With only a few weeks till the UK general election, I thought it might be useful to do a series of, ahem, partisan blogs explaining exactly why you might want to vote for each party. If you’d like a more sensible view do check out Rick Edwards’ excellent new book ‘None Of The Above‘ which gives an actually partisan view of the current political situation. Also check out Lee ‘Budgie’ Barnett’s blogs in the lead up to the election too.
I’ll be doing a blog for each major parties and a few combined ones for smaller parties. If you think there’s anything important I’ve missed out or have anything hugely incorrect then please let me know. I’d like them to be as informative as possible. First up though, it seems only fair to start with the party that have been in charge for the last five years. Yes, I know it’ was a coalition government but we all know who was in charge. So without further, or in fact, any ado:
WHY YOU SHOULD VOTE FOR…..THE CONSERVATIVES
The Conservative Party have been a faction of the UK political scene since 1834, which is where they maintain most of their policies from. They have always been traditionally a right of centre party, when the centre is fallen over somewhere on the right side which happens to be a slippery slope with no foreseeable means of clawing it’s way back. They believe in a free market for trade, a much cheaper market in which their friends can buy public services and a very expensive market for the general public to buy necessary items to live off. So why on earth would you want to vote for them? Well there are a number of their policies, promises/threats and (dystopian) predictions that may well suit you if you’re a certain type of lizard. Sorry, person.
Do you like debt? Like, one of those big debt fans I’ve heard about? Well the Conservatives are the party for you. David Cameron has repeatedly confused the country’s deficit (the difference between money received by the government and money spent) and the country’s debt (the money owed by UK government). So far Conservative posters in January stated the country’s deficit had been halved when it’s barely been reduced by a third in their 5 years in Parliament. Cameron has also stated on a number of occasions that debts have gone down when in fact they have risen quite dramatically. The Conservatives are certain that if you vote for another party we’ll be in economic crisis. ‘We are heading for a crash so we have to stay our course’ said Cameron, seemingly thinking the best thing to do with crashes is to drive straight into them. At the last budget George Osborne criticised Labour for bailing out the banks, before then pointing out that the financial services are the most important UK industry and we have to back them. The last global crash was caused by too much private debt being sold off by banks, resulting in even further debt. We now have even more private debt than we had back then. Watch this handy vid:
Huge debt LOLZ! The Institute of Fiscal Studies says we are actually in the slowest recovery in the modern age, and that includes Kerry Katona’s career.
If you think banks and corporations are far more important than infrastructure or a sustainable society, then the Conservatives are the party for you. 100 companies signed a letter to the Telegraph last week stating that they are backing the Conservatives. This might be because Chancellor George Osborne announced a cut in corporation tax in the 2015 budget allowing tax avoiding companies to not to avoid even more tax. Or it could because one in five that signed were given honours by the Conservatives or that one in three had donated large amounts to the party. So it was definitely a fully partisan backing based only on political integrity. And why not vote for a party that won’t rule out allowing you to avoid contributing to society even more so you can have extra fun swimming in your pool of wealth like a less fun Scrooge McDuck?
Like employment? The Conservatives have stated that there are now more people in employment in the UK than ever before. Which is something that’s happened every year since the Black plague due to a constant population increase. Similarly, more people have died in the last five years than ever before but I guess this doesn’t sound as good on a campaign poster. Under the current government, employment has risen but it does help that they have changed the word ’employment’ to mean people enrolled on workfare schemes who’ve not had any employment for 6 months, people on zero hours contracts, and people in incredibly low wage jobs that still need benefits in order to afford cost of living. Some people want to work to live. Some want to live to work. If you don’t want either of these possibilities, the Conservatives are your team! Don’t forget that if you’re young an unable to find work for two years then a Conservative government will make you do unpaid work or cut off your benefits. In February David Cameron said is ‘Is it compassionate to leave people on the dole with no incentive to get work?’ No clearly not. It’s obviously far more compassionate to bring back slavery.
Not a big fan of disabled people? Neither are the Conservatives! 75% of people affected by the bedroom tax have disabilities. The magical, mythical Universal Credit system that we are told will one day appear to save us all, will actually help to make people with disabilities have even less disposable income. In 2012 10,000 people that either had disabilities or were sick, died for no reason at all after having their benefits claims closed. Thanks to cuts, there is already less money for carers, and less money for access to work schemes too. Down with independent lifestyles, right? Vote Conservatives.
