General Election 2017 | Cabinet reshuffle: Hunt re-appointed Health Secretary for record third time

How do you intend to vote in the 2017 General Election if eligible?

  • Conservatives

    Votes: 80 14.5%

  • Labour

    Votes: 322 58.4%

  • Lib Dems

    Votes: 57 10.3%

  • Green

    Votes: 20 3.6%

  • SNP

    Votes: 13 2.4%

  • UKIP

    Votes: 29 5.3%

  • Independent

    Votes: 3 0.5%

  • Plaid Cymru

    Votes: 2 0.4%

  • Sinn Fein

    Votes: 11 2.0%

  • Other (UUP, DUP, BNP, and anyone else I have forgotten)

    Votes: 14 2.5%
  • Total voters
    551
  • Poll closed .
Speaking to senior people at work who are more Tory leaning and mood has shifted regarding May. She's alienating people with her incompetence and lack of personability.

I remember them singing her praises months back and now they can't stand her.

They still think she'll win but have no love for her.
 
rcoobc said:
Whats the average hours that a nurse works? What region was this person in?

£25k to a home owner with no or a low mortgage is easy money. £25k for someone living in an expensive region, spending £1k a month on rent, £1.5k on council tax, £1k a year on gas an electricity, £1k a year on car insurance, £1k a year on petrol, £300 a year on car maintenance, £360 a year on water, £360 a year on a telephone line...

Oh and that £25k a year wage is actually £20.3k after tax.

That leaves £60 a week for food, school fees, and everything else.

I don't think any of my numbers there are unreasonable. If you are working 60 hours a week as a single wage earner with dependents in an expensive region, it's not unreasonable to say there is no way it's sustainable.
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Child maintenance should contribute another £200 a month based on a similar wage to the single parent. Are there any benefits for a parent with a deceased partner or one that won't pay?
 
Seems to be a good number of working class voting for May, with some really dumb fecking reasoning, just like with Brexit.

I thought the Tories had had a nightmare with the way the campaigning was going, but they've obviously reached a decent amount of people.
 
QuackQuack said:
My friends dad volunteers at a food bank in Manchester and you still need a referral. And food banks did exist a decade ago they just weren't as common.
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I only ever tried to use a foodbank once. Found out I needed a referral and went down to the council to get one. They told me to fill in a form and wait. Later they came out with a £75 Tesco card instead. I guess the expression on my face would have made a good picture. Had to suppress a "WOOHOOOOO!!!".
 
Ubik said:
Labour really need to ensure people having the costings to hand when they're launching a policy.
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You mean memorised, the 'interviewer' had them in front of her. Again, rather interesting that how big a deal this is depends on the party the person is representing.

Maybe Corbyn should just answer any question on costings by promising a consultation after the election? Seems to be fine and dandy for someone else I can think of.
 
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rcoobc said:
No doubt there are some one here that would blame you for not thinking in advance how much having a child would cost!

Childcare is something I haven't factored in (we luckily have grandparents who are free)
I don't know how a single parent on low wages could cope without benefits.

Me and my Mrs were on £17k with me as the sole earner (so like £14k net?), and managed to make ends meet on £8k rent, £1k Council Tax, etc, without too much difficulty. But rent has gone up since then, car insurance, council tax, etc... and we had zero child care costs.
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But you just quoted a spreadsheet where earning £25K was barely enough where as your family was getting by on £17K "without too much difficulty". I am not saying that £14K is enough to live on properly, and well done for managing it, but you can put any numbers you like into a spreadsheet to give the answer you want.
 
Raees said:
Speaking to senior people at work who are more Tory leaning and mood has shifted regarding May. She's alienating people with her incompetence and lack of personability.

I remember them singing her praises months back and now they can't stand her.

They still think she'll win but have no love for her.
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Who has love for politicians then? They are all slimy and dishonest.
 
