In the mind of one UKIP voter.

I had a bit of a shock after work recently. Conversation over a couple of congratulatory drinks turned to people's attitude towards homosexuality and a young colleague said that "people of my generation don't even think about it." My response was that that is great but added a note of caution, mentioning recent EU elections where right wing parties made large gains across most of the continent. Then I said the fateful words:

"A lot of people are voting for parties like UKIP."

What followed could have turned very nasty. Another colleague (fortunately someone I don't work with often), who henceforth shall be referred to as 'bile-man' erupted into a seething monster, burning red and spitting uncontrollable vitriol. It was incomprehensible, though his point was clear. He voted UKIP at the recent elections and hate cannot describe his feelings towards anyone who disagrees with what he thinks is right.

I didn't want an argument. If he had reacted more calmly I would have happily engaged in a heated debate about Europe, immigration, the economy, welfare etc but this turned nasty in a split second and it was obvious bile-man was not going to discuss the issue in anything like a measured way. I tried to calm things down by saying "I understand why you don't want to vote for the main parties - I voted green." This didn't help - "THE GREENS ARE THE WORST!" How anyone could think the Green party are less likeable than one of the main parties, I have no idea. Even if you hate the idea that we should all be treated equally and don't think that we should be compassionate or look after the planet, you can't deny that they're probably the nicest party. 

I suddenly felt the need to go to the gents. When I returned, a friend who had had a bit more to drink than me had somehow managed to wade into this situation and yet also calm it down a little. I was trying not to get involved. I feel equally as strongly as bile-man about this topic but the shock of his ridiculous reaction had left me on edge and I didn't want to erupt too. I finished my drink and made my excuses. 

It really affected me though and I went over the earlier discussions again and again on the way home and again in quieter moments over the weekend, wondering why it is someone I had otherwise quite liked could be so angry. I recalled an earlier conversation: a colleague had mentioned the 'no more page 3' campaign and bile-man had proudly stated that he reads the sun and likes it very much. He'd also mentioned that he was from the baby-boomer generation, although I can't remember why that came up exactly. 

I woke very early the next morning and immediately began thinking about this all. Why is he so aggressively anti-socialist (I like that term; I think I'll use it again)? I looked at the facts:

Baby boomer

Formerly in the private sector, now a low-paid public sector worker.

Sun reader

UKIP voter

I came to the following conclusion, which may be almost as reactionary as bile-man himself but I'll share it anyway:

As a young baby-boomer (approximately 60), he didn't witness the difficulties of war-time Britain or the immediate aftermath when people helped each other and helped the country to recover. He is young enough to have always had the NHS and the welfare state to support him and anyone he cares about although he has rarely needed it, if ever. Before he was born, all adults had the vote. By the time he started work, the Unions had sorted out fairer working hours and better working conditions. He will have been in his 'prime' during the difficult late Labour-Union years in the 1970s when the right wing press (owned and paid for by the rich, of course) made people believe all Unionists were scum, and/or Trotskyite revolutionaries and that the Tories, Capitalism and Thatcher, were the only positive choices for an empire punching below its weight. 

He's a public sector worker who doesn't earn very much and probably earned a better salary in the 1980s and early 90s when he worked in a private sector industry until that failed and spat him out when times got tough. He likes golf: a man's sport where men often talk about work and business and moan about 'er indoors'. He becomes older and less tolerant to change as he sees his prosperity worsen and thinks back to when life was better for him. He didn't see many people from different countries at work back then. The Sun tells him other working and non-working people are to blame for him being worse off. 

So he's learned from Thatcher's Tories that he has to fight for himself and during that time, he was doing ok. Now the only fight left in him is directed at those he feels are taking something that he feels belongs to him. 

He fails to consider that of our ancestors were immigrants and we have all benefited from the changing culture in this country. He doesn't realise that our country's wealth was built on taking land from other nations and plundering their resources; using the poor to make profits; bringing in cheap foreign labour when the home-grown workers started to become too expensive, or were fighting in wars; and our prosperity is still reliant on using cheap overseas labour to increase profits in the retail sector which our economy is now so reliant on. 

The UK has used other countries to make its wealth and we still need them. At the moment, the UK is producing less than 60% of the food we need. We are not self-sufficient. Bringing in cheap food from overseas means that some countries have to produce more than they consume and when there's a short-fall, it won't be the UK that goes hungry.