Mentioning cuts, you’re a big fan of cuts right? Well the Conservatives love cuts more than an enthusiastic scissor company. Here’s a list of 50 cuts that the coalition government have made since being in power: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/budget-2015-50-cuts-tory-led-5354805. Don’t worry though! There are still at least £12bn more cuts to come from the Welfare sector alone, but we won’t find out where from till after the election. Hands up who wants really horrible surprises that may be to do with child benefits, more disability benefits cuts and all of which may have affected your voting decisions if you’d known about them before hand? That’s right, then vote Conservatives. Don’t forget too that this government has very kindly added salaried state pensions to welfare costs, just to make everything real nice and clear for us.
Like net migration? Who doesn’t want, er, nets to leave, hence threatening, er, butterfly hunting and football goals? Well the Conservatives promised to reduce net migration to less than 100,000 a year but failed spectacularly with figures three times as high in the last few years. This, plus vague promises on an EU referendum, have meant that a few Tory MPs have now defected to UKIP because they tow a very anti-establishment line that allows Tory MPs to defect without much thought.
Housing is over-rated right? Well the Conservatives are the party of home ownership, which isn’t just because all their party members have several houses each. George Osborne has promised to double the number of first time buyers to 500k a year for the next five years. Which will be great fun considering the number of houses built in 2013-14 was the lowest on record in a decade. So all those young people can get help owning somewhere that just doesn’t exist yet. And remember that video from earlier? Due to an overpriced housing market, the Help To Buy Scheme is just aiding people without enough money to afford extortionately priced homes to gain debt they’ll never hope to pay back, which will in turn cause demand on houses to rise and in turn make houses prices go up. Yey for avoiding crashes!
The NHS is a big issue in the upcoming election and the Conservatives promise that it’ll be safe in their hands, which is why it should please all voters to know that they continue to place it in other companies’ without public consultation. Yes, only 6% of the NHS is now privatised but that includes 170 GP surgeries and £18m a day from the NHS budget goes to private companies. The current health bill states only 51% of patients in need of beds have to be NHS, with 49% able to be private healthcare customers. Many nurses have lost jobs while those that have stayed have suffered a pay freeze. Several A&E units have closed and other hospitals have had to merge. Excited by the prospect of your healthcare being part of a competition? In all competitions there are winners and losers. So if you’re happy to be told ‘We’re sorry but your broken leg hasn’t won this time, but here’s a 50p voucher off a Mars bar’ then Vote Conservative!
UPDATE: The Conservatives have now promised to give £8bn extra to the NHS per year if they get in, in the same way you might redecorate your house so that it sells for more. They haven’t yet justified where they’ll get this £8bn for, but that’s ok right? Remember it’s only other parties that’ll lead the country into chaos with unsubstantiated policy costs. Whereas the Conservatives will probably be cutting welfare putting pressure on the NHS that they will then give money to. It’s akin to stabbing someone repeatedly but constantly buying them nice plasters.
Also to help average super rich families, George Osborne has pledged the Conservatives will cut inheritance tax for up to £1m. As the average family home in the UK is £272k, this pledge is aimed directly at the hard working people who work for a rich CEO who’ll be slightly more pleasant to deal with now that their children can have even more skiing holidays.
So to sum up, if you like a party who’ll very happily work for the bosses rather than the workers, hire a criminal as Director of Communications, have parliamentary candidates that work with the EDL, MPs that will happily use Parliamentary expenses for their own gains, and MPs that lie about moonlighting with 2nd or 3rd jobs, who’s MPs confuse democratic elections with ‘stabbing your brother in the back’, who’s head of the Department or Work and Pensions won’t meet with food banks and ignores obviously disturbing child poverty figures, and you want the NHS, housing and a decent standard of living to only be for certain people, then you know exactly who to vote for on May 7th!
If you haven’t yet registered to vote, please head to https://t.co/2RLHDye1Vz and do it now. Even if, for some odd reason, you don’t want to vote for the Conservatives.
Next blog: ‘BUT WUT ABOUT LABOUR?‘
Note: I there’s anything I’ve left out – and let’s be honest, there’s probably tons – please let me know.
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