Now what do people want from their government?
First, I think they want to be left alone to lead their lives in their own way. Then I think they want governments to provide them with things that they can't provide for themselves. Things like schools, hospitals, roads, a good police force, help for the elderly and the disabled.
Now of course governments have to raise money to pay for those things, and it comes from tax and that's why governments, any government, have to tax their citizens.
So out of the money people earn, the government has to take its slice to pay for those things.
Now you may have noticed that, in recent years, that slice seems to have been getting bigger and bigger, but services of hospitals, schools and welfare haven't been getting better and better.
The official records show that in sixteen years under Labour, take-home pay in terms of what it will buy, rose by only 6%; and that's really the root of the whole problem, [end p1] because when people don't earn enough because they're not producing enough, governments have to take a bigger and bigger slice of what people do earn to pay for all the things we need.
And the official records show that in the seventeen years with Conservative government, take-home pay rose by 60%;, nearly ten times as much, and that's why Conservative governments could afford to take a smaller slice of people's earnings and still have enough left, year by year, to pay for better services.
It's not that Labour governments don't want to provide more of these things. They do. Their policies just don't have that result. And good intentions aren't enough to pay for better standards in education, and health and more police.
It seems that Labour governments haven't yet learned that before they can take more money, people have to make it, and that's why governments must see that the people have a fair chance and fair incentives.
So if you want the country to have the chance of growing the way it did during Conservative years, you'll need a new government with a new approach, the right approach. And don't just hope for a better life. When the time comes, and I don't yet know when that will be, vote for one.