Sassy Colin said:
But you just quoted a spreadsheet where earning £25K was barely enough where as your family was getting by on £17K "without too much difficulty". I am not saying that £14K is enough to live on properly, and well done for managing it, but you can put any numbers you like into a spreadsheet to give the answer you want.
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Rent going up is the big one. I think when we leave here, we'll be looking at spending nearly double what we originally were :( Or maybe, moving away, which will break my Mrs heart.

Council tax has also gone up by approximately 25%

Water bill is also going up 250% (don't ask)

Gas and Electricity is going up.

In truth, we lost a bit of money from doing what we did, but we had some saved up, so it wasn't a problem.
 
DenisIrwin said:
It's almost always the case. To succeed in politics you have to be manipulative.
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Not necessarily slimy though, Sturgeon isn't anyway and she's the best of the current crop.
 
Sassy Colin said:
But you just quoted a spreadsheet where earning £25K was barely enough where as your family was getting by on £17K "without too much difficulty". I am not saying that £14K is enough to live on properly, and well done for managing it, but you can put any numbers you like into a spreadsheet to give the answer you want.
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Also, the difference I guess is; we were only doing it for a short time, we had family to support us, we had money saved up, and there were two of us.

If you are alone, have been alone for many years, with no financial safety net, and no extended family, it's a different story.

As you say, we can find a situation where seemingly decent amounts of money aren't enough to live on somewhere.

Maybe this Nurse lives in East Anglia, has a husband earning £35k, and is just generally awful with money. Or maybe she lives alone, works 60 hours a week, has two kids, and is privately renting which is constantly going up near London.

Who knows
 
VeevaVee said:
Seems to be a good number of working class voting for May, with some really dumb fecking reasoning, just like with Brexit.

I thought the Tories had had a nightmare with the way the campaigning was going, but they've obviously reached a decent amount of people.
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Lot of people aren't up to date on politics and get the stuff they know from the papers or snippets on the news. Apparently the BBC bulletin after last night's debate was awful for Corbyn and good for May, and the papers are mainly siding with May.

For a lot of people, Brexit remains the core issue and that is what the Tories are focusing on.

Here is what is scrolling on Sky News regarding the debate:
  • Prime Minister Theresa May says "No deal is better than a bad deal" after Brexit negotiations
  • Theresa May says our social care policy is "about ensuring that nobody is going to have to sell the house to pay for care in their lifetime"
  • Corbyn says there will be a deal following negotiations
  • Corbyn has not directly confirmed if he would order to kill someone with a drone strike if they posed a security risk to the UK
Overall will resonate better with votes towards Conservative party than the Labour party.

Edit: Now Sky going on about the costings with Corbyn forgetting cost for new childcare policy in a radio interview.

On the debate last night there was not one question towards May about lack of costing in their manifesto.
 
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rcoobc said:
Also, the difference I guess is; we were only doing it for a short time, we had family to support us, we had money saved up, and there were two of us.

If you are alone, have been alone for many years, with no financial safety net, and no extended family, it's a different story.

As you say, we can find a situation where seemingly decent amounts of money aren't enough to live on somewhere.

Maybe this Nurse lives in East Anglia, has a husband earning £35k, and is just generally awful with money. Or maybe she lives alone, works 60 hours a week, has two kids, and is privately renting which is constantly going up near London.

Who knows
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Exactly my point, which is why that spreadsheet is irrelevant.
 
Damien said:
Lot of people aren't up to date on politics and get the stuff they know from the papers or snippets on the news. Apparently the BBC bulletin after last night's debate was awful for Corbyn and good for May, and the papers are mainly siding with May.

For a lot of people, Brexit remains the core issue and that is what the Tories are focusing on.

Here is what is scrolling on Sky News regarding the debate:
  • Prime Minister Theresa May says "No deal is better than a bad deal" after Brexit negotiations
  • Theresa May says our social care policy is "about ensuring that nobody is going to have to sell the house to pay for care in their lifetime"
  • Corbyn says there will be a deal following negotiations
  • Corbyn has not directly confirmed if he would order to kill someone with a drone strike if they posed a security risk to the UK
Overall will resonate better with votes towards Conservative party than the Labour party.

