Who was PM during the best of times for you?

How do we define the best times really? It's more to do with age, life circumstances and luck / location. Professional career before kids was best financially, so Brown/ Cameron. Best times are with my DS though, so anyone from May onwards. It's hard to be aware of how wider society is operating, it's only when your family needs services that you can truly assess flaws, and then you usually can't compare regional differences. I moved between NHS trusts a few times so I know where I am now is and has been excellent, but in other areas it's been abysmal. I can't only blame government because of the shit-shows I had for medical care 1999-2002 (though GP good) and 2008-2016 (dangerously giving wrong medication several times), compared with the other trusts 2002-2008 and 2016-now. Oh, 1996 in another trust was awful too with hindsight. Some schools are good, others awful, even in the same borough. Crime in some areas is bad, in others it's reduced.

I utterly hate Blair with a passion. We should not have gone to Iraq and I think he is a crook. I didn't benefit from him much as a young person in a shitty job who paid too much tax, but my mother did well enough to buy her council house and look after three kids. Unheard of now. As a parent now, I wish we had the Blair years back. I felt hope for the future as a young person and families were supported instead of stressed, overworked and stagnating in their lives. Childrens futures were proritised.

There is absolutely no hint of hope under this government and it has been decaying for years, more so since Brexit vote. I'm embarrassed but our government now, bunch of corrupt panto villains. Pathetic.

As you can imagine I deeply regret voting Tory in 2010! 😞

Born early 80’s. Tony Blair hands down.

And this.

Austerity failed. The Cameron/Osborne years were a failed project.

And Whatever happened to ‘the big society’? Oh, I remember. It gave us societal division and Brexit. Well done, lads!

That’s your political opinion.

I think a wealthy Western country that doesn’t prioritise health, education and children’s services is a shameful place.

I also think it’s shameful for extremely wealthy Tory ministers and MPs, constantly on the make in their private lives, to use covid and Ukraine to tell us that nurses and teachers aren’t worth a fair pay rise.

Eh? the Tories had massively increased national debt and borrowing well before Covid or war in Ukraine hit. Their 'austerity' failed, utterly.

This thread shows why the U.K. is in a state - it’s the whole ‘buy now pay later’ theory. Public services might’ve been well-funded, but it was money Blair simply didn’t have !

The Tories dealt with the Labour post-Blair fall out through austerity. And more recently, it’s Covid and the war in Ukraine that has tanked the economy both of which were outside the control of the government.

The impact on youth services and education when Cameron got in was huge, and it happened very quickly.
The youth sector was decimated and has never recovered.

Blair/Brown.

EMA for college students.
Uni fees were a grand a year for my course.

I work in education - youth services were well funded and education felt like a government priority.

Life as a young adult in London was great. Expensive but affordable. The arts and music scenes were vibrant. There was a real sense of hope and that things could indeed only get better!

Thatcher.

Blair/Brown. I was able to train as a teacher thanks to the bursary, and the course was full of enthusiastic and energetic trainees. We started our careers in schools that could afford support for children - I had LSAs in most of my lessons, children could access mental health support if needed and there were interventions and help provided for families in need of it. A few years in, I watched Cameron and Osborne take a wrecking ball to public services in the name of austerity. I watched children's life chances crumble along with the school buildings no one could afford to maintain. Everything crashed and burned, until Cameron delivered the final blow of Brexit and fucked off leaving the smoking ashes of the country behind him.

Thatcher 😂. Left university with a £300 overdraft and no other debts at all.

Gordon Brown..

"Texture like sun "...🎵🎶🎶

Another vote for Blair/Brown - and early Cameron was ok, before it all turned to shit.
(But I wonder if we are all similar age and harking back to our younger days? I’m 55.)

Blair. I work in the NHS and it’s the only time we were fully staffed, we were able to give good care ,wages were good in comparison to cost of living and I was able to get on the property ladder.
oOnce Tories got in the NHS crumbled, almost overnight staffing seemed to fall by 50 percent.

Blair. No question. He is by some margin the best PM of my lifetime and I’m 50. Which is why I find the hate towards him so hard to understand. Yes the Iraq war was extremely misguided and damaging. But that doesn’t invalidate the rest of his premiership.

Blair. We had sure start when my son was a baby and it was a golden age. I started my childminding business with grants, free courses and free business support.

Thatcher then Blair/Brown.

Definitely Blair. The elation and hope when he got elected felt off the scale.
I can't describe how sad I feel about the world / country my DCs will grow up into and have to deal with as adults. Fucking Tories, fucking Brexit

Blair
Maybe it was more to do with the global economy at the time, and it was after all pre GFC (but we did have the internet bubble burst so it wasn’t all economic plain sailing), but the feeling of optimism was tangible. I can still remember it. Britain was proud to be British. I’m leaving the U.K. this year and it’s partly because the future here looks and feels so bleak. Brexit has done untold damage.

Another Blair/ Brown vote here. I do not understand why they never get the recognition they deserve. I totally disagree with a PP who said they wasted money and left the economy in tatters. They didn't. What they did was invest in ordinary people. Anyone who worked in the public sector felt the difference in thos years. We were properly funded after years and years of being denied the resources we needed.

I was teaching then, and the difference it made. We had smaller classes and more TAs. SEN education was better funded. Early years were better funded. The children educated in those years really benefited from this.

That ws the time when the NHS got the funds it needed. I was able to get a drs appointment on the day i requested it. There were no massive queues in A and E. not waiting in ambulances just to get in through the doors.

All of that good work has been undone now due to the cut after cut after cut to public sector funding. Many of the people who benefited from the Blair/ Brown years went on to vote Tory - talk about pulling the ladder up behind you.

I really fear that education will never recover from the state they are now in - not due to the people who work in them, but due to being utterly starved of the finances they need.

My career did stall but I was still young so having a good time plus it was a global financial crisis it wasn't down to Blair and Brown. Brown actually came out of it quite well. The Tories would have been utterly incompetent.

Neither is he ;

Many reasons probably for another thread though

Did no one get hit hard by 2008 crash on here? Eg huge job losses in sector

Or house situation suffered

Maybe it’s a public sector / private sector split

Blair & Brown of course. Good times...

I had my best years while Cameron was PM. And was fine under May as well.. Bought first house age 24, had first 2 kids, got married so things were good for me. Things are still ok for me but obviously Covid wasn’t great and makes Johnson’s time look especially tricky and now things feel a bit expensive with cost of living. Credit crunch under brown wasn’t a nice time and the Blair years started when I was 9 and i was also was the first year of £3k tuition fees so felt a bit hard done to at the time by Blair as friends a year older were paying much less.