The reason I will be voting Labour is because we have suffered from austerity for too long – an economic strategy that is not even effective and has caused widespread suffering and unnecessary deaths.
The social security system is not respectful of the people who have to claim benefits, it is weighted to pressurise and worry people who are in a vulnerable position. Having to rely on benefits is a harrowing experience especially for those on Universal Credit. One day a young mother begged me for change because her Universal Credit payment had not come through and she had a baby at home and nothing to feed her with, this woman was haunted and desperate and near to where I live, which has never until this year had homeless or destitute people as it is not in a city. My point is that poverty has spread into the suburbs. I see this as the fate of many more if we don’t change to the wonderful policies that Labour have proposed. If the Tories are back in office after Thursday, all but the very wealthy, face a grim future of desperation.
Everyone but the wealthy few are being stripped of our assets, by being told that “Education is a privilege not a right” and the legislation backing up this principle has personally damaged my life. Firstly by making Universities into businesses touting for students with promises of jobs after completing their courses.. I was lured into a PGCE in Post Compulsory Education, encouraged in my hope to become a teacher of fine art in further education. I worked very hard on an intensive one year course, passed all of my modules and observations. But further education suffered many cuts in jobs during my course under the David Cameron government. My hope to pull my family up out of poverty with a teaching job was quashed. All that was on offer were cover supervisor jobs in minimally equipped Secondary School Academies and because they operated on a principle of overwhelming the students into passivity, they wanted a very authoritarian teacher, and that is not who I am so I couldn’t even get those sort of jobs. Now I have a student debt of over £13,000 and interest is growing every year – and no job.
The prospect of more Tory government is terrifying, especially with their special association with Trump and his cruel values, so if that happens I have no hope for the future. Privatisation of the NHS will soon mean charging for treatments – this will be torture of ordinary people when they need hospital treatment. To be forced to pay vast bankrupting sums of money or suffer pain disease, death and watch their children, parents, partners and friends suffer and die is a philosophy of warfare, upon the poorest then slowly creeping up the economic ladder to those who were once more comfortable.
Tories and Trump are ripping out the good things in people’s lives by stopping funding of the arts in education and entertainment. Every good value will be out of reach of ordinary people and no emotion of care or compassion exists in the Tory world for any people, animals, wildlife or wild place. The world will continue to be stripped of love and beauty, the poor will all become desperate, fighting for food, living a base, degraded half life..
Labour’s policies address all of these problems and more, LABOUR POLICIES ARE COMPASSIONATE AND INCLUSIVE! Labour’s manifesto policies are economically sound and set to save the people, save the planet, improve all qualities of life with the arts, animals and wild spaces to uplift our spirits. Labour’s are policies of respect, dignity and care for the diversity of people in our country and for people in countries overseas. In voting on Thursday please think of the future, end the Tory oppression, vote Labour to set us free.
SARAH HARBRIDGE WRITINGS 