Women Use Your Vote!!!

In my post "Be Brave" I spoke about how Stay At Home Mums had a unique position in our society to challenge what has become the consensus in politics itself. One of these is that it is better for women to go to work than to stay at home.

However, just because I am a stay at home mum does not mean I do not value the voice I have through my vote.  Without the voices of mothers I believe that politics is hollow. However the way I have used, and plan to use, my vote has changed dramatically as a result of what I have witnessed in my years on the workplace.

Labour in my blood!

All my life I have been a Labour voter.  I grew up in the era of 'Maggie'; and my family did not see her as a good person! We were traditional, working class, aspirational people.  My mother and father instilled in me the value of education and the need to get on as well as pride in my background.

Doubts about the social revolution.

Having worked in the police for a significant amount of time I began to see that the sexual and social revolution of the 1960s had only resulted in the poor becoming more marginalised.  When you have the chattering classes promoting ideologies that negate the belief in free will and promote the idea that people are just victims of circumstance the people who end up paying are the poor.  It is not wealthy, middle class magistrates that give people another chance in their courts; it's their neighbours.

Added to that I met the 'families' that were the result of the relaxed attitude to marriage and sexual licence.  It's not pretty.

I became a police officer at the start of Labour's reign and guess what? The poor remained poor.  They just had Sky and plasma TVs now. They also ahve lots of time to harass those families that are working and can't afford the Sky or plasma TVs. Again, it's not pretty.

Having been in the police I became a teacher and moving to a more 'caring' prefession only ensured that I became more convinced that this revolution, far from being glorious, was soul destroying.  Try and sit through an assembly where the theme is 'don't get your kit off in front of an internet camera because the person on the other end might be a dirty old perv' and not have it make your blood boil.  Note, it's not because you should respect yourself and your body, it just might not be who you think it is on the other end.  

Crossing over to the dark side.

About five years ago I voted Conservative for the first time.  Me, a public sector worker in the middle of a recession voting Conservative!  I swear I woke in the middle of the night, at about 3.30, with a flashback; I'd just voted Conservative.  There was an action replay in my dream of my drawing a cross next to the Conservative candidate.  I think it might have been the screams of my ancestors that awoke me.

The biggest joke is I voted Conservative just when they stopped being Conservative!

Yes that's right, the Conservative party now believe it is better for women to be working and their developing the themes, and resulting social chaos, that have resulted in the glorious revolution.  Look at the following for evidence;

As Peter Hitchens points out,
it's never a factory worker when working women are depicted.
Also, where are the calls for equal amounts of female bin-men?

• Liz Truss (the Child Care Minister, yes that's right, the child care minister) has pointed to Germany and its boosted economy by increasing the number of women returning to work after having children. 
• Added to this is, despite the Governments claim that it supports all mothers, financially you're better off working. Despite the promise to protect 'traditional families' during the Conservatives election campaign with a transferable tax allowance between spouses they have introduced tax changes that directly disadvantage stay-at-home mothers.  Changes to child benefit have affected couples if the higher earner takes more than £50,000 a year. 
• Furthermore, as Gavin Kelly pointed out in the New Statesmen in March, the government’s new childcare policy which is proposing to spend near on £1bn on childcare, excludes those on tax credits is very significant. He states that the hazy notion that Universal Childcare Credit is about the 'poor' is untrue, it actually reaches many households on middle incomes relying on childcare. "A couple with two children in childcare would have to be on more than £40k of post-tax income before they come off universal credit (the figure is significantly higher if they are renting rather than home-owners). That is above the middle of the working-age income distribution. Those who have highly misleadingly referred to the vouchers policy as being ‘universal’ need to change their language."

I think the last point is the most significant.  As Peter Hitchens points out "A selfish upper crust of female lawyers, professional politicians, bankers and journalists imagined that all women enjoyed working as much as they did - when the truth is that most do it to pay the bills. But this self-satisfied clique is very influential. Who, in Parliament, law, business or the media, speaks for full-time mothers?" I believe this last policy shows these women in operation.

If not the Conservatives then, where else do I go? 

Who will value my role as a mother? Who will value my choice?

Certainly not the Liberal Democrats . 

Who will I vote for tomorrow? Like Peter Hitchens I would like a true, socially conservative party on offer to me as a voter.  For too long now the Conservative Party has been about money and not about values.  In order to get this I think it needs to be made clear that we need another voice.  However, unlike Hitchens, I do not think that not voting will enable us to do this.  It is far too easy for political parties to blame 'apathy' for the lack of turnout at general elections and, let's face it, as long as they have power they don't care if a good majority of the country didn't vote for them.

This year I'm voting UKIP.  I am concerned about the legislation passed down from the European courts which seems to be affecting our society, although I love Europe itself (always fancied going to live in France!). More importantly  here is a party that can legitimately register your disaffection and actually hurt the mainstream parties!