To think that the Tories will mess up this country worse tahn teh last goverment?

[poshsinglemum]

With all this talk about shuting down libraries. I am horrified. It's disgusting. What else will they do away with? Nappy changing facilities, buses? Hospitals? What were people thinking when they voted for thm?

It seems people main issue with labour was the way they hadled the debt. Maybe they were just rekuctant to cut back on all the thing i was so proud of about this country.
*The NHS-being privatised.
*Libraries-going.
*Schools-Many state funded schools are being in a way privatised and even means tested!
*Legal aid-cut.
The whole thing is awfull.

I thought GB handled the crisis quite well actually.

My main issues with Labour were

• Erosion of civil liberties
• The Iraq war
• Explosion in silly regulation
• Ideologically-driven boom in immigration
• Ruining higher education
• Spending the increased tax revenues from the boom years on vote-winning social engineering rather than stocking the coffers for lean years to come.

I dont think labour had an easy time and im really torn. I agree with lots of your points especaiily the iraq war but it seems to me this wasnt a matter of choice. Our ties with america were to strong and iven the amount of money owing it seems they had no other chioce. And i hear lots of people arnt to happy about how higher eduction is being handled the moment lol.

OTheHugeManatee Agree with everything on your list - Labour are a disgrace.

Another to add to the list is that they made it more worthwhile for people to claim benefits, than work, so we now have families who choose to sit on their arses all day, rather than get a job, because they are better off on benefits - depriving the genuinely needy who CAN'T work of money due to them.

Ooh, another Manatee!

GorgeousX - Labour are not a disgrace and you are misinformed to think Labour made it worthwhile to be on benefits. With the minimum wage they made it worthwhile to work. I had 6 months on IS - it was so hard, I could barely live on it, then I got a job and was loads better off. I think the argument that it pays not to work is one that has come from tabloids rather than fact.

Oh and Gorgeous - I think it's a bit more complicated than just Labour making benefits somehow amazingly attractive.

I'm livid with the way New Labour commoditised higher education, exploding the sector in the name of 'access' while degrading the value of degrees and landing generations in hock for degrees of very little value. What we have now is a vastly oversized HE sector, which means the government can't afford to subsidise it, which means we're soon all going to be paying £9K a year for degrees which are, in the main, not worth the paper they're printed on. Thanks, Mr Blair.

But I'm also pretty pissed off with the way Thatcher blew the North Sea oil and gas revenues on breaking the mining unions. Instead of doing what some countries did - put that massive windfall in a trust fund to support future generations - she spent it on dole payments, and in the process destroyed a viable UK industry and laid waste to vast sections of the North of England. Thanks, Maggie.

A lot of the areas in the UK where intergenerational worklessness is entrenched date from the collapse of heavy industry and, importantly, mining. (Thanks, Maggie). But it goes further back again. Massive expenditure during WW1 and WWII; millions of working-age men killed; communities torn apart; the collapse of the British Empire (which, incidentally, was one of the stragic aims of the US during WWII) and the squandering of billions in Marshall Plan money in the 1950s, where no effort was made to reinvigorate UK industry, with the results we all know and love.

Essentially this country has been deluding itself about 'punching above our weight' and 'place on the world stage' ever since 1945. That's bigger than party politics, and has - historically - led to a far greater number of stupid decisions. Instead of solid roads and rails, and booming industry, we spend money on posturing in 'international peacekeeper' defence activities; instead of capital investment, we blew billions in Marshall Aid on whatever we fancied. It was a bit like spending a fortune on exotic orchids for the garden, and gilding for the cornices, when the roof is rotting and the gutters falling off.

Eh. The Tories will do no better or worse than Labour would have. The UK's troubles go back to WWII and our inflated view of our place in the world since the collapse of the Empire.

I agree manatee, six of one and half a dozen of another. I am dismayed by the coalition already though.

OhTheHugeM I take your point.

The conversation has moved on a long way since I looked in last, but I still feel the need to say that others' council tax paying for my enlightenment and enjoyment (and more importantly that of my DC) is important because it is in the interest of the whole of society that as many members as possible be literate and educated, for which reading is useful, but I suspect Sky Sports is not.

slight detour but my bus driver earlier was saying that there are too many buses around making him late
he may be shooting himself in the foot with that argument not to mention talking himself out of a job

so at what rate is the private sector coming up with jobs to make up for the lost ones in the public sector?

regarding the NHS I imagine that the dismantling of PCT's (validity of it aside) will turn GP surgeries turn into mini PCT's with need for all sorts of managers to be employed, so maybe re employing the same people with different contracts?

That selling off Woodland news is shocking from 7% to 100% bloody disgusting

I dread to think whats gonna happen to this country it actually scares me, even more than when thev BNP got a seat

OtheHugeManatee am i right in thinking those were workless incluidng all sick / disabled / elderly etc?

What i would dearly love is a stat exempt of those figures and also devoid of anyone claiming under a year given the massive redundancies lately.

