Things Can Only Get Better?

I don't think that there are any suitable candidates to lead the country at the moment, unfortunately.
Being on the 4th July, it is a shame that there won't be an option to sell out to the USA

Fucks up most of my work life from now until the end of the summer and fucks the rest of it up until Jan 2025 if there is, as expected, a change of party at the top.

Yep. I have spent the past couple of months preparing to throw our hat into the ring for some MoJ contracts. Looks like I can put my feet up now...

Out of the frying pan and into the fire would be my guess.

I think the current choice is between the mumps or the measles or perhaps a kick in the goolies or a punch in the face. Nothing is particularly attractive and with choice I would avoid all of them but unfortunately we have to choose one or have it imposed on us!
I don't mind Starmer but he does lack charisma and he has a whole host of dangerous people behind him. I don't mind Rishi either but the Conservatives appear to have cleansed themselves of any talent over the past 5 years and IMHO they are less dangerous but still completely inept.
I was annoyed at Starmer's speech yesterday when he said that Labour would once again be the party of the working man. Who exactly is this working man? I work 12 hrs a day 5 days a week plus weekends at certain times of the year but I can't see their policies doing anything other than giving me a good kicking. The next 5 years could be very difficult.

I think you'd be in for a total fiscal fucking no matter which side wins - the Tories haven't been doing much in the way of reducing the tax burden, which I keep reading is currently the largest since WW2.

The current Tory mob are an embarassment to the whole country and need to be removed.
Unfortunately it appears that the worst of them might be the most likely to retain their seats.

I don't look forward to a Labour government either but they can't be worse than the clown show currently in charge.

I've seen plenty of comments elsewhere about all politicians being the same and corrupt but the last couple of years have been an absolute piss-take of the electorate and while Labour might eventually get themselves into the same cesspit its unlikely to be from day 1. After all the Tories have taken 14 years to get to be this bad.

It was laughable to see one Tory MP (can't remember his name) stating that a vote for Labour will be a vote to keep things the way they are and that the Tories are the party of change.
If he loses his seat I look forward to seeing him as a stand up comic.....

Where's the Monster Raving Loony Party when you need them ??

Agree with this but remember you're voting for what's behind the frontman.

If you vote Labour there's a chance you'll get some Corbinystas.
If you vote Tory you are going to get Truss, Braverman, Patel. etc

I agree Starmer lacks charisma but then there's the danger of too much and you end up with someone like BoJo!

I think a period of boring and sensible politics would be nice, then perhaps we can go for the more exciting option next time round?

Things can only get wetter on Drowning Street as the wags are putting it.

I won't vote for Starmer because the whole "working man" thing vastly annoys me for the same reasons as John. All told, probably 50% of my income disappears in tax. I'm at peace with that and not angling for a cut, but I certainly don't see why I should pay more. And as an owner of a very small and modest modern house that is only valuable because it is in central London, I am suspicious of some sort of impending reform to property tax which will be spuriously based on the wholly unequal notion of house price and will disproportionately bite Londoners like me.

But the Tories are not votable either.

I am sure that if "None of the above" fielded candidates across the country they would win a landslide. 

I have a very tainted view of this modern “working class” definition. I would never have described myself as working class having a mother that was a colonial and an ex-RN, ex-BBC Crown Agent for a father and international businessman as a step father. But let’s take it back a generation, to those very parents that were definitely working class.

My dad was 100% working class. Born in the center of Birmingham in June 1939 he always said his earliest memories were of the older ladies of the family in the shelter, wearing clogs and smoking clay pipes. Grandad was a RSM and returned to regiment for the war and was a tram driver as a civvie. They never owned their own house. My stepdad won a scholarship to Alleyns but his mother had to go and scrub steps to pay for the uniform as his dad had done a runner. 

My dad left Handsworth Grammar at 15 and worked in a laboratory for a year. He said he looked at the others and said to himself “he’s going to marry her; that one is going to marry that one; they’re going to move to those houses up there and that’s it…..”. He joined the navy at 16 and sailed the world as a proper sailor for 15 years. When we laid him to rest in the Solent I tried to imagine what it must have been like for a 16 year old that grew up in the furthest point from the sea in the U.K. the first time he sailed out to the middle of nowhere with no land in sight.

My stepdad left school at matriculation as well and got a job because he had a knack with a lot of languages. His National Service was unsurprisingly based on that ability. His personality was such that he was a very successful salesman even though he hated it. As time went on he used his product knowledge and became a well known specialist in solder paste. Neither went to formal further education although both did some as well as work (the navy helped) as they chose to. I speak of them both because both have played their part in my upbringing, outlook and personality.

So my jaded view of the current working class? Having benefited from the trials and tribulations of a previous working class to move up the food chain I find much of the current pleading of being working class and having no chance as being an excuse for not not doing enough to move your arse on and assist the generation that follows yours. I accept that ability, opportunity etc. play a large part but my story is not unique. 

Finally my mother. Born in Cape Town in 1940. I have my mother’s birth certificate (I need it for certain clearances) and it says in one place one word. “Mixed”. She wasn’t allowed to go to the English school so was sent to the Boer school despite not speaking a word of Dutch. She has had an extraordinary life that defies her beginnings and as a result I don’t have much time for other sections of our U.K. society that proclaim being discriminated against.

Bit of a rant about “working class” but I find this retrospective of my own family makes voting in the current polarised political landscape very difficult.

Surprised we've not had a post in this thread this month. Does that suggest we've all lost interest? Or is there such a sense of inevitability that the toolmakers son will prevail and the poor boy who never had Sky TV will be out on his ear that there's not much worth saying? I must admit that even at work and at customer sites there's less political talk than during any election I can recall so maybe that's where we're all at.

Personally I've found Labour more and more unpleasant in their manner as the campaigns gone on. Their self satisfied sense that it's in the bag has been rather unbecoming and I do worry that they're not telling us everything they're really planning to do once they're in power.

I'm still very divided but we have a very good Tory MP in Jeremy Quinn and I'm erring towards giving him a vote not on a 'better the devil you know' basis but so that the Conservatives can form some semblance of opposition. I dont think the Farage mob will beat the Conservatives to that role but it amazed me that my wife couldn't understand how they had any supporters which I (politely) suggested was a naive position for anyone on either the blue or red side to take.

Can't vote Conservative because they're a shower and leave a legacy of failed tax fund use.
Can't vote Labour because apparently they want everyone to prosper and raise themselves from poorer backgrounds but those that have already or will do so will have all the gains taken away from them.
Can't vote Farage because it's a private limited company and no member has any voting rights over who is leader and therefore the direction it should take aka a dictatorship.
Can't vote Lib Dem because I have daughters and they think it's fine for my daughters to share changing rooms with muscular men with cocks wearing a dress claiming to be women.
Greens live in la-la land 
Others are all chancers.


There are various other reasons to not vote for all of them, like being a car owner, a Christian, a higher-rate taxpayer, having a foreign wife, a pension, savings...etc. Basically this is the worst election choice in my lifetime by some margin.