So what change would people like to see in this country - given people seem to want change and are fed up with the pace of change?

[cakeorwine]

That seems to be the message from people in the recent elections.

Clearly immigration - controlled or uncontrolled is an issue for some / many people and the impact on local communities

But apart from that, what other changes do people want to see that are not being delivered?

I know that housing is a massive issue. Affordable places to live
Job opportunities in a local area
People being able to stay where they live instead of being forced to relocate
NHS waiting times, seeing a GP quickly, seeing a dentist who is NHS
Cost of living - life is expensive for many people. How can life be made more affordable for people who are struggling?
Run down town centres, too much shoplifting and a feeling that people are getting away with crime

What changes do you want to see happening?

I would like to see the following changes:

The electorate realise...
We can't remotely afford the current level of public spending.

Spending over £350 million a day on interest payments, isn't an "investment in the future".

Taxing companies and the wealthy even more isn't a solution.

Labour need to appreciate...
Long term sustained growth only comes from business believing the UK is the best place to invest their money, Labour's policies have achieve the complete opposite, and have been more vindictive than strategic.

If local elections had been held across the UK on Thursday, they would have been forced to call a general election.

The government needs to get it's own house in order with regards to the education system before attacking home educators and parents of SEND children.

Zero tolerance to crime - employment of Rudy Guiliani's 'broken windows' method would be an excellent start.

I agree largely with the tax initiatives mentioned in previous comments.

Complete stop of inheritance tax - this is basically theft

Move to a sensible insurance model for healthcare. (There are many countries we could look at here, obviously not the US!) I certainly don't worship the sacred NHS. It's broken.

I'd vote for anyone proposing the above.

Tax the rich - stop penalising people who work for a living and start taxing unearned income, windfalls, inheritances etc that never bother a tax return. Unmuzzle HMRC and give them the resources to close loopholes. Labour need to stop fawning over non-doms.
Address wage stagnation - Tories and New Labour policies are responsible for the disgraceful situation where people working full time are having to rely on benefits just to keep their head above water and line the pockets of landlords and shareholders (particularly of utilities companies).
Housing - measures to curb house price inflation (CGT, IHT would be a start) and more social housing (protected from being sold off). Insecure housing is at the root of so much that is wrong with this country from productivity to crime and anti social behaviour.
More corporate and political accountability -Criminal sanctions with custodial sentences for mismanagement of companies that deliver essential services. Sewage dumped in rivers/coming out of taps? The police should be rounding up the directors.
Just warming up.

I sometimes feel we are looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope.

if we consider that many of the failures we've witnessed in the UK, that have led to deprivation, imbalance between th haves and have-nots and the crumbing of our infrastructure and services, have been due to incapable people being allowed to make detrimental and self-serving decisions.

we need more talent, capable and committed politicians who believe in making ethical decisions for the good of the people, based on priorities not solely aimed at self-aggrandisement and personal gain, When did we last have someone in high office who was inspiring, who we felt safe in their hands? Not even anywhere close to it, in my experience.

I struggled with which party to vote for in the local elections, because the messaging conveyed at party level just doesn't resonate with me. I know you're meant to vote for the party that best aligns to your values, but I just haven't had any confidence in even a small percentage of what I've heard. Not an iota of talent between the lot of them,

So you want politicians to be significantly different to the population who whilst deploring the nanny state is at the same time unwilling to act for their greater good ( destroy their bodies and the planet with their actions ) and they are also all unwilling to pay more to help others ( and that’s the killer - politicians are constrained by those desires of the population that drive voting patterns. Suggesting tax on the motorist, business, the dead, hard working people, the rich ( but only the very very top 1% because anything else isn’t rich ) - all lose yih votes

Nationalisation of all essential industries: water, gas, electricity, all aspects of NHS, rail and buses.

Health service and education to be restructured with massive reduction of managers from outside the professions, freeing up more funding for the salaries of medics and teachers.

Affordable housing. Fair rent.
Huge fines to any non-UK resident who buys property as an investment and leaves it unoccupied. All properties not lived in should be offered at token rent to key workers in the area as mandatory part of sale.

Vigorous chasing of tax owed by major corporations.
Vigorous chasing of child support payments from all non-resident parents.

Focus on cleaning up rivers.

Focus on developing and regenerating UK-based industries, especially sustainable ones and food growth and production to reduce air miles.

Force men to support children they father.

Honesty over the country's financial situation and what we can and cannot afford and realistic priorities.

1. Sort out taxation - this country needs to encourage high earners rather than deter them.

1. Value the countryside and agriculture.

1. Introduce a social insurance based healthcare system like those in Europe.

1. Rather than all the top ups in the form of universal fsm, nursery hours, the old family tax credit, etc., pay realistic wages and support a realistic wage level.

1. Reintroduce proper social housing.

1. Sort out education. Massive comprehensives don't work, not every child needs multiple O'Levels and 40% of the population does not need a "university" degree. Introduce proper respect and technical training for the skilled trades.

1. Value and think about the white working class.

1. Bring back consequences in schools, stop the excuse culture and the blame cultures that seem increasingly prevalent along with the sense of entitlement.

1. Reintroduce personal responsibility.

People seem to want more money in their pocket, lower taxes, lower cost of living, better public services & less immigration. Somewhat impossible!

And the vast majority don't want to recognise the ageing population issue or the finial implications of that.

Make election manifestos legally binding with elected government front bench personally and collectively subject to massive fines and permanent barring from any public office when they inevitably try to break their word.

And a lot of what others have said here with the exception of more funding for the NHS. It's a money pit and needs to be reformed. And yes, I know that that's not a popular opinion.

