01-06-17, 10:30 AM
I always vote because if you don't vote you can't moan, IMO. But I'm really struggling this time round.
I'm not a Labour voter but I do like some of what Corbyn is saying. I am all for re-nationalising the railways, I don't think they should be run for a profit and to pay shareholders, all money should be pumped back into making the railways a great service. I disagree with tuition fees to a point. £27k of debt for a three year course is a HUGE sum of money. If my credit card said that I would be shitting myself and wondering how the foc I'm going to pay it back. BUT, I really don't see how Corbyn can suddenly offer to cancel all the fees, just like that I doubt very much that in what would effectively be 2 months post election to the start of the new University year that they could organise the money for the Unis. I think lower fees subsidised by the government maybe, rather than completely free.
The main reason I can't vote Labour though is that they will just spend to keep people happy and we will just get further and further in debt and the deficit will get bigger and bigger, it's been shown so many times over the years. He says about raising corporation tax but I think we should freeze that. We need to encourage companies to come to us, especially with Brexit coming up, we shouldn't be putting them off.
I don't know what to make of the Tories, their manifesto was a bit wishy washy. They have reduced the deficit, not as much as they said but I bet it's a harder job than it is on paper. It's the same for all politicians, saying what you are going to do and then actually doing it when faced with the day to day are totally different things. But we aren't going to get into surpless by random spending on things like giving free tuition fees.
What does worry me is the amount of house building in the South East (where I live). We are getting thousands of homes built in the town where I live, with more on the cards and yet we still have no more Drs, Dentists or road infrastructure to cater for it. The torries keep forcing homes in our area and that really puts me off voting for them.
Immigration, I do believe it needs cutting to sensible levels for the reasons mentioned above about homes. We have a big population growth anyway, sitcking another couple of hundred thousand on top of that a year can't be sustainable the way it is going. I also want to see a move away from letting in unskilled workers and reforming the benefit laws to make it more worthwhile for our unemployed to work over living on benefits. People say these migrants contribute to the country's coffers but I'm not so sure how much. Most I see are on minimum wage and as a result won't pay any tax. We employ a lot of EU cleaners and handy men at my place of work. I doubt any pay tax. We need to make it worthwhile for our benefits people to take on these jobs. It's human nature to want the bigger pay packet each month and in reality that should be from work and not benefits. Sadly, for unskilled work, benefits currently pays more, or not enough difference to make some want to get out of bed.
If our unemployed did more unskilled work we wouldn't need the migrants to fill in the gaps and if we didn't have the migrants we possibly wouldn't need so many houses or extra people using the NHS etc etc..... yeah that's a very basic view but you get the idea.
We had a friend of a friend, made redundant from a fairly decent job. Went to Argos to get some work to fill the gaps rather than claim from the state. Turned out it was better for him and his family to go on benefits while he found a new job, so he did. It shouldn't be like that.
Anyway, housing is a big local issue for me, so I might vote for the independent candidate in our region who wants to fight the housing.
I've got a week to go though and I suspect I won't have fully made up my mind until that tick goes in the box.
I'm not a Labour voter but I do like some of what Corbyn is saying. I am all for re-nationalising the railways, I don't think they should be run for a profit and to pay shareholders, all money should be pumped back into making the railways a great service. I disagree with tuition fees to a point. £27k of debt for a three year course is a HUGE sum of money. If my credit card said that I would be shitting myself and wondering how the foc I'm going to pay it back. BUT, I really don't see how Corbyn can suddenly offer to cancel all the fees, just like that I doubt very much that in what would effectively be 2 months post election to the start of the new University year that they could organise the money for the Unis. I think lower fees subsidised by the government maybe, rather than completely free.
The main reason I can't vote Labour though is that they will just spend to keep people happy and we will just get further and further in debt and the deficit will get bigger and bigger, it's been shown so many times over the years. He says about raising corporation tax but I think we should freeze that. We need to encourage companies to come to us, especially with Brexit coming up, we shouldn't be putting them off.
I don't know what to make of the Tories, their manifesto was a bit wishy washy. They have reduced the deficit, not as much as they said but I bet it's a harder job than it is on paper. It's the same for all politicians, saying what you are going to do and then actually doing it when faced with the day to day are totally different things. But we aren't going to get into surpless by random spending on things like giving free tuition fees.
What does worry me is the amount of house building in the South East (where I live). We are getting thousands of homes built in the town where I live, with more on the cards and yet we still have no more Drs, Dentists or road infrastructure to cater for it. The torries keep forcing homes in our area and that really puts me off voting for them.
Immigration, I do believe it needs cutting to sensible levels for the reasons mentioned above about homes. We have a big population growth anyway, sitcking another couple of hundred thousand on top of that a year can't be sustainable the way it is going. I also want to see a move away from letting in unskilled workers and reforming the benefit laws to make it more worthwhile for our unemployed to work over living on benefits. People say these migrants contribute to the country's coffers but I'm not so sure how much. Most I see are on minimum wage and as a result won't pay any tax. We employ a lot of EU cleaners and handy men at my place of work. I doubt any pay tax. We need to make it worthwhile for our benefits people to take on these jobs. It's human nature to want the bigger pay packet each month and in reality that should be from work and not benefits. Sadly, for unskilled work, benefits currently pays more, or not enough difference to make some want to get out of bed.
If our unemployed did more unskilled work we wouldn't need the migrants to fill in the gaps and if we didn't have the migrants we possibly wouldn't need so many houses or extra people using the NHS etc etc..... yeah that's a very basic view but you get the idea.
We had a friend of a friend, made redundant from a fairly decent job. Went to Argos to get some work to fill the gaps rather than claim from the state. Turned out it was better for him and his family to go on benefits while he found a new job, so he did. It shouldn't be like that.
Anyway, housing is a big local issue for me, so I might vote for the independent candidate in our region who wants to fight the housing.
I've got a week to go though and I suspect I won't have fully made up my mind until that tick goes in the box.
Money doesn't buy happiness, but it buys beer, and that helps!