We are all suspects now.

NB: The author is Tim Hewish, who I am glad to welcome as a local contributor. — Steve

One of my local Wycombe friends asked me: Why, as a young person, should I vote Conservative? I initially came out with the usual blurb about the positives of Conservatism, but she stopped me mid-way and she repeated ‘no, as a young person’. This made me think about the question further and I was fortunate enough to find two articles that stated my case beautifully. The first comes from a young campaigner who recently wrote on the ConHome website:

We’ve come to love and depend on our captors. A whole generation is clearly suffering from Stockholm Syndrome, direly dependent on the State – and Labour would have us stay this way to ensure we vote for them for years to come.

For many my age who think Stockholm Syndrome is just a Muse song let me flesh out the basics. It is instead defined as:

A paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein a positive bond between hostage and captor occurs. In essence, eventually, the hostage views the perpetrator as giving life by simply not taking it.

For far too long, young people have been at the mercy of the Blair/Brown Curriculum.

Almost all of us rebel against our parents in our teens, but then why should we run into the arms of the big nanny state? There is a twisted Nineteen-Eighteen-Four aspect in our generation where we are taught: War is Peace (The Iraq War),  Freedom is Slavery (hundreds of children’s rights but no personal responsibility) and Ignorance is Strength (teaching us social issues, but not the educational facts that means we are unable to question and think for ourselves)

In a world where we are ‘told’ the standard of life has improved by reams of Gordon Brown’s statistics tell us they want a double-think worthy fair future for all. (Click hear for a new blog detailing all of Labour’s failures)

I ask you: Is it a fair future that thousands of young people leave school without the basic grasp of reading, writing and arithmetic? Is it a fair future when you finish university without there being enough jobs to go around? Is it a fair future that Labour doesn’t actively support the stability that marriage brings? Is it a fair future not being able to get a foot on the housing ladder? Is it a fair future that out of the almost 3 million unemployed 1 million of those are 18-24?

This is exacerbated even more by the second article I found, which shows Labour have dropped their pledge to get one million more people to own their home as it “compounds inequality”.

Their own Housing Minister, John Healey, attacked owner occupation, saying that:

“Home ownership had been dropping since 2005 and I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing” and he slammed parents passing a legacy on to their children since “inequality is compounded over the generations.”

Only in a world where 2+2=5 would this make sense and people would swallow it. The hard graft and determination to own your own home is one of greatest aspiration the young can aim for. It gives you a goal to work towards, it maintains your work-ethic, it gives you a sense of pride and something on which you can improve. While it is also something that you can leave to your children.

Relying on your own acumen and skill is something we should champion, not condemn.

Saying it compounds inequality just shows that Labour doesn’t want any free individual to own anything and wants everyone equally poor as Churchill correctly stated:

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

So at a time when the Government’s own advisory body indicates that only 26 per cent of families aged under 40 could afford to buy a home in England in 2008, the Conservatives are calling for:

• A permanent cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers up to £250,000
• For an equity stake for social tenants who are good neighbours
• Respecting the tenures and rents of social tenants
• And are pledging to build more family homes with parking spaces and gardens for young families by scrapping flawed Whitehall density rules.

This is why young people should vote Conservative on May 6th and break the cycle of being Labour’s captives and end these 13 years of their Big Brother government and start embracing the Conservative vision of the Big Society based on hope, not fear.

The Guardian reports proposals for an increase in automated summary justice in combination with cries for “fair rules”:

Benefit claimants will face lie detector tests and will lose benefits for a month if found guilty of fiddling the system under proposals unveiled by Gordon Brown on the eve of today’s Queen’s speech.

The “one strike and you’re out” proposal is contained in a tough summary of the speech released yesterday by the Cabinet Office.

And:

The Cabinet Office paper tries to put the emphasis on fair rules in the context of the credit crunch. It says: “As everyone enters difficult economic times … fair rules will become more important.

“If people perceive that not everyone is treated equally, that some get preferential treatment, that people who break the rules get away with it, respect for rules is undermined.”

Slowly, oh so slowly, the Government begins to rediscover the classical definition of the rule of law and the reasons for that definition.

And by the way, what happens when a desperate person makes a nervous phone call and the machine misinterprets the stress in their voice as a symptom of fraud?

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