with armed police and armed milltary on our streets - a dedicated and all powerful armed religious milltary morality police must be established to enforce traditional Christian religious teachings by a show of overwhelming milltary force to ensure absolute compliance and actively prevent all dissent, with the sweeping legal powers to instruct all other bodies like councils, police and army to carry out certain actions 

I still read your diatribes in a state of distraught disbelief.

Unfortunately, the ignore function was never given to us and I am unable to ignore you.

I will say the same things to you that I said a couple of years back - look at history, look at the world where totalitarian states still exist, look at the abuse perpetrated by the Catholic Church and the evil perpetrated by religious zealots.

It's people like you that would run the state as you describe, and I'd rather be dead to be honest.