If the Tories get in power again they have pledged to cut £12 million from the welfare budget in the next two years. Ian Duncan Smith has declined to give details about the cuts but a leaked document indicates that disabled benefits will take a huge whack.
Contribution based ESA will be scrapped so if you get a works pension or have a working partner you will get nada. Taxing PIP which will hit people still in work AND those people with pensions who just lost ESA. Cutting carers allowance claimants by 40%
This general election is crucial. It’s not my place to tell you who to vote for but I urge you NOT to vote conservative. Almost any alternative (not UKIP) would be better. I know that many people have lost faith in government but by golly this is an opportunity for your voice to be heard and to actually mean something.
It’s not too late to get a postal vote. The form is online (Apply for a postal vote - GOV.UK) and needs to get to them 11 days before the election.
PLEASE vote, vote to stop disabled people being thrown into poverty. I promise you that if these cuts go ahead the boards will be full of heartbreak.
I just realised - it should be £12 billion not million
its funny money anyway I just know that my own income would evaporate. After decades of paying nation insurance I would be eligible for sweet fa if the new plan goes ahead. I’ve never been more scared of anything for our country. I used to think that Margaret Thatcher was bad…
please everyone, just vote. It was people not voting that got us into this mess. I don’t know who i will be voting for yet, but it won’t be for conservitives, or ukip, or liberal democrats. xxx
Me too. I am also the carer of a disabled partner and we are dreading what will happen if the nasty party get back in power. Also, the way Cameron ( and his wife )use their poor dead, disabled son as a sob story to get votes and then have no compunction in cutting help for other people’s disabled children makes my blood boil.
I take great care to read all the election pledges and weigh up the possible benefit to society and then vote Labour, as I have done every time since Harold Wilson. Far from perfect, but an awful lot better than the alternative.
This is a worrying prospect. I receive contribution based esa and I also receive a (small) occupational pension. I’m 37 this summer, I’ve had ms for 19 years. I worked with the nhs for 15 years and would have still been there had my ms not dictated otherwise. So now I’m faced with the possibility of losing the majority of my esa as I’ve got “other income” that I worked for! Possible tax on DLA aswell? Great, they can take their pissy car back. Shove it up IDS’s arse and esa & dla. Infact take the fking lot. I don’t want it! I want my old job back. I want my old life back, even though half of it’s been with ms so it’s getting harder to remember but they can have it! Just book me in for a large syrupy drink that ends it all then put me in a box & cremate me. It’ll save on the cost of burying me. Seriously folks the way this is all ‘possibly’ headed I think that’ll be a relief. Instead of having to scrape by on fking pennies and all because I caught ms. How dare I!
I share your feelings exactly. I have never felt so bleak. Like you I worked in public service (with its depressed wages) and dutifully paid my NI and superan for over 20 years only to find that the Tories look on me as a drain and a scrounger. What kind of society are we creating where the vulnerable carry all the weight and the multi millionaires get tax breaks?
Take your anger to the voting box and put your X where it will count.
We have a problem with so-called Bed-Blocking.
This started with hospital closures from the 1960s onward (often the “no longer needed” Isolation Hospitals) and continued by every party ever since. Some of the old workhouse buildings were either modernised or replaced at that time for accommodating the elderly, and have been closed since. Usually they stood on a large plot of land which attracted developers (now there is surprise). Today there are very few State or Council run homes for the elderly - and the private sector has taken up the slack at a price. So we can blame both parties for that one.
The Blair government did the NHS no favours at all. All Bliar did was to announce measures that were already in place before he did so, and to impose loads of targets. If you run the bed occupancy rate up from about 85% to 100% you cannot be surprised if you do not have any empty beds. (of course, you could say that Bliar was a Tory in disguise (I nearly wrote drag)), but his administration had 13 years to improve the NHS and did nothing.
The Camoron administration: who takes the blame for doing nothing here? Tories or Lib-Dems or both? It is a touch curious that more NHS Trusts have had problems in this period - or is it.
Vote Labour? Not in my area - there is simply no point.
I live in a safe Tory constituency. Over half the vote is Tory. The sitting member is a mouthpiece for Conservative Central Office: “The NHS is not being privatised”.
The only realistic opposition is the Lib-Dems - the candidate is an ex driving instructor. The word “Chancer” comes to mind.
The labour candidate comes from being a Councillor in East London - I guess that she has been put down here to see how she copes in a seat she can never win (11% of the vote last time). Then she will be put up in a marginal that she might win. A vote for Labour will be wasted.
UKIP - who?
So I cannot see much point in voting - even if I did shuffle into the polling station with my Zimmer frame.
If there was anyone seriously worth voting for I would shuffle - but there is not.
If you want to play a fun game, take the old slogan used against Richard Nixon - “Would you buy a used car from this man?” and apply it to the party leaders we have here and now.
Camoron? Used Jags with the speedo clocked.
Millibean? Used Vauxhalls - and a lot of spiel about how they are better than Fords
Clegg? Range Rovers rebuilt after a crash.
Farage? Empty forecourt - only genuine British made British cars - might have a Morris Minor next week.
I recall when sick pay became ‘means tested.’ If you were in receipt of an occupational pension in excess of the amount of the sick pay you didn’t get any sick pay. That happened when labour were in power.
The problem we have is that the welfare system has been hijacked by too many people who are ‘fiddling’ the system in a big way.
In the '97 election, one constituency was won with a majority of 12 votes, overturning a 5,800 majority.
Another constituency changed hands with a majority of just 2 votes, overturning a majority of over 8,000 (This was declared void upon petition, and a by-election held. The victor’s majority this time was 21,500).
How would you feel if the party YOU wanted to win missed out where you live by just a few votes - and you hadn’t voted?
It happens!
If a constituency were won by just a single vote, then everyone who had voted for the victor would have actually cast that winning vote.
In agreement with Ben, not vote because assuming ‘safe seat’ in area - no! Too many people are miserable with the current state of affairs. I hate Blair’s legacy but the current government is worse and I do anything to get them out!
I’m not a fan of tactical voting and thank goodness I don’t have to because the labour candidate in my constituancy stands a real chance of winning. My daughter is a passionate Green but is in an area where the sitting Tory has a small majority with labour as a close second. She is very conflicted because she worries that to vote with her heart (green) will let the Tory in again. My thoughts are that I would do almost anything to prevent this lot back in. I would weigh up the odds. Is a labour government going to be better than the Torries? Hell yes!