But bile-man won't care. He's one of the special original good people of Great Britain, and anybody else can **** off.

My apology

In May 1997, I was 19. I'd grown up under Thatcher and saw what nasty divisive people in power could do to working families - and those who desperately wanted to be working. I was far too aware at far too young an age of what the Tories stood for - and against.

The Labour party under Neil Kinnock were still the party of the working majority. John Smith's leadership was all too brief though I think his ideas were very much still towards the left. People like us had someone to vote for during the champagne-swilling, porsche-driving, wad of cash-wielding, white collar and braces yuppie era.

But the Tories kept winning. They conned many of the older generation of working class - those who had fought in the war and rebuilt the country afterwards - that policies such as the 'right to buy' scheme were in their interests when really they were in the interests of the wealthy few and shrinking the state. In the 80s, the right wing had even more control over the media than they do now: we have the internet now; back then it was even easier to manipulate tabloid readers.

The BBC at the time used to keep a second personnel file for each employee which included security information collected by Special Branch and MI5. If a staff member was thought to harbour any kind of left-wing bias, their file was marked with a symbol which looked like a Christmas tree. This would, in most cases, leave them with no chance of a promotion or any key role in the corporation. The BBC also communicated with secret services to check the 'record' of any potential new employee. Of course, employees with links to the Tories would be treated entirely differently. With this level of bias at the BBC, plus the majority right-wing press, the Labour party didn't stand a chance.

And then came Blair. A Labour leader the right could get behind. Thatcher said in 2002 that her greatest achievement was Tony Blair and New Labour and that's one of few things she ever said that I agree with. The right-wing press went soft on Labour. In the run up to the 1997 election, the Sun switched allegiance and so did a lot of tabloid readers (compare that with now: Ed Milliband is constantly under vicious fire because the right-wing press wanted David Milliband - the most Blairite of the leadership candidates).

I voted for Labour in 1997 because all I knew was that I wanted the Tories out. John Major had been nothing like the destructive force that Thatcher had but they were still Tories: friends of the rich and powerful; architects of inequality. Despite the Iraq war, continuing to assist the rise of the few and the promotion of private sector involvement in public services, New Labour did do some things right and they were still the lesser of two evils - as we know all too well right now.

But the worst long-term legacy of that post-Thatcher, pre-Brown, Major-Blair era, for me, is the bullshit non-speak. We now have the benefit of the internet where we can find facts to prove or deny what we are told by politicians but when they don't speak their minds and if we can't tell what they really mean by what they say, how do people decide who to vote for? I spend a lot of time reading, listening, watching and learning what is going on and what parties are doing or might do and I know who I agree with. But for most people who have more pressing matters, such as trying to put food on the table, this is just not possible.

You know when you need to pay someone to fix something for you and they baffle you with things you don't understand until you pay them a lot of money? That's what most politicians do these days. If people can't decipher it, or they don't have enough background knowledge to know what parties are likely do if they get into power, they're unlikely to vote. This is how, plain-speaking, beer-guzzling, fag-smoking, hate-feeding UKIP make such surprising gains.

If Labour still represented the majority of working and non-working people in the UK, and they still told us what they thought rather than dithering in the centre ground, making sure they don't upset the racists, the people who hate benefits or the bankers, the differences would be clearer and I think voter turn out would be considerably higher. The Tories are just as bad, only instead of dithering, they just lie in their manifesto and then tear it up when they get into power and go about sneaking policies in - often whilst parliament is particularly quiet (did you know it's now easier for your employer to sack you? Do you know how busy parliament was when the gagging law was passed?).

So, I'm sorry. I apologise unreservedly for my part in bringing Blair and New Labour into power. I only hope as many protest votes go to the Greens as to the little Englanders in UKIP.

England in 50 years' time.

The year is 2064. England is booming. Scores of people are arriving from all over the world to buy fancy goods, eat fabulous cuisine and enjoy the best in theatre, music and art. It is the only place in the world where you can arrive in luxury, check out the new retail city you recently bought shares in, buy the latest fashions and jet back home the same day.

Many choose to stay for a while in 5, 6 and 7-star hotel complexes and soak up the international culture available amongst the urban sprawl just a 5-minute limo drive from the nearest airport. While they're here, they can pick up art or sportscars and have them shipped home for when they return. The very wealthy invest in property, too. There may not be as much property available as there was in the early part of the century, but the quality and potential return is simply outstanding.

