To the Elders

Subject: To the Elders
From: The Kids
Date: 7 Jun 2017

I saw a graph of voting demographics this morning, and it showed older voters were more likely to vote conservative. I am very aware that of course many older people will not vote for them, and of course some young people will, but I have spoken to some peers about this and we decided to write to you with a plea.

We are writing to ask you from the bottom of our hearts NOT to vote conservative. We think that we are old enough now to make an informed decision.

We can’t speak on behalf of every young person in the UK. We speak from the position of the many conversations we have had with other young people in the UK, above and below voting age. We speak from the general feeling underlying our generation.

We understand that the Conservatives are selling themselves as “strong and Stable”, but this is very confusing because although they may have been strong & stable many many years ago, more recent decades have shown them to be anything but. I don’t need to mention the conservatives handling of “Brexit” which has proved to be weak and unstable – you know the details.

Once upon a time, we are told, the Conservatives supported new businesses and had a conservative budget. Now, however, their financial strategy is to cut the services we most desperately need (particularly in the face of the austerity they imposed) and to hand very economically rewarding contracts to corporations which end up costing the state more. A country that is heavily in debt without enough hospitals, nurses, police or firemen to support it is neither strong nor stable. They also have no problems making false promises, or lying.

In 2010 George Osborne set himself the target to eliminate the UK’s budget deficit by 2015, not only did our debt grow, we also lost our credit rating. The hard Brexit that May is proposing can only throw us further into debt. They have not looked back at their major short-comings and revised a new strategy, they propose no real, meaningful change. Things can only get worse.

We are of course excited by Corbyn’s proposition of a new way of doing politics, and a fairer system that serves the people, and he is coming off a much stronger leader than we first gave hime credit for. You did always bring us up to believe that “honesty is the best policy”. It does seem a far cry from the ‘new labour’ government that shares many of it’s objectives with ‘new conservatism’ that has disappointed us so much in the past. We need the change they are proposing.

We need a government that represents us, that will engage with complex issues such as terrorism and immigration to look at the root causes of conflicts. We need a government that wants us to ask questions and educate ourselves. We need a government that considers the well being of the people over the needs of the corporations that fund them.

But we’re not here to persuade you to vote for Corbyn. We’re here to ask you to read and carefully consider the policies of the various parties. We’re asking you to ignore sensationalist media which are biased, and grossly oversimplify complicated issues – you know that they are full of lies – trust yourselves. We are asking you for the sake of your children, your grandchildren, for their children, for the sake of your future:

Please DON’T vote Conservative.

Thank you.
With great love and respect

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