Those who support or lean towards the Labour Party, why?

[-:Undertaker:-]

And do you think because I'm voting Labour I must be opposed to cutting any of the foreign aid budget?

So you do agree with me in cutting the foreign aid budget as one of our least essential spending budgets given our debt?

I see the winter fuel allowance as a benefit, to help those that are not able to do so. Just like we don't give out JSA to those that have jobs, the winter fuel allowance I think should only be given to pensioners that are seriously in danger of not paying their fuel costs. In fact, I wouldn't be too opposed to scrapping it altogether.

At least we can agree on some things.

In fact, you've convinced me, instead of voting for the Europe loving paedophiles that spend spend spend, I'm going to vote for UKIP! I've seen the light!

Well the question is really, what do Labour have do to actually lose your vote?

Given Rotherham, the Iraq war, the debt ... how much more do they have to do before you punish them?

He has the self-awareness of one of those street preachers that desperately tries to convert you despite the fact you've already politely said no

Don't flatter yourself that I am trying to convince you, no, that would be pointless. My main aim when I debate you isn't to convince you at all, it is to make a show of you so that anyone who is reading may be convinced/won't feel like they are alone in holding their opinions. The amount of times I have had people PM me after a debate on here, in private, and tell me that they agree with me but don't want to say so themselves is comforting.

If I end up convincing you otherwise then that's just a bonus.

[Kardan]

So you do agree with me in cutting the foreign aid budget as one of our least essential spending budgets given our debt?



At least we can agree on some things.



Well the question is really, what do Labour have do to actually lose your vote?

Given Rotherham, the Iraq war, the debt ... how much more do they have to do before you punish them?



Don't flatter yourself that I am trying to convince you, no, that would be pointless. My main aim when I debate you isn't to convince you at all, it is to make a show of you so that anyone who is reading may be convinced/won't feel like they are alone in holding their opinions. The amount of times I have had people PM me after a debate on here, in private, and tell me that they agree with me but don't want to say so themselves is comforting.

If I end up convincing you otherwise then that's just a bonus.

If the past is anything to go by then promising to scrap tuition fees and then tripling them is a pretty good way to lose my vote.

[The Don]

So you do agree with me in cutting the foreign aid budget as one of our least essential spending budgets given our debt?



At least we can agree on some things.



Well the question is really, what do Labour have do to actually lose your vote?

Given Rotherham, the Iraq war, the debt ... how much more do they have to do before you punish them?



Don't flatter yourself that I am trying to convince you, no, that would be pointless. My main aim when I debate you isn't to convince you at all, it is to make a show of you so that anyone who is reading may be convinced/won't feel like they are alone in holding their opinions. The amount of times I have had people PM me after a debate on here, in private, and tell me that they agree with me but don't want to say so themselves is comforting.

If I end up convincing you otherwise then that's just a bonus.

The point of this thread isn't to debate and you would know that if you cared to read the opening post which actually said "not looking for a debate of any kind".

[Inseriousity.]

Voting based on a party's past would mean you'd only ever really vote for the parties that have never had to make choices. UKIP for example has never been tested. There comes a point where a party can reinvent itself (New Labour, compassionate conservatism) and it becomes okay to draw the line that the party's past is now in the past and the party is going in a different direction that you approve of and can vote for.

[Firehorse]

The Labour party will ensure that all teachers in state schools are qualified, something I believe should be done. The Conservatives are quite happy having unqualified teachers in permanent job roles in schools. I wouldn't want an unqualified surgeon operating on me, so why should we allow unqualified teachers to teach?

So just like Labour did with making nurses get a degree? Notice how absolutely nothing in the NHS has changed for the better: there are now a shortage of nurses and not only are they on a low wage but also paying off student debt thanks to Labour. One thing is certain about this policy: there will be a loss of jobs and a resulting shortage of teachers. Teaching is NOT a job many people set out to do, schools struggle to get teachers at all let alone qualified ones. This is another case of the Labour party doing something with what seems, to those who don't take a moment to think about it, like good intention, but the outcome will be far from that good intention as has already been proven too many times to count.