The healthcare here is also world-beating. Built on the foundations of a world-renowned health service, the best surgeons and consultants now operate in gleaming towers that are more like hotels than hospitals. Patients visit from overseas for surgery and get a facelift or tummy-tuck while they're under anaesthetic.

England in the 2060s is the place everyone in the world wants to be wealthy enough to visit.

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In large cities and motorway junction retail towns, shiftworkers change over for the third time that day. It's like the changing of the guards: solemn; perpetual. Those who have another short shift the next day gather in food courts. They can exchange their workers' credits for coffee or something to eat from Starbucks, McDonalds, Subway, Dunkin' Donuts or Taco Bell. Later, they disperse into unknown spaces; possibly unused back offices or the basement vaults where generators and air conditioning systems are housed - basically anywhere security won't move them on. They only re-emerge for food or coffee before it's time for their next shift. Those who do not have a shift the next day have set off on their journey home, exchanging credits for a bus ticket. The cost of gas-powered transport has risen again, so credits don't go as far and some shiftworkers have taken to walking the last few miles of their journey. The exercise should be good for them but pollution takes its toll on their health.

In recent months drilling has been halted at another fracking site following more surface disturbance and damage to the site structure. Though tax revenue is at an all-time low (after decades of tax reductions and breaks for private sector corporations and the poorest workers), all over England, taxpayers' money is funding the repairs to tremor-damaged foreign-owned bore sites, and for the channelling of water from higher ground to replace contaminated supplies.

The living arrangements of some shiftworkers - possibly as many as 50% - is unknown. Many people have reported co-workers living in the large closed-off spaces underneath road junctions that were once retail developments, warehouses and offices. 'Home' for those who do have a registered address is often just a room in a private tenement in 'ranges' up to 50 miles away from work. Some of these ranges have old schools nearby, kept open by charities since the end of the state system. Shiftworkers who have any credits left at the end of the month pay to keep them open, so it's more like very cheap private education. Food banks, 1 credit stores ('Everything 1WCR!'), bookmakers, pawnbrokers, launderettes and coffee and takeaway food chains occupy the ground floors of the tenement buildings by the bus stops. They all accept workers' credits. Some pawnbrokers keep cash and a little is always in circulation amongst the shiftworkers: credits run out, particularly when they need medication.

Most ranges have a health centre where basic treatments are available in exchange for credits. There are some care centres run by charities for anyone whose credits don't stretch as far as the operation they need but the waiting lists are long and the quality of the treatment varies greatly. Some charity care centres are in old state hospitals which are in desperate need of repair.

England in the 2060s is the place everyone in the world wants to be wealthy enough to visit.

Are we sinking or are we being dragged under? Isn't it obvious?

The Tories seem very proud of their work so far. A little growth and they want us to believe they're geniuses. They're not. They also claim to love our NHS and have pledged to protect it. They don't - and they're not.

They claim that more people than ever are in work and they snort all over suggestions that more people than ever are in part-time work and zero-hours contracts - not even considering that important enough to respond to. They also claim that we can't afford the cost of benefits, the NHS, basically anything that poor people couldn't do without is too expensive. 

So if there are more people than ever in employment, where is all that lovely income tax and National Insurance going? Well for one thing, the government cut the top rate of tax, and reduced the amount of people paying the lower rate of tax. The latter may be a popular policy because it gives the lowest earners a bit of extra money - but if they were paid a living wage, they could afford a little tax. Now the government are talking about cutting National Insurance. 

The public seem to be, for the most part, unaware of the Tories' plans to give anything and everything profitable in the public sector to their rich friends and donors but it seems obvious, doesn't it? And what about the sections that wouldn't turn a profit? Charity will probably take over what's left of the public sector, and the greediest and most selfish in the country can choose to keep all their cash to themselves. 

It's baffling to me that anyone would vote conservative. The other main contenders aren't exactly great options but surely the people of Britain (or England, Wales and Northern Ireland - depending) would sooner choose a papercut or sand in the eye than being robbed and kicked to the ground?

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I would not be saying anything new to suggest that top earnings keep rising whilst the middle and lower incomes keep falling but new reminders come along all the time. My generation - and presumably the next - are being made to pay for the supposed profligacy of the one before.

Of course, the profligate ones were at the top - yet the top earners still see their wealth and prosperity rise.