Edit: Now Sky going on about the costings with Corbyn forgetting cost for new childcare policy in a radio interview.

On the debate last night there was not one question towards May about lack of costing in their manifesto.
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It's shocking isn't it? But not really surprising.
 
Do those who claimed the media were impartial still think thats the case? And I'm not talking about anti-corbyn agendas but anti-labour or anti-opposition government
 
Smores said:
Do those who claimed the media were impartial still think thats the case? And I'm not talking about anti-corbyn agendas but anti-labour or anti-opposition government
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It seems clear that the press if favouring the party promising to scrap Leveson 2.
 
Classical Mechanic said:
Child maintenance should contribute another £200 a month based on a similar wage to the single parent. Are there any benefits for a parent with a deceased partner or one that won't pay?
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Seriously don't even get me started on CMS, they are a load shit. My daughters dad has a similar wage to that but he moved in with someone with two kids already and then had another child which reduced payment significantly plus he has my daughter every other weekend so it's classed as shared care so they knocked off 1/7 as a 'discount' so now he pays 118 a month. There is a reason why maintenance isn't classed as income to the benefit office and that's because it's not guaranteed you will get any kind of payment.
 
May back to attacking Corbyn and Brexit. Really delusional speech on Sky now, we've gone full on American now i swear.

Oh god she's moved on to fairness and JAMs.
 
Sassy Colin said:
Exactly my point, which is why that spreadsheet is irrelevant.
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I wouldn't say it's irrelevant. I think some people seriously underestimate the cost of living in 2017. No one should assume that the Nurse saying she earns £25k and uses food banks is just "bad with money".

This argument is happening everywhere by the way
https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/2217213/nurses-using-food-banks
http://forum.charltonlife.com/discussion/comment/2852848
https://www.muscletalk.co.uk/Food-Banks-m5492913.aspx
https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=4396238&page=237
Or let's look at some media coverage
In just six years, nurses’ salaries have plummeted in real terms by 14 per cent. In the same time period, rent where I live in London has rocketed and the price of food and utilities has gone up rapidly too. At the end of last month, I had £1.10 left in my bank account, and for many nurses it’s worse than that. A friend of mine had to choose between eating and paying her mortgage. After a year of eating beans on toast she conceded defeat, sold her flat and moved back with her parents. When Jeremy Hunt was confronted by Andrew Marr last week with the reality that nurses were using food banks, he said that the reasons for this were “complex”. They aren’t complex. We aren’t being paid enough.
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http://www.independent.co.uk/voices...y-i-voted-for-industrail-action-a7736896.html
The 625,000 health service staff who earn at least £22,000 will have seen their income fall by 12% between 2010-11 and 2020-21 as a result of years of below-inflation 0% and 1% pay rises eroding their spending power, according to a report by the Health Foundation thinktank

Staff salaries have already been cut by 6% since the coalition came to power in 2010, more than the 2% seen across the economy as a whole in that time, the report found. Midwives have seen their pay shrink by 6%, but doctors and health visitors have been hit by 8% and 12% drops respectively.
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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/29/nhs-nurses-pay-cut-12-per-cent-over-decade
Many people simply can't understand how a Nurse earning £25k a year could struggle to feed him or herself, but I think it's plain as day in expensive regions. To a home owner, or someone who has paid off the majority of their mortgage, then living on £25k a year could be trivial. This big difference is because house prices and rent increase are outstripping everything else at the moment.
 
Does it actually bother people when politicians can't remember off hand the exact cost of a policy? I've never understood the furore around when it happens. They're not machines.
 
esmufc07 said:
Does it actually bother people when politicians can't remember off hand the exact cost of a policy? I've never understood the furore around when it happens. They're not machines.
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Yes, I'm the same. I don't want my MP to be a fact-bot 3000, I want them to be hard working with a good head on their shoulders.
 
