The thing that pisses me off most about Tories (and there are a lot of things that piss me off about the Conservative party, but I'm talking about Tory voters) is their fast belief that anyone, ANYONE, who works hard enough can succeed, and a lack of success is an individual's fault. In summary, poor people are poor because they have failed as a person, on some level. Rich people are rich because they are inherently better.
I mean, it's bollocks. You don't need a sociology degree to know it's bollocks, AND YET it forms the background of so many Tory policies. There is an a total lack of insight into how society works. When we are born, we are effectively a blank slate. What we are born into affects every aspect of our development and future.
If your parents are better off, they might be able to pay for your driving lessons, buy your first (and subsequent) car, pay your student living fees, house you while you save for a mortgage, lend or gift you money for your mortgage. And all these things are taken for granted by you, the privileged one, as enjoying the rights afforded to you by birth.
On the other hand, if your parents have little spare money, you might not learn to drive, or go to uni. This might severely restrict your ability to get a job, particularly in deprived areas. Your parents might be keen for you to move out because they can't afford to house you anymore. You might end up paying a rent that takes up most of your income, leaving you no spare cash to save for a mortgage. And this, according to the Conservative party, is your fault. You should have tried harder.
Even things like having parents available for free childcare can massively affect your career trajectory and income potential. And these are not conditions that most individuals choose, they are accidents of birth.
It was different when my parents were young, and you could get a 100% mortgage by just asking, and business loans were a thing, and university was free, and jobs didn't require you to have a degree and three years experience just to work in retail. It was different when their parents were young, in the immediate postwar era when the welfare state was born. But in the current economic climate, it is bloody difficult to get going into adulthood without some financial backing.
And so you get a cycle of poverty. Poor parents have poor children who become poor parents who have poor children. The Tories are trying to stop this by stopping the poor reproducing (and just for the record, THIS GOVERNMENT THINKS YOU ARE POOR IF YOU EARN LESS THAN £35k P.A SO WIPE THAT SMUG SMILE OFF YOUR FACE) but ultimately, you have to invest in people to make them thrive. You would think the Tories would know this - they know you have to invest in a business to make it succeed. But no.
But when Jeremy Corbyn starts talking about investing in normal people, in redirecting wealth, the Tories throw up their arms in despair, crying Marxism and trying to re-institute fox hunting. Fox hunting - a sport that occupies a few hundred people at a time, each paying a massive subscription, exclusive by definition - is far more important than dealing with any form of social inequality, because the Tories simply fail to acknowledge that it exists.