Surely an unqualified teacher is better than no teacher at all? Many teachers at the Academy I went to did the job just because they had a degree and therefore it was a job they could get easily if they had been made redundant in their sector or left for other reasons; people like this who teach would not do so if they were required to obtain a PGCE on top of their current qualification. It would mean going back to university to study the PGCE course (and pay the fees to do so, ending up in the debt cycle which is exactly what Labour wants).

You do not have 40 people applying for every teacher position like you do every fast food position. Schools struggle to find teachers. The actual level of education will not be positively affected by this; some people have specialist degrees and can actually teach their specific subject much better than many who are only qualified to deliver the curriculum like a robot.

I'm not a fan of free schools which were set up by the Conservative party - not only are they allowed to employ unqualified teachers but councils have absolutely no control over the schools, yet the council are the ones held responsible if there are issues with school places in the local area.

You have just perfectly described Academies... which, by the way, were a Labour invention. Good example of hypocrisy.

Of course, one benefit with free schools is that there is an increase in school places but because they are free schools and the council have no responsibility with where they are built, they are often built in places where extra places aren't needed, the money the government are providing should be spent on building schools in areas that need the extra places, especially primary schools.

More nonsense. Educational facilities cannot appear out of thin air. They require planning permission. You cannot even convert the use of an old building to become an educational facility without planning permission from the local authority. The council has the absolute authority to decline planning permission for a free school if it does not see fit that it meets the schooling requirements of the area.

Other education policies I agree with: Compulsory sex and relationship education, including the targeting of homophobic bullying within schools.

You're using half-truths in this statement. I say half truths because despite stating this as opinion, you are deliberately failing to mention that sex education is already compulsory from age 11 upwards; Labour's change here is to make it compulsory for younger children. When you say only that you agree with compulsory sex education it implies that it is not currently compulsory at all, when it is.

Relationship education and bullying of all types is already covered in the PSHE curriculum which all primary schools must cover. So again using half truths to insinuate that schools don't have to cover it. Not only is it covered, there is an entire week devoted to educating about the issues.

Of course the reduction in tuition fees to £6,000 is better than the current situation but it is not ideal.

No, it's not ideal. Because they introduced the fees in the first place after closing the free technical colleges, forcing people into the debt culture (and as mentioned with nurses and now teachers, they will do anything to trap people into that debt culture).

It was seen as politically correct to get everybody into university regardless of actual ability, but not actually help them earn money when they reached the real world by making sure they had trained up for jobs that would actually earn that money.

If you are really against fees and are passionate about a good education system then why aren't you considering UKIP as a party? Regardless of their other policies they want to scrap university fees altogether and reintroduce grammar schools which help the poorest in society get the top jobs. (Remember how Labour scrapped those too.. can't have their core voters escaping their debt culture now can they!)

Non-education policies that 'justify' my vote for Labour: They will ensure that University students are not deterred by immigration laws.

So what proportion of international students do you suggest the UK has to cater for before you consider them no longer deterred by immigration policies? You haven't explained why they might be deterred by immigration laws in the first place (which are already very relaxed compared to most international immigration policies). Currently 18.9% of the UK student population are from an overseas domicile. Universities accept international students based on criteria and availability, the same way students of UK domicile are accepted by universities. Your comment about students being DETERRED is crazy; they're not deterred, students WANT to study in the UK.

Introducing a tax on bankers bonuses,

Bankers bonuses are already taxed at the PAYE rate the same as everybody else's bonuses on the same sliding scale of tax. The issue comes when they as individuals use tax avoidance schemes.

So where's the plan? How are they going do to it? They're just spouting idealistic rhetoric with no actual solution to the problem.

a 5% pay cut for every government minister,

Do I even need to mention the party responsible for the introduction of the inefficient IPSA who has decided every MPs salary increase since 2010? That's right, Labour!

Labour are also copying exactly what the Conservatives did during their first cabinet meeting of this parliament!

