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The above might not work as I’ve not tried it before
Listening to Theresa May earlier stumbling over one soundbite after another in an effort to avoid answering any direct questions. As is a recurring question at the moment she was asked about the £8bn promised by them for the NHS and where they’re going to find the money … the closest she got to an answer seemed to be that this sort of money just sort of turns up under a Conservative government so they shall use that. She said that this is how they’ve managed to find such amounts before, they’ve just done such a wonderful job of managing the economy that the billions just magic themselves into existing. Asked if they were sure this would be the case she stumbled again, she wasn’t going to comment on what or would not happen as far ahead as 2020, no one could know that she seemed t be saying. So, she was asked whether or not the money had specifically been budgeted, that she could say with absolute certainty it would be found and she repeated her assertion that they’d done it before. The question, the one she kept avoiding was, if you’re so sure the money is going to be there, how can you not say where or when it’s going to happen? The reality is, they have no clue. They are hoping there is a good following wind and that they get lucky during the next 5 years. Perhaps they are hoping for another coalition so that this sort of promise can be explained away as a coalition compromise. If it is so important to them, this £8bn, would they not be wise to say now that it would not be up for negotiation in the event of a hung parliament? The Liberal Democrats have been making similar such promises on certain policy commitments they mentioned, not that anyone believes they wouldn’t sell their own mothers to keep the power.
I just don’t like any party avoiding questions, it says to me that the answers are either not what they want us to know or that the answer is, the promise isn’t worth anything to them, it’s just an election bribe. If I hear Labour doing it, I’ll post about them too.
The “Right to Buy”. From the inception of the modern Conservative Party this has been a policy designed to promote the Conservative party. Margaret Thatcher knew this and she made a big thing about it. Right back when the Conservative as we know them now were invented they knew that a nation of tenants would not vote for them, their voters needed a stake in the country, a reason to ensure they looked after their own self interested as opposed to what was best for the country. Home Ownership was the key to that. Ensure that it mattered to these new home owners what interest rates were doing. Make sure they had a financial burden so they effectively gave up their right to strike because it meant losing their home. Home owners, and I don’t blame them, have little choice but to seriously consider voting Conservative. As Owners they are better placed for the sort of bribes a Conservative government would offer with regard to tax breaks and so on. As Home owners, they are not going to want to do anything which would risk their home. The Conservatives are so convincing that we should all aspire to ownership that they positively encourage a feeling of shame which those who do not own should feel, that ‘they’ are not fully part of society, that tenants are ‘less’.
What we need to remember is that we are all equal regardless of wealth or ownership, we all own this country and have an obligation to it and to each other.