financially (and traditionally) someone like me would be better off if the conservatives were in power. labour tend to take from the rich and give to the poor. where as the tories let the rich keep it, which seems much more fair to me. why should i have to pay for my good fortune and hard work, especially when it gets used to pay for some pregnant teen or lazy addict. screw that! traditionally the tories dont believe scum should be funded by hard workers. the problem with this idea is that traditional conservative values are no longer in place, so i have no guarantee that voting tory will help me financially. the good old days are long gone.
That's a very old and typically right wing propaganda stereotype of how Labour taxation has previously been applied Jug...
You seem to forget that under Thatcher's and Major's Tory party, it appeared that high earners kept more of their money BUT this was offset by the fact that there were far more stealth taxes involved. You think it's bad now! VAT went up from 8% to 17.5% between 1979 and 1997, which hit the workers who couldn't claim it back far harder than the executives and entrepreneurs who could.
Sure the Tories cut taxation, but it was more of a case of give with one hand and take with the other. Remember free milk in school? That was taken away by Thatcher in the 70's ("Thatcher Thatcher milk snatcher" was a slogan at the time!). So those that wanted their kids to have milk at school now had to pay for it.
What about prescription charges? Those went up dramatically under Tory, and many people who were previously exempt now had to pay for it. This hit those in the working classes (who were WORKING) moreso than the middle and upper classes. Ironically, regardless of the wage a family was earning child benefit was offered to everyone. A rich family could claim a few quid in child benefit on top of their high earnings, but a low earning lower class family couldn't get free/ subsidised prescriptions anymore. Equality eh?
Remember as well that the Tories wanted to privatise just about anything and had set about selling off most of the state run industries at knock down prices. Certainly that meant you would no longer have to pay for them through your taxation, but if you wanted to use them at all you had to pay full whack for them instead. This was going to include education, health, public facilities/ ameneties no doubt had the Tories clung to power...
Seeing how badly some of the privatised industries have faired (Railtrack anyone?) and how the Water Companies for instance gave most of their profits to shareholders rather investing in the replacement of leaking Victorian pipes (giving us a hose pipe ban) shows that privatising essential services is not necessarilly a good thing.
Therefore you might have ended up paying less tax out of your wages under previous Tory governments, but the cost of living for essential services useage would go up dramatically. See what I mean about giving with one hand and taking with the other?
So when the Tories STILL go on about cutting taxes I take it with a pinch of salt. The schools, the hospitals, the libraries, street cleaning, Policing, the Civil Service etc. needs to be paid for. They don't run magically, and if privatised then the share holder becomes the priority rather than the service for the end user (the public).
And besides, I have ALWAYS been financially better off under a Labour government than under the Tories. That included periods where I was earning good money and also periods when I was unemployed. Only the very rich would be substantially better off, and we can't compare the taxation of the 70's Labour government with the Labour government of today. The socio-economic climate is very different now than it was then. We do actually pay LESS direct tax under Labour today than we did under previous Tory governments.
If you ever get the chance to challenge Mr. Cameron, ask him how he is going to pay for his promised tax cuts. The simple answer is that Joe Public will foot the bill one way or another. The books have to be balanced somehow.
So until the Tories give me an idea of how their policies are going to be paid for I will not vote for them. They put me and most of my friends out of work back in the early 90's, as well as causing some of the biggest economic crashes in recent times - Black Monday, the property market crash, mass unemployment, high interest and VAT rates etc.
I always vote tactically anyway, making sure that party I LEAST want to get into power doesn't. At the next election I could be voting for any party, but it won't be Tory that's for sure.
Don't waste your vote, it's a valuable opportunity to have your say.
*End of Chas' party political broadcast*