Conservative and Lib-Dem MPs took a 5% pay cut and pay freeze throughout their entire time in parliament without even having declared it as an election promise, whilst Labour MPs enjoyed their larger salaries. The fact it was a pay freeze and not just a pay cut that the coalition took meant that the only MPs whose salaries actually rose to £67k were that of Labour and the SNP. You couldn't make it up!

Another fine example of Labour's hypocrisy.

a drive against tax avoidance by keeping money overseas,

If someone is keeping their assets overseas you can't force them to move their money to the UK. You can tax the movement of money as it leaves or returns but you cannot force people to move assets which are outside of the jurisdiction of the UK unless you get an international court order. Yet more idealism which Labour rely on people not to fully understand.

GP appointments within 48 hours,

How do you suppose this will be achieved? GPs are already heavily overworked (that's no secret). Do you suppose Labour will force current GPs to work under even more extreme conditions or magic some new ones out of thin air?

getting rid of zero hour contracts

So students will have less ability to work flexibly.

Also it will have NO impact because the companies already have a loophole in the form of four hour contracts. This is already in practice in the cinema industry. A four hour contract means you're guaranteed to get at least 4 hours work in a week, but that doesn't change anything else. Like I've said previously, Labour MPs collectively employ 22,000 people on zero hour contracts; they don't practice what they preach.

pushing apprenticeships for those that choose not to go to university,

Which is a Conservative initiative. The Conservatives revived apprenticeships and got a huge amount of people into work. In a few weeks I will be interviewing apprenticeship applicants for the company I work for, it's a brilliant system and has done wonders for both workers and industry.

But again, you're using this as a reason to vote Labour when this is a Conservative initiative. Judging by Labour's past, they'll surely find a way of cocking up the system by introducing some sort of fee or tax on either the employee or the employer.

scrapping of police and crime commissioners,

So who will be accountable for the police force? Elected crime commissioners replaced the unaccountable police authorities which were found to be performing 'adequately' or 'poorly', but rarely 'well' or 'excellently'. Whilst they cost money to run, the work has to be offloaded somewhere. If a commissioner isn't doing it then another authority will be paid to do it; you might be able to save enough to cover the salaries of 3 or 4 officers per region.

banning child sex offenders from working with children

This is probably by far the most misguided comment so far. ANY POLITICIAN can spout what they agree or disagree with but that doesn't change the reality!

The reality is that it is already illegal for a convicted paedophile to work with children! In fact they're banned from even standing within a specified distance of public parks where children might be playing. What on earth do you think a CRB and DBS check is for?

What exactly is Labour going to change here?

withdrawal of winter fuel allowance from wealthy pensioners,

Define wealthy.

a rise in minimum wage.

I've already explained previously how the minimum wage only needs to exist thanks to Labour's policies of the 1990's which served to only change the competition for employees to competition for jobs, so no need to go into more detail than that.

I'm not going to waste my time and explain in depth why I agree with all those non-education policies and even if I did I'm sure you'll manage to come up with something that will 'counter-act' each of my points whether that be 'Well the Conservatives have a better policy on that' or 'Labour wouldn't need to do that if they didn't mess it up in their last government'.

You're not going to explain them because you can't defend them? Or you're just copying and pasting from Labour's manifesto without justification for any of it and hope the sheer quantity of things they promise will be reason enough? A couple of your points I didn't respond to because I agree with them (like prioritising children's mental health) or neither agree or disagree with (paternity leave); both of which are policies covered similarly by the Lib Dems anyway.

It's not about the Conservatives having a better policy for some points (although in some cases they might), but in the cases you listed it's more about simply copying and pasting what the Conservatives have already done in the last parliament and claiming it as Labour's idea.

And no, Labour doesn't need to do any of what it's promising because of their last time in government because they're not actually promising to fix any of the problems they caused the last time they were in power!

[-:Undertaker:-]

@Hashterix; has just demolished all of those points as easily as kicking in some flat pack IKEA furniture would be, well done.

