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.

Exactly, successive politicians have had decades to reverse the council housing stock reduction but have CHOSEN not to do so. If it was such a bad policy, why didn't Blair/Brown reverse it during their 13 years in power? Why isn't Starmer proposing to reverse it?

With Brown, he is the reason why more people are in a situation of being net takers and not net contributors. Tax credits interfered so much in the jobs market , this had made reliance of the state so widespread and held wages back for all but the very higherst earners.
His tax grab on pensions switched investment from shares to property.
I will literally never forgive Brown.

Yes and she came into power due to the state of everything in the late 70s. It wasn’t roses at that point.

I think it actually started with Thatcher and it’s just kept on getting worse and worse from there.

yes, she sold off housing stock but has no one thought to address the housing proble min 35 years?

Again governments made housing a key driver of our economy and this fuelled house price inflation plus intergenerational inequality. Your house can earn more than you who is working. This contributes massively to "broken Britain". Look at how much tax we are paying now but look at the quality of those services!

The biggest issue is our demographics & how we have failed to account for the change.

Brexit, Farage, and that fucking sex womble, Boris Johnson, who couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to be working or obeying the laws he fucking made. He completely undermined any trust in government at a time we needed it most. People are dead because of him.

he is the reason why more people are in a situation of being net takers and not net contributors.

We have more net takers because we are ageing! 🤦🏻‍♀️ how many times

A. Blair and his uncontrolled immigration. His PFI which we will probably be paying back until the cows come home.
His 24 hour alcohol licencing. That went well didnt it. Taking us into an illegal war.
Gordon Brown selling off all the gold, raiding the pension pots. Dubbing the grooming gangs victims as making a ",lifestyle choice"
These were vulnerable children, many in care for fucks sake.
From then onwards it went down faster than shit off a shovel and now we are on our way to a communist state.
Someone get me outta here!!

*oh forgot to mention Blairs Education Education Education which has saddled 1000s of people with huge debts and useless degrees

@the5thgoldengirl

She really didn;t plan on any other government replenishing the council house stock because she saw the upkeep of these houses and the original build cost as being too costly to the State.

That's what people don't grasp. We had a very old housing stock that needed a lot of upkeep and modernisation, and lots of it contained asbestos. It would have ruined local councils to bring them up to modern standards.

Same happened with the railways. They HAD to be nationalised because the rolling stock (engines and coaches) wasn't compliant with emissions, health & safety nor energy efficiency standards that were being introduced. The country needed private money to virtually replace every engine and every carriage which cost millions each!

Likewise the closure of council/public run convalescent and care homes, i.e. the "care in the community" drive. Most of the homes were Victorian era, riddled with asbestos, non conforming with modern standards, and again, would have cost millions/billions to bring up to standard, so probably cheaper to close and put funds into independent living with care/healthcare visits.

In so many ways in the 80s/90s, we were running on antiquated "legacy" systems of infrastructure, housing, etc., that weren't fit for purpose, non compliant, and replacing/renovating with public money would have bankrupted the country.

Thatcher

Tax credits have been an enormous factor. We have never recovered from the 2008 crash.

Yeah, I couldn’t stand her for what she done and I absolutely agree, she definitely started this whole mess by selling off those houses! No government since seems to have had the gumption to sort it out. It’s almost like they wanted to make a
mess and for it to get gradually worse with each generation. If that was their aim, then at least they’ve achieved that! Sad times

Problem with Maggie is that when council properties were sold they weren't replaced, that's why we are in this situation now

The average Joe had no idea how much of the country’s wealth was built and sustained on the unique and extremely privileged position of the City of London. No idea how that money underwrote public spending.

Having the Brexit vote was one mistake. The second was how we left the EU. The fantasy that we could leave and maintain all those advantages. You can definitely blame Farage for that and Boris with his NHS bus. Neither of them are competent to run a country. They are good political campaigners and the fact the British people can’t tell the difference explains a lot of why we are where we are.

@Msmfailedusbad tax credits are not why we never recovered from the 08 crash though!

Yes I can definitely see your point about the tax credits system and though they were meant to help the working class, they did make people overly reliant on the state so wages stagnated.

And net takers increase with an ageing population.

"Across all income brackets, if you take out pensioners, the percentage of net recipients is 39.6% - not 53.4%."

why have wages stagnated since 2008 then… you are not suggesting it is pensions surely?????

It doesn’t really matter how good the government is we are still at the mercy of global politics. Wars that send people fleeing over here, wars that mean energy prices sore and food prices. Banks that crashed in America send waves around the world and causing the global banking crisis. The crisis could have been worse but Gordon Brown did well to manage the fall out over here. The Tories made the poor and public services take the brunt of this in the form of austerity. That is when it all really went wrong in my eyes.
Magaret Thatcher is to blame for the housing crisis. The Labour Party tried to help poor people but it backfired by making them more welfare dependent.
lack of religion , community and culture of suing people means we live in an entitled society. Sometimes things have to get worse before you stop taking everything for granted and appreciate what we do actually have.

B and D and then add Boris to the mix.

You had me there until you wrote “lack of religion”. I’m sorry to say but religion has a lot to answer for. The wars over land and who can live where… so I’m glad we are more a secular county.

No, they didn’t make people overly reliant, they made large corporations overly reliant on their wage overheads being subsidised. Just like the mass privatising of the rental sector causing landlords to be overly reliant on their home purchases heingvsibsidised by the state.

What are ordinary workers supposed to do? Refuse to work unless they're paid more? Eat fresh air? Live in cardboard boxes? To be fair, card board boxes are probably more secure than your average tenancy….

I don't think its down to gvts anymore worldwide. I think there are simply too many human beings competing for resources. Time for worldwide population control.

why have wages stagnated since 2008 then…

You think it's because of tax credits?

No, it's because we have had low productivity since then. Years of low interest rates & austerity meant little investment by government & business into their employees & workers. We also have too much concentration in London as opposed to spread around the country.
Workers spend far too much of their income on housing costs & transport costs which again impacts infrastructure.
Our strong sector was financial services which is why so much concentrating in London & why Brexit is so damaging.

An ageing population means more money is spent on healthcare, pensions etc & that's why we now are feeling it