I applied for a job yesterday, which would financially be one step up from my current one. My current job, I should add, has been downgraded in the last few years: colleagues with the same job title and the same responsibilities who have been here longer are on a higher pay scale than I am but I'm in the education sector, which has had to cut pay. This new job, when you look at the long list of responsibilities, sounds like quite a senior role. The successful candidate will be have sole responsibility of managing an academic centre with a hard-won multi-million pound research council budget and their salary: £25,000 rising to £28,000. This at one of the most well-established and well-respected Russell Group Universities. Incidentally, the colleagues I mentioned who have the same job title and responsibilities as I do in my current role are on that same pay scale but I feel the two roles should be two pay grades apart.

Important jobs are being massively undervalued and of course I wouldn't put my line of work in the same category as nursing, for example. Nurses are so important to us all and yet they are paid a pittance, as are other care professionals.

The downgrading of many jobs whilst the top get richer and richer and property and transport gets more and more unaffordable is a ticking time bomb. How can we expect people to be motivated to work hard when they can't afford a decent living? How can we expect nurses and other care professionals to do all the things we need them to do with care and consideration when they are so undervalued? How are people expected to be able to afford to live somewhere close enough to work or afford the transport costs of living further away? 

This government have set about trampling down anyone in the public sector and have then changed policies which demand more from them. Cuts have led to redundancies and extra pressure on those left behind. Changes to targets and box-ticking have meant further pressures still. 

Anyone would think this is an attack on the state from all sides; running people and services into the ground so they can say "Look: it's failed - but don't worry, we know some excellent private companies that will take over." And how much more attractive these contracts will be to their friends' and donors' private companies when staff are so cheap.

I've said this so many times before but on what basis do people think that outsourcing or selling off our services is done in the public interest or in the interests of improving services? PRIVATISATION MAKES THINGS WORSE.

Capitalism's success is a stick to beat the poor with

One of the under-lying topics of the benefits and living standards debates is about material possessions. 

Those who want to reduce the benefits bill by simply reducing benefits (as opposed to, say, getting people off poverty wages and more people into full-time work) will say that the poor can afford big tvs, smart phones, tablets etc, so they're obviously not really poor. Let's put aside the point that these possessions may have been bought when they were more affluent, and the fact that people need mobile phones if they're looking for work, and the fact that we all end up tied in to long contracts for phones, broadband etc. I'm going to concentrate on the reasons people might have such things.

Capitalism brought us materialism. Over the last 50 years, we have gradually been more and more bombarded by advertising, marketing, product placements etc and it’s still getting worse. Every celebrity endorsement, magazine cover, reality tv programme, bus, billboard, newspaper advert promotes a lifestyle we ought to seek out. We are constantly under pressure to have the latest styles, products and more and more stuff.

The hardest hit are often the poorest. People who have a good career can find status in that (and often that comes with a salary that means they can afford stuff if they want it) but those who don't might not want everyone to know their financial status. Anyone who has never been unable to afford the stuff we're told we need needs to try to understand how demoralising it is to silently display to the world that you’re too poor to buy new clothes or the latest technology.

What makes this even harder, is our children. Has Ian Duncan Smith ever tried to tell a 6-year old why the expensive trainers all his friends have are not necessary? Or why she can’t have the toy that her friends are getting for Christmas? It’s desperately sad that such young children care about such things but they do. A few months ago we had some friends over for dinner and they brought their children aged 6 and 5 with them. They hadn’t been to our flat since they were babies and they quickly set about comparing it to their house and their friends’ houses. Unfavourably (our modern-ish two bed flat could compete with their parents’ four-bed semi with a large back garden). They weren’t doing it to make us feel bad – they’re too young to realise that it’s not a nice thing to do – it’s clearly normal.

I remember vividly what it’s like to be a child at school with Mercury or Nicks trainers rather than Adidas or Nike. Or to get a new games console that’s 4 years old and inferior to the latest model that my friends had. At school, I resorted to defending myself by telling my peers that my family were poor but instead of making them feel sympathy or even pity, I suffered further and more brutal ridicule and bullying. I realise now that I wasn’t the poorest but other parents had clearly decided that by whatever means, they would buy their children the trainers and toys that their friends had. I thank my parents for what they did: it taught me not to be materialistic – in fact, I actively avoid having branded clothing and don’t see the worth in buying the latest gadgets and have been this way since my adolescence. But I completely understand parents who choose the other option and use credit cards or monthly payments (home shopping catalogues were the thing in the 80s and 90s when I was at School) and probably end up in financial difficulty as a result.

