Who broke Britain?

[User32459]

Who do you most blame for our downfall as a nation?

A) Tony Blair and New Labour (97-2010)

B) The Tories (2010-2024)

C) The current Labour government

D) Brexit and Nigel Farage's lies

I think the answer is all of the above and the current government are an absolute disaster, but to be fair to them they've come in at the end when the damage is done. It's not 1997 anymore when they can get away with Blairite policies.

Labour have a lot to answer for but i'd probably go B. The Tories just about got everything wrong. Did they do anything good at all? And ultimately their shocking governance led to Brexit as well.

And the failures of the lot of them will need to Nigel Farage as Prime Minister.

Absolutely. Same old same old. No one accepting that their side has cocked upon o let’s scapegoat the migrants.

I just wanted to acknowledge this, they seem to be interesting ideas. Whether they’d end as May’s did is the issue as you say.

I am sure there are plenty of things I have overlooked or not thought through but we at least need to have conversations about it. Otherwise there is no chance of change.

But most of them worked 50 years - from 15 to 65. Meaning they would have had to earn £10k a year for 50 years. Which most of them did.

Doubtful considering the amount of time you spend on here....

37k pp, so for a couple, thats 5x average earnings.

Like it or not, taxes have to rise and a great many people can afford it, if only to pay for all that free childcare.... that you and others claim.

I do contracting now, took VR, lived of that, didn't work for a couple of years, now do some IT stuff, at 40% tax, so i'm paying towards free childcare for all..... you on the other hand are not a net contributor....so need to pay more?

And Johnson right ? The Boriswave of 900k ?

I literally named Farage in D, the bloke is a fraud and helped break Britain and make us all poorer with Brexit.

Starmer has no choice but to at least make it look like he's doing something because Reform are so far ahead in the polls and immigration is top of voter's concerns now. He doesn't really want to do anything and skirts around the edges with nonsense like 'smash the gangs' (while doing nothing) and '1 in 1 out' with France which is utterly pointless. Even Macron told him and the UK to get real with all the incentives we give to illegals.

This is about several decades of terrible governance. Immigration just being one part of that.

Well yeah. Blair opened the borders in the 2000s and Johnson widened them.

What Johnson did was so dishonest and so damaging to community cohesion that we're seeing the backlash now (combined with the absolute madness of the boats/hotel situation which also kicked off properly on his watch).

But most of them worked 50 years - from 15 to 65. Meaning they would have had to earn £10k a year for 50 years. Which most of them did.

This is why I get frustrated about these debates because some posters just post utter nonsense like the above.

It’s just confirmed what I suspected. That people on benefits really have absolutely no idea what it is like to be a low/average earner (excluding those who work FT and rightfully get a top up).

It’s like they can’t believe there isn’t some magic carpet that swoops in with a payment when you get a fuck off massive bill - there really is nobody to save you.

Nursery fees were 1k a month until last year for full time workers. Now they’re £500.
If you’re buying a house now, a mortgage under 1k a month is all but impossible unless your deposit is gigantic. And that’s for the cheapest properties available.
So that’s 1,500 gone immediately out of the £2,500 somebody on 37k receives monthly. 1,000 minus bills conceivably leaves £500 for food, clothes, leisure, birthdays, Christmas… and we all know how quickly kids need new shoes.

I am also absolutely outraged (and I don’t care who laughs at that) that some clearly think any enjoyment by working people clearly shows we’re not paying enough tax for benefits. Like they literally exist as poorly paid workhouses, there to be robbed by those who feel entitled to their money while calling them terrible people.

Sorry but that’s how I feel. And I’m guessing many others.

Absolutely 100%

Privatising everything and selling off social housing has led to increased poverty and poor infrastructure.

Some pots calling kettles black on here I see...reforms greatest recruiter !

I’m on annual leave.

That’s a very vague outline of your circumstances, probably deliberately. You ‘do contracting now’. What did you do before? What do you earn? What are your housing expenses? Do you have kids? Without all these factors you have zero idea what it’s like to be an ‘average person’ that does.

