Why are the Tories allowing this to happen to the country?

I think we should also not underestimate the impact of sheer incompetence and infighting within the party.

The Gov shut down the economy for more or less 2 years.
The various covid and lockdown measures cost an estimated £300-£500 Billion.
(ie Test and Trace, furlough, eat out to help out, bounce back loans, and loss of GDP due to businesses being closed and fraud).
All of this has to be paid for; hence inflation (due to Bank of England printing money, or quantative easing).
This has caused a cost of living crisis, not helped by an energy crisis, partly caused by the Russian/Ukraine War and Gov decisions over the last 20-30 years, which has run down our own capacity, etc.
So, the unons want pay rises to combat the cst of living crisis, which will probably cause an inflation spiral.
The health crisis happens every year, but there is also a backlog of cases, due to Lockdown - undiagnised cancers, etc

All of that, @Perfect28. The railways are in a terrible mess. Also, a country as rainy as ours shouldn't be having to put drought measures in places every few summers. Also, do something effective about the housing crisis. More social housing, some way to cap house price inflation, make it unattractive for foreign investors to buy London flats and leave them standing empty - I don't know, but surely politicians could help if they had the will to do it.

I guess Labour might have reopened gas storage facilities, invested in insulation for UK homes, collaborated earlier with French officials in Calais and increased staffing for asylum applications to speed them up, not tried to alienate one of close neighbours, wanted affordable house building targets, not spaffed money on Rwanda and Festival of Brexit, done something about teacher retention etc etc, not appointed chancers like Paterson or Mone, kept an Ethics advisor etc etc.
No magic bullet but there were ways to stem some of the nonsense.

This. One of the many lies Tory MPs come out with.

Surely they're just doing what the Tories always do?

Inexplicably, people keep voting for them. That's the downside of democracy, I guess. The electorate can make stupid choices.

Really? The paramedics, doctors, nurses and other HCPs who have been so appallingly badly let down by the Tories over the last 12 years will do that? No, they won't, and neither should they, and I can't see any NHS administrators trying to force them to do it either.

One of the things that boggles my mind is that the Tories have been in power for 12 years but in that time we've had five different Prime Ministers and every time we have regime change supporters of the new PM behave as if nothing that happened under the previous PM has anything to do with them. They even try to blame Labour from time to time, which I suppose is force of habit.

The narrative that other countries are the same and we're all suffering is just not true- we are clearly demonstrably doing worse economically, and that's even before you start looking at gaps between richest and poorest or public and private sector where we rate shockingly poorly. Here's the evidence.
Economic comparison

@Perfect28 what do you think the government could do to improve the situation?

His predictions were correct in FT do you remember, it was a while ago

As much as it’d be interesting to see a party with strong union ties and thought to be on the side of the public sector deal with this there still wouldn’t be an easy solution.

How would they fund it?

It means there is no simple solution that will solve all of the issues. They are complex ones: some made by poor choices in the short term but equally some made by poor choices going back decades.

Tough as it is Sunak got it right in summer and there’s is no magic bullet.

What’s that supposed to mean?

This. Go and read Chums by Simon Kuper. They're all mates and they think that we are collateral damage in their quest to rule the "empire" and make a shitload of cash.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001fwcw
Michelle Mone PPE scandal

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63864192
Michelle Mone PPE

There's no private A and E but there's No way they'd wait to be seen they'd be ushered straight through and treated Asap while mere mortals wait hours and hours.

Yes there’s no easy way through unless pp think funds are there to match every pay rise demand

We got Truss promising it’ll be easy, Labour haven’t said much except ‘we’d sit round the table’.

Tough as it is Sunak got it right in summer and there’s is no magic bullet.

Labour could meet every demand but how would they fund it?

Every day this lot is in is a day we lose money. The next government is going to have a trully rough time trying to change things with no money left.
Look at Liz Truss. She managed to vanished lots of money, in less than 40 days, by just saying a few words and posing for the cameras. They got away with it..... they will do it again.
And their inaction, on almost anything that has to do with their actual duty, is making me angrier than I thought I could ever be.

There's a lot of looking after the interests of rich business friends so that these friends will look after them, give them lucrative jobs, directorships etc. I'm alright Jack.

I don't 'get' out either op. I understand its deliberate but can't get my head around the mindset. I mean what do they think will happen next? After?

The coal mine that was granted permission yesterday has fucking done for me.

Inflation-level rises in the public sector will add to both further inflation and public debt. While I don't know many people who've had a pay rise in the private sector (excluding promotions) for a long time.

Regular pay growth in the public sector was 2.2% in July to September 2022, while in the private sector it was 6.6%. This is both the largest private sector pay growth and the largest gap between public and private pay growth on record (since January 2000), excluding the height of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

So they can sell the country off to the highest bidder. They’ve been asset stripping & privatising services for a long time to firms they have a personal interest in. The Tories are not patriotic, they just pretend that they are. The majority of them hold contempt for this country and its people yet people vote for them every time.