Now this government is using the participation in materialism by impoverished people as a tool to hit them with in debates about benefits or the level of poverty in the UK. The fact that this materialism is feeding the capitalism that lines the Tories’ pockets and drives their policies seems entirely lost on them.

A three-pronged attack on our country from within.

Conservatives are fundamentally and permanently driven towards lower taxes. To them, it makes sense that they should pay a lump sum for something if they need it and not a small amount from their pay packets in case they do. Which is fine for them: they can afford it. If their poorly-paid staff end up unable to clean their brandy and truffle-infused shirts because of cuts to their poverty wage subsidies, or inability to get healthcare, then fine - they'll get someone else to do it. After all, there are literally millions of people across Europe who are fit and desperate to do their dirty work.

When in power, the Tories are able to wage a war on public services from both sides. On the one, more obvious side, they claim there's not enough money in the treasury to pay for "failing" and "inefficient" services. So they cut them. On the other side, they exert even more pressure on the treasury coffers by reducing income tax for the top earners and taking the lowest paid out of it altogether. The result being, of course, that there really isn't enough money coming into the treasury to pay for the extra low-pay subsidies (in-work benefits) that they themselves are creating. So one project makes the other necessary and also true at the same time. You almost have to marvel at the audacity and disregard shown by this latest bunch of nasty Tories.

There's a third prong, too. The wealthy business-owners, shareholders and other sundry wealth-stealing Tory supporters and donors are dragging wages ever lower with more minimum wage part-time jobs, zero-hours contracts and forcing employees to become self-employed and in doing so, stealing rights from them such as sick pay and holiday pay. The more this goes on, the less taxes are being generated. And of course, this is without mentioning tax avoidance, which has not been dealt with at all.

The Conservatives and their cash-guzzling throng are shafting this country from all sides. And at the moment, it does not look like we have an opposition who will do much to change it.

The Tory plan is right on course.

When Ed Milliband introduced the 'cost of living crisis' debate to parliament, it seemed like a good thing - and it kind of was. It was a handy catch-all phrase that helped to bring a discussion about the financial troubles of working people alongside the constant strivers vs scroungers rhetoric. However, what it also did was to bury discussions about who and/or what caused the recession even further down the agenda and the problem is, it isn't being dealt with at all.

The deafening right-wing crowing about the deficit fails, as of course it would, to mention that the last conservative government had a higher deficit than the pre-bail-out labour government. And the argument from the right about the collapse of the economy is that the last government spent too much on wasteful things like giving the poor enough money to feed themselves. The idea being that if the last government had been more frugal while the economy was good, the country would have been able to cope with the recession.

What is wrong with this argument? I'm fine, in principle, with the idea that a government might run a big surplus in case they need it - provided of course that the economy is strong enough to do that (which it isn't at the moment). What's wrong with the argument is that it suggests we should always expect recessions of this type to happen, rather than discuss what went wrong and how to fix it. What the tories want is to cut spending right down so that the city can carry on being greedy and reckless, safe in the knowledge that when it all falls down, the taxpayer will bail them out again. The handy by-product of this is a far smaller state, which is very much on their most-wanted list anyway - the recession is just a very handy excuse to do it.

Labour do not want to be seen as the anti-city party. Ed Milliband and Ed Balls have talked about bonuses but felt that they couldn't turn the discussion from 'strivers vs scroungers' into 'how to get our money back and stop the banks from failing again' because the city is too powerful and influential to mess with and would not want to have to change their ways. Labour's talk of a tax on bankers bonuses is probably safe enough; they know that the banks will either find clever ways of avoiding paying the tax or just increase salaries and reduce bonuses accordingly.

The labour party could keep quiet about fixing the banks until they get into power. Then, bring in tighter regulations, bonus caps (on top of the bonus tax they've already mentioned) and perhaps even dissolve the corporation of the city of London. Surely the public would be pleased with the new government acting to fix the cause of the recession and and helping to fix the leaks in our economy. And provided there are no more Iraqs or other major mistakes, vote to keep them in for a second term, thus allowing enough time to see some of the benefits of gaining control of the capital.

I do this sometimes: I get these ideas and hopes that labour might do the right thing but then I come to my senses. They won't.