Agree. I do benefit checks for pensioners and an awful lot of them ( particularly women) have barely worked at all. I know that it was normal for many women to give up jobs etc when they had kids or even forced to so not necessary from choice but we can't pretend they all or even the majority worked for 50 years.

Like it or not, taxes have to rise and a great many people can afford it, if only to pay for all that free childcare.... that you and others claim.

Do posters even think before they post?

Nope 😖 it’s mortifying!

@MickGeorge22 & a 10k salary in the mid 70s is the equivalent to almost an 80k salary today. And even in the 90s only 3.5% of people paid the 40% higher tax rate. We also know that that the majority of mothers didn't work full time. As I said it's utter nonsense.

I think it was A, followed by the austerity years. I don’t think boris was particularly bad and I think all nations struggled with Covid. With hindsight he did an ok job. Rishi was a good PM but didn’t have the backing of his party. I wish he hadn’t called an election as I think things were looking brighter for the country and I am not convinced labour would have gained their landslide 6 months on. The current government are the worst I have known and are actively driving the economy down. At least when Tony Blair arrived there was positivity in the country. Now it is all gloom and despair and messages that things are going to get worse.

I really think people insisting 37k is loads of money need to read this, and then again, and again until it sinks in.

Exactly. Aren't all countries a mix of good and bad? I quite like the UK. Right now it's sunny and pleasantly warm. However, it isn't unbearably hot or muggy, like it would be in many countries, and I don't have to worry about being stung or bitten by something dangerous. London is one of the coolest, most interesting cities in the world. Many countries don't have a vast metropolis like London –Ireland doesn't, nor does Sweden or Australia or Canada or Poland or Holland or countless other places. We often forget that. In October, I plan to spend a week going round the London art galleries and museums. If I'm lucky and it's cold and bright there is nowhere in the world I'd rather be. I love Cambridge and Oxford and York and Bath and Edinburgh. I love the Scottish Highlands and the Yorkshire moors. And I love and cherish Britain's incredible cultural history. I love seeing the pub where Tolkien read the Lord of the Rings to C. S. Lewis and the Oxford college where Oscar Wilde studied. I've seen Shakespeare's birth place and done the Jane Austen tour. Some day, I'd like to see the house Freud lived in, or the Cambridge college Darwin studied at. I'd like to see Karl Marx's tomb and visit Westminster Abbey.

I think the UK is an extremely interesting place to live. Bill Bryson said that you could land at random anywhere in the UK and you'd find some interesting fact connected with it. Maybe Isaac Newton was born in the neighbouring village, or Karl Marx or Lenin or Dr Johnson or Byron or someone once stayed there, or whatever. The UK feeds the imagination like nowhere on earth. Modern evolutionary theory was worked out here. The atom was first described here. DNA was discovered here. Hamlet was written here. The Beatles formed here.

Yes it's overcrowded, yes places like Luton and Milton Keynes are grim, yes the houses are too small and are all jammed on top of one another. But no matter where you live there are problems. I have known Canadians (my favourite nationality btw) who moved to the UK because they wanted the stimulation of London. We think of Australia, for example, as a much nicer place to live than Britain – bigger houses, more space, huge skies, etc. But an art-loving bohemian Aussie growing up in a small town on the west coast might dream of London. To him, that home town may be dull and suffocating. Studying in a London art school and spending his weekends drinking in Soho pubs and visiting the galleries, on the other hand, might be heaven.

It was a deliberate strategy by the Tories to run down the North.

The North is no worse off than the Midlands or South West.

So true.

And I think Keir Starmer’s house in Kentish Town will become a national monument, even a shrine. He’s a political colossus, like Disraeli or Gladstone or Churchill.

These are great times for inspiring leadership and further stitches in the great quilt of history that is the UK.

Defo.

The OP gave themselves away by blaming 'illegals'.

You just told me that you didn't see the 1970s.

Isn’t she allowed to criticise immigration? Isn’t the fact Reform are the most popular party a sign that her views are not niche? And are better discussed than dismissed as bigotry?