How will we all be voting?

I'm bloody pissed off that I'm not 18 'til October. Everyone go out and vote.

Yeah, I'm not 18 until September.

I'm gonna have to wait another 5 fookin' years now.

By post, if Waverley ever get their act together. I don't discuss my politics, as I'm likely to lose the argument.

CD

Thats a shame, yeah I certainly agree that everyone should do thier best to vote, people have fought for that right for hundreds of years and we must honour it etc...

Personally I shall be voting Labour. Despite all the crap they still remain the best organ for left-wing pressive change in the UK, and one look at Micheal Howard and I have no doubts what so ever.

lib dems i guess. Best of a band bunch really. still thinking about it. But def not Tory. and actually def not Labour, so i'm not left with that much choice really. I'd rather vote for Michael Jackson tbh.

Conservative. though my first choice party is Lib Dems.

The reason for my odd political persuasion is that the LDs are still not a real challenger to Labour yet. If all the Lib Dem supporters vote Tory, then in 5 years time we'll try and stick the Lib Dems in charge.

If the LibDem supporters pay me a fiver between them, I'll volunteer my username to be changed to Love_LibDems until may 5th.

I know it's not quite what you're saying Tim, but there are loads of people who say "I would vote Lib Dem but I reckon I'd be wasting my vote, 'cos they've got no chance." If all these people actually voted for them, they'd push Labour close.

That's where my vote will be going anyway.

*Bites tongue.... hard*

You're right Liam, there are a lot of people who say that, but I believe it's mostly our peers (we're about the same age I think....roughly). It's all very well having the youth vote, but where I live (SE England) there's loads of conservative safe seats, while up in the north and midlands there's many Labour safe seats. Having support in those areas, for example, is no good.

Like I say, I'm not a hardline Tory, and in an ideal world I'd vote LibDem, but in this election, considering where I live too, a LibDem vote is going to be a waste of my minute power as an individual electorate member.

edit: Frankie... this is a discussion board. Speak up, by all means.

Oh don't say that. That's worth a smack around these parts.

Ok then, here is why I will not voting Tory:

-Firstly the history of the party. Thatcher and Major, through intrusive privatisation schemes wrecked public services, and they are still struggling in many cases to recover. Thatcher's fierce neo-liberalism, lowering taxes for the rich, introducing poll tax (which was not only economicly disasterous, but also immorral) and stripping funding from education and healthcare led to a massive increase in the gap between rich and poor. Unemployment, remember, reached three million last time the Tories were in.
-The Party is locked in the past. Just look at their voting record on issues of constitutional reform. Devolution into Scotland and Wales, the abolition of the Lord Chancellor, and the abolition of hereditory peerage in the House of Lords were all vitally necessary reforms in modernising Britian, and making it more democratic. Not only did the Tories resist constitutional reform when they were in power (Thatcher stripped local government of pretty much all its funding), but nearly all Tory MPs voted against Labour's constitutional reforms.
-Playing the race card. A lot of the Tory campaign seems based on immigration and gypsies. It may not be racist to impose limits on immigration, but emphasis on strict immigration is designed to swing over a lot of the causually racist middle England "coming over here stealing our jobs..." Daily Mail reading types. Flying in the face of very basic human rights, it seems Howard is prepared to withdraw from the UN convention on Refugees in order to pander to racial tensions. Defeat of the Tories in this general election will send a very clear message, playing the oppertunist race card is simply not acceptable anymore! It was the Tories who, in a Birmingham constituency in the 60s used the slogan "If you want a nigger neighbor, vote Labour", it was a conservative minister (Powell) who made the infamous "rivers of blood speech". How anybody could vote for this party scares me.
-Foreign Aid: Blair and Brown have begun the long process of trying to reduce the massive global gap between rich and poor. Britian's foreign aid has massively increased (to the target of 0.7% of GDP) over the last few years, and the debts to many countries (though its not yet enough) have been abolished. Furthermore, they are putting vital pressure on other nations to do the same thing. The Tories would throw this all away.