Depends if they came on to a talk show to talk about it.
 
"That would be an ecumenical matter." - Theresa May
 
Dobba said:
"This is no time for a weak government leader and a weak leader to be making it up as they go along" - Theresa May. No really. Theresa May. THERESA MAY.
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Standing in front of a podium which has a new slogan on it because they had to sack off 'Strong Stable Leadership' because everyone thought it was fecking nuts coming from her.
 
esmufc07 said:
Yet the PM and the Tories can get away with not costing anything and just saying, "Vote for us and we will tell you the cost after the election."
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To be fair, and this is coming from someone who would never vote Tory (probably). To be fair, we already know what the cost of a Tory government is. It's the status quo.

Okay sure, scrapping free School Lunches and replacing them with free School Breakfasts was costed wrongly. Okay sure, maybe things like Brexit is going to feck us. Okay sure, maybe there are a couple of policies that will increase the burden on general taxation.

But by and large we know what the costs are, because we already have them. The Tories could have produced a one page manifesto by just writing "pretty much the same as now" and handing that in to the teacher.

Labour want to nationalise the Royal Mail, Water, Energy and Trains. They want a national investment bank. They want a £10 minimum wage. They want to tax the rich, and tax big companies.

The burden of proof is on Labour. We already know the Conservatives plans work. Or don't work, considering the deficit.
 
QuackQuack said:
Seriously don't even get me started on CMS, they are a load shit. My daughters dad has a similar wage to that but he moved in with someone with two kids already and then had another child which reduced payment significantly plus he has my daughter every other weekend so it's classed as shared care so they knocked off 1/7 as a 'discount' so now he pays 118 a month. There is a reason why maintenance isn't classed as income to the benefit office and that's because it's not guaranteed you will get any kind of payment.
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I'd keep quiet on that one Quackers, there might be a Tory planner reading this somewhere.
 
Raees said:
Speaking to senior people at work who are more Tory leaning and mood has shifted regarding May. She's alienating people with her incompetence and lack of personability.

I remember them singing her praises months back and now they can't stand her.

They still think she'll win but have no love for her.
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Pretty much the same view the people I know closely who are conservative voters feel. May is winging it. She's uncertain of how to go about things, her media handling as home secretary was wooden so the office of the PM and the further scrutiny it brings shows her up. At the very least Cameron had a bit of personality [well enough to get a thug life compilation]. Soundbite politics was enough to woo the politically non-engaged at times of voting even though his policies didn't deserve it. Sadly that makes a big difference. Just ask Ed Miliband.

Whereas Corbyn has found his element in campaigning and getting into the heart of communities. Unfortunately I don't think labour will turn it around in time but hopefully the long term consequences of Corbyn's surge, and the vast number of youth participating and engaging in politics will make the difference in the coming years. May wants this over and done with and get a majority so she can shut the curtains to the public. She will be in for a hell of a shock.
 
Emma Barnett was very clever (and underhand) in using the opportunity, when Corbyn was trying to find the costings, to stick in the barbed reference to Gordon Brown.

Corbyn: "Can I give you the exact figure in a moment?"
Barnett: "Is this not exactly the issue with people and the Labour Party which came up under Gordon Brown that we cannot trust you with our money?"

That's a cheap shot right there. The guy hadn't memorised the figure, which she had already been given earlier by Angela Rayner. The issue, as Emma well knew, was that Corbyn hadn't memorised the figure. That was it. Nothing about the rights or wrongs of the policy and how it would effect the lives of the Womens Hour audience. She made it an issue about memory to throw Corbyn off balance and took the opportunity to get into the audience's mind, almost subliminally, her own message - that Labour are not to be trusted with our money.

 
rcoobc said:
To be fair, and this is coming from someone who would never vote Tory (probably).
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I'll be honest, I kind of already think of you as a bit of a Tory. Though I find it entirely possible that this is largely down to the fact you like debate and were you to be on a right-leaning forum you'd sound like a communist.
 
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