Fundamental to everything is exorbitant house prices. It's hard to do anything when the bulk of your earnings goes towards a mortgage

high housing costs have fucked the economy

Harsher sentencing for knife crime. Especially for younger offenders. The amount of stories I have read over the past few days about teenage knife crime is terrifying!!

I mean this thread is a bunch of contradictions. 😆

Remove right to buy

Heavily invest in social housing. HAs need to be able to build large volumes of housing in the highest need areas (London, Home Counties & South East are statistically higher in need of social housing than north, but that's not to say the north also doesn't need it)

Invest much more in secondary schools. Increase teacher salaries to encourage more to join, and hopefully reduce workloads. Include "life lessons" in schools too..

Get rid of nonsense, useless degrees which are just money spinners. Raise the rate of income levels for students to get financial help. Since family income doesn't stretch as far, the added expense of putting a child through uni is restrictive.

All dentists should have to provide NHS services to children. So all children can access dental care easier.

Stop the crazy expenses MPs can claim! No other business would pay the things they claim for.

I don't mind paying higher tax if I could see the benefits, but services are being cut. Potholes are an epidemic, social care, mental health care are woeful.

In a word, fairness.

Limitations on what can be earned by one individual - either through work or through non earned income. More tax bands that deal with this. I don't believe that CEOs work 100x harder than a full time carer and it's clear that economic supply and demand doesn't function at the bottom end of work or carers/nurses/nursery staff would be paid much more.

Intergenerational fairness - resources focused more fairly, with far more at the younger end, where they will have an impact for the whole of that person's life.

Inheritance tax needs to be increased - it just continues wealth inequality into the next generation. Pensions need to be frozen. Prescriptions need to be paid by those who can afford to do so. Pension age benefits should not be more generous than working benefits.

Benefits - no one on benefits should be given more money than someone working full time on minimum wage.

Educational fairness - close all private schools, all religious schools. Our children all learn together and have to adhere to the same set of rules.

NHS - move to co-pay system where everyone has to pay a certain amount, which varies according to income. Every one then has some level of responsibility to the resources that they take from it.

Make foreign ownership of national infrastructure and assets illegal, make foreign ownership of housing exorbitantly expensive through tax - they can choose to leave the country, but their assets have to stay here and be taxed.

Rebuild national infrastructure through the taxation changes above.

Undo privitisation of care services, prison services, housing services - anything that Serco/Capita and their ilk run. Squeezing profit out of these services is destroying them and the staff that work in them. National care service should be created wih national pay scales and standards for child, elder and social care.

So much more, but I think that's enough for now.

Everyone has their own ideas based on their personal circumstances or opinions but invariably involve more expenditure.

Given that people don't want to pay tax does anyone have any sensible ideas how to make the pot bigger without benefits and migrant bashing.

There's no magic wand for things to change immediately (which is what people also seem to expect).

Flat rate pay increases, not percentages. £1 a week more EVERYBODY, for the next 100 years.

User - are you a communist? Limits on what people earn is ridiculous!! Completely stifles any incentive to train, innovate and invest. Communism has been tried and it doesn’t work.

NHS - move to co-pay system where everyone has to pay a certain amount, which varies according to income. Every one then has some level of responsibility to the resources that they take from it.

It's hardly a free service. We're all paying for it.

I'm no way an expert and probably have missed some downsides. I'm a floating voter. Centre.

Labour want growth. We need to defend ourselves from Putin. Combine the two. Well paid manufacturing jobs.

Health and education are struggling.
Waiting lists are coming down which is good. This will speed up peoples' return to work. More tax less on benefits without penalising anyone.

Train more dr's. Ease contracts. (GPs) More dr's paying tax. Lower waiting lists, more preventative medicine.

Raising money needs to happen. How is another matter. Taxing people more isn't going to work right now after cost of living crisis. Labour are a bit stuck between a rock and a hard place. They are going to have to make a lot of changes that add up to a big difference. They are also going to get blamed for world events just as the conservatives were for the results of Ukraine and covid and labour before that for the banking crash . People have really been stuck on stagnated wages for nearly twenty years now.

I think they are doing the right thing keeping a steel plant in the UK. I would have opened that mine to get the coal to run it. Less carbon on importing the coal from long distance. We can control the environment issues with it better if here.

Work on insulating homes. Makes some semi skilled jobs. Saves people money.

Encourage wind farm equipment manufacturing/other renewables in the UK. Make electricity cheaper. Phase out gas. Subsidise boilers that aren't gas.

Look at what the conservatives did that worked. Do the same. Don't ditch good ideas just because the other lot thought of them.

Housing is a real issue round here. Way too much agricultural land is being carved up for huge new developments of housing estates, giant distribution warehouses and whacking great bypasses. Do they even build homes that local young people can actually afford? Nope. Not on the wages the distribution warehouses pay, that's for sure.

The state of the environment and the threat of irreversible climate change horrifies and sickens me.

Don't even mention HS2.

What changes would I like to see most?

I would like ALL vehicles (with the exception of those used solely for motor racing) to be fitted with a speed limiter so it is physically impossible for them to go over 70 mph.

I would like life imprisonment sentences to actually mean life, not '23 years but hey ho, let's let you out after 12 and a bit'.

I would like people to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to AI.

@RosesAndHellebores

Your first point seems to suggest lower taxes on the very rich as an incentive to stay in UK. But most extremely wealthy people achieve their riches on the back of milloons of massively underpaid workers. Huge corporations are subsidised by the taxpayer via government top ups to underpaid staff. Later you say increased wages for workers. But that would massively reduce shareholder profits and bonuses at the top.

How can these ideals coexist? I'm not criticising your comments, I just don't know much about economics and don't understand how this would work in both directions.

I wish we could make excessive greed as uncool as drink-driving became in 1980s. No one needs to be a multi-billionaire.

I would like to see safe and legal routes for those claiming asylum.