I could go on. I could say how the economy is better now than it has been hundreds of years, I could say how the gap between rich and poor in the UK has been falling, how millions of children have been pulled out of poverty, how education and the NHS are in a better state than they have been a long time... how... you get the picture.

That is my two cents. Anyone with any shred of human decency could never vote Tory on the May 5th, and will either vote Labour, or for a Lib Dem candidate that will stop a Tory MP from getting in. Another trashing of the Tories may consign them to the history books forever, and I will have a big fucking smile on my face.

I'll probably be voting Labour, with a heavy heart as is usual.I havent made up my mind totally yet maybe I'll look into Socialist Labour and their policies.
I think the spector of Michael Howard ever getting in is scarey enough to get most Labour voters out.
As for the Tories,Plaid cymru and the Liberals most of their policies dont apeal to me with perhaps the exception of the Liberals policy of raising income tax to pay for services but the Liberals always struck me as unprincipaled: ie just saying what it it takes to get votes, if they ever did get into power I'm not sure they would follow through so to speak.

That's a very very good post, frankie, though I'm a bit bemused as to what a 60s election campaign slogan has got to do with anything at all other than your own pointedness. It's a bit like me saying "FrankiegoestoHollywood wrote a song about homosexuality once, don't listen to frankiegoestostoke's posts!" But I'm sure I would have felt the same as you do.....back in the 1960s when it actually happened.

I do think, though, that by referring 'back' to what the Tories did in past terms in power, it's just what Labour are doing in their campaign - we've seen the posters urging voters to remember what it was like when Conservatives were in power and how bad it was, apparantly. I've only ever had an understanding of politics under a Labour Gov, I don't remember what the differences were. I agree the economy and Britain's world standing is strong now, stronger than it ever has been etc. but I don't think there is a danger of that disintegrating under ANY party.

By 'playing the race card', which may be a bit immoral and I don't agree with it, I do think that it is just simply that: playing a certain card to win the election. I don't think Howard could seriously expect to pull off the very extreme measures in this area, which have largely been created by a asylum-crazy press anyway.

On education - I'm not certain. Perhaps, generally, education in the last 8 years is better than the 8 years before that. But it seems to me, very recently, that there are now growing problems in this area - lack of quality teaching, effective discipline, too much trouble in schools, poor standards of school meals (one of these points is tongue in cheek, can you guess which one?). I'm also not keen on our current edgy relationship with Europe, is that relationship worth risking in order to keep on pleasantry terms with Bush? Not in my opinion.

You make some good points love-libs.

The 60s election slogan thing was merely an example of the historic differences between the two parties, and how one (labour) has a much more consistent record of safeguarding human rights than the other.

But I agree the two parties are very different (particularly Labour) to how they were forty years ago, and while Labour's human rights record is sadly rather patchy these days (though it must be noted they were the first government ever to codify human rights into British law in 1998(?) with the human rights act).

I think the reason many Labour supporters are so keen to point out the failures of the previous conservative government is because many of those on the opposition benches now were key players in that government. Micheal howard was employment secrety when unemployment reached a historic peak etc...

I agree there are still problems with education, but under the Tories there is no chance this is going to improve, as their overall plan seems to be the cutting of billions of pounds (35 billion is the figure being thrown around) from public services including education.

Finally, although we may rightly criticise Tony for being too close to Bush, and distancing himself from Europe, this is nothing compared to what the tories would do. Micheal Howard actually applied (and was interestingly rejected) for a place at the Republican Party convention, he is also extremely sceptical about Europe. I think overall Labour's policy towards Europe has been very inclusive, and hopefully after trashing the tories Tony will go on to secure the referendum on the EU constitution before handing over the power to Gordon (at last).

Sorry... I'm a bit of a politics nerd these days