It goes to show what a load of absolute incoherent drivel comes from the main parties, and how their supporters just lap it up without examining a thing.

If the past is anything to go by then promising to scrap tuition fees and then tripling them is a pretty good way to lose my vote.

Hashterix has already alluded to Labour's record on tution fees which is even worse than the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. More to the point, I am sure my memory serves me right in that it was a Labour peer who wrote the Green paper before the last election for the current proposals which was not carried through by Labour before a General Election (for obvious reasons). Ontop of that, you've also had Miliband twice change his policy on tuition fees since 2010 where he said he'd abolish them and now he's saying £6,000. Doesn't sound like a principled position to me, rather like someone hedging their bets as to how many gullible students they can get to vote for them depending on the extent of the Liberal Democrats polling collapse.

Voting based on a party's past would mean you'd only ever really vote for the parties that have never had to make choices. UKIP for example has never been tested. There comes a point where a party can reinvent itself (New Labour, compassionate conservatism) and it becomes okay to draw the line that the party's past is now in the past and the party is going in a different direction that you approve of and can vote for.

The real changes in political parties don't take place in front of the camera with shiny new public relations campaigns, a smiling young leader and a new slogan. The real changes in political parties take place in internal leadership coups and party splits (Labour and the SDP, Tories and the coup against IDS). The mere rebranding exercises of New Labour and Dave's 'compassionate conservatism' took place well over a decade or more after the actual change had occurred.

Don't go by what they say, go by what happens.

[Inseriousity.]

But you can't go by what happens until they're voted in and given the opportunity to prove they've changed so there comes a point where you have to trust that it's not just a facade and there's a genuine desire to change. I don't personally think that's the case with Labour atm (I think it's just political convenience to try to distance themselves from the past rather than any genuine conviction) but I do think there comes a point where you have to put the past behind you.

[The Don]

@Hashterix; It is not compulsory for students to have sex education in the UK as you claim as parents can refuse to let their children take part. You also start to discuss planning permission on a point kardan made about there being an overabundance of schools in particular areas without addressing the actual point. Obviously planning permission is needed on any building in the UK, that's not the point Kardan was making. The point is that the government doesn't choose where they are built meaning you can get free schools being built in areas which don't need them.

I can't be bothered to research the rest of your comments but it's clear you don't really know what you're talking about.

[Firehorse]

But you can't go by what happens until they're voted in and given the opportunity to prove they've changed so there comes a point where you have to trust that it's not just a facade and there's a genuine desire to change. I don't personally think that's the case with Labour atm (I think it's just political convenience to try to distance themselves from the past rather than any genuine conviction) but I do think there comes a point where you have to put the past behind you.

The good thing about our democracy is that there is an opposition. Everything gets debated and voted on. The main parties use the whip system to tell their MPs how to vote, but UKIP is structured differently in the way that they don't use the whip system. This means that while the party can hold major stances, they will listen to local people and act on what they want. For example, the party may be pro-fracking, but if a constituency does not want it then the MP for that constituency is afforded the freedom to vote in the interest of their locals and not just in the interest of the party.

The 5 year terms in our system also mean that there are limits to the amount of damage that can be done by a party. If they really cannot run the country then they can be voted out again.

We don't have a system which is open to abuse like that of countries where democratically elected leaders have ended up becoming dictators. The vast majority of policies can be undone with relative ease (as you can see with the back and forth between the Conservatives and Labour), it gets more dangerous when a party holds power for a significant period of time and begins to get complacent (as Labour did) and begin making changes to the very foundation of the country's democratic system without affording the people of that democracy the opportunity to disagree with what they're doing.

Policies about level of taxation and benefits is actually very much small talk in the grand scheme of things. Whilst being mismanaged it can lead to bankruptcy, it can still be undone and changed in any way a future government wishes. When you start changing who has the power to make the law and who has a say, that is a very big issue; yet it is treated as being no more important than the £100 extra spare change you might have at the end of a year.

[FlyingJesus]

Am I the only person in the country who thinks things are mostly ok