Wait until you see the impact of their education policy. They're ignoring Ofsted's advice that the Universities offer the best training for teachers (in close partnership with schools) and moving all training to schools who don't have the time or inclination to take it on - saving money. Schools will either farm it out to private companies or will muddle through to boost the budget. Coming to a child nearest to you soon....an underqualified teacher. Then there's the curriculum. Coming soon to a child nearest to you - limited choice of GCSEs, you're f**d if they're not bright basically. If they are, then they'll have to cope with an increasing gap between GCSEs and A Levels as the exam boards continue to put in place demands to make the A levels harder (reducing the number of students getting into university and therefore saving money). And...coming soon to a child nearest to you - substandard buildings not fit for purpose (who cares, anyone who matters goes private),a lifetime of debt from tuition fees (look at the Cosmo survey which said that 50% of current female graduates wished they hadn't bothered - high debt has meant putting off having a family, they can't afford houses and didn't get great jobs. And they're the ones with a third less debt than the one coming soon to a child nearest to you). This lot are making changes that will hit us badly in about ten years time - just as Thatcher's rail privatisation policy ended in catastrophe, her economic policy created the current banking system, merging retail and investment banking, creating a culture of bonuses and greed and the collapse of our manufacturing industries (steel/coal etc) led to an over-reliance on the financial and retail sectors for our economic well being. Mark my words (she says tongue in cheek), our kids will look back at us and shake their heads in shame.

I agree about it being worthwhile to work- once Dh got himself sorted we were far better off thhan beforehand, that simple really. As indeed it should be generally.

I personally could not look into the eyes of a homeless disbaled person in a year and say dismissively 'oh but we had to make cuts'; not without weeping in shame anyway.

And I guess my new job is devolved from public sector really, but it will mean people on the lowest incomes who need me most cannot access me: not something I am hugely proud of (deeply sahmed) but sadly I need to pay bills too.

Now, PMSL'ing at my 9 and 11 year old in the kithced right at this minute:
DS2; 'I like Ed Milliband he's alright, he does a very hard job'

DS1' No I preferred dave, he looked like he'd be better than Ed with a hamster' (Ds1 has an asd hamster obsession LOL)

We should not have got into a situation where all our manufacturing industry/call centres were allowed to move abroad.

We should not have got into a situation where it is cheaper to import shite from china rather than buy home produced products

We should not be in a situation where employers pay such poor wages to those at the bottom that only immigrants can live on the wages.

There are generations of families who have never worked, still have children and expect to be supported by an ever dwindling workforce.

I dont know who started the rot but I know Labour made it a hell of a lot worse.

'We should not have got into a situation where it is cheaper to import shite from china rather than buy home produced products

We should not be in a situation where employers pay such poor wages to those at the bottom that only immigrants can live on the wages. '

sadly without huge surcharges on imports that would put plenty of other Uk businesses out of business, the first rather results from the latter: lower living standards being accepted elsewhere mean imports are cheaper. however, that really should ahve been resolved at first sign I agree, possibly too late without severe pain now I agree.

'There are generations of families who have never worked, still have children and expect to be supported by an ever dwindling workforce.' It seems so, though never met one myself. But how many? And is taking out the security of the very many who didn;t choose their fate worth it- given the large numbers of redundancies etc? I personally think not: that will of course be a purely personal answer. Am I happy for any child to be abandoned by the state becuase of a judgement on his or her famillies history? A thousand times no.

The problem is education.

We can never compete with an ever widening global unskilled workforce. We should have spent fifteen years building up a knowledge economy. We didn't. We spent fifteen years dumbing down and trapping people in social stasis and a benefits limbo; now we are paying for it, and will be for years to come.

But if there are generations of families who have never worked and expect handouts to live on, then that problem started a very long time ago. Given that generations means many years.

I mean, there have always been poor people. They used to beg or go into the workhouse.

I still don't see the evidence of Labour making that a lot worse. I still don't see any concrete facts and figures coming out about the numbers dependent on the state for generations yet you all seem so certain that there are thousands, nay millions of families like that.

I'm happy to see the evidence but nobody seems to have any.

I'm certain though that whatever the numbers stand at now, you'll be seeing them rocket in a year's time with massive unemployment.

some of the links offered above actually show the trans-generational trend, or how it perpetuates from generation to generation and even then it seemed to be 1 in 5/6 of non working families would carry on the trend, so still no actual figures of current situation

also it seems to be a bit like the 'single mothers' issue who were supposed to be the root of all evil

or the 'bogus' asylum seekers, although some would have been illegal migrant workers it wasn't really a great wave of 'unworthy' asylum seekers flooding these shores

appletrees that is another argument for not being cheap with education

No Government collates that AFAIK: actually theya re quite happy to play with stats yet really don;t seem to produce the ones anyone needs- that's all governments BTW: left or right.

The best example I can think of though was a recent Tory one where they merged ESA and DLA stats to produce something completely unrelated to DLA (to do with workless disabled people- even though DLA has nothing to with employment status) and up fraud rates. Everyone of course KNEW IB / ESa had major problems (not necessarily with the ATOS approach...) but DLA developed them by association.

Whereas stats about genereational non disabled non pensioner long term unemployed famillies might wreck a few stereotypes? I;d quite like to be challenged personally and see the reality.

It's like housing isn;t it? mainly apid to pensioners and people IN work: far from how the housing cuts were sold.....

Or in other words: why would any Government produce the figures that let you argue with facts against what they want to tell you?

It's nothing to do with money though sfx. Billions were thrown at education by Labour to no good effect. It's to do with policy, strategy, quality, curriculum.