To wonder if life was better under a Labour government?

[Wasloafbetter]

Or are people looking back with rose tinted specs?

I started teaching in the Blair years and I found it pretty awful, although how much of that was down to my own lack of experience and how much was down to government policies is hard to say.

I’m wondering if people are looking back nostalgically (have seen this on a thread this morning where apparently the 80s were a great time for freedom of expression with no pressure to conform, which don’t tally with my memories at all) or whether life was better then.

I’m 42, by the way - was 17 when Blair was made PM.

It was a conservative government all the way through the 80s so I am not sure I am understanding your point.

Anyway I am 51, I guess I have just over half my life under Conservative and the rest under Labour. Ignoring any political preferences, I don’t really think my life has been fundamentally much different.

Honestly they are all crap!
Regardless of party, once elected, they just do what they please.

For me, at the particular stage of life I was at, it was much better under Blair than it would have been under a Tory government.

I benefitted from the EMA allowance and going to University prior to top-up fees. My younger siblings were not so lucky and have much bigger student debt than I do. The difference was only a few years but either side of the election has meant tens of thousands of pounds difference.

You have missed the point April!

I’m inclined to agree they are all crap but it’s still interesting. Well, I think it’s interesting.

I think it’s impossible to say and a weird hyper theoretical question as in how can we know how Labour would have handled the pandemic for example ?
How do we know what would be better ? Going by the current shit storm I feel all comparable reasoning is gone.
Unless you believe MN to be full of psychics I’d say you are unreasonable.

But Nuff - I’m partly playing devils advocate here but wouldn’t you have benefited from a grant system and no loans / fees at all?

I fail to see how labour could do any worse, TBH.

That’s not what I’m asking though Falls. My memories of life in the late 90s and 2000s are that it wasn’t all that but as we were famously told earlier this year, recollections vary and it’s interesting to see what other peoples perceptions are of that period.

apparently the 80s were a great time for freedom of expression with no pressure to conform

Are you sure you aren't getting confused with the 60s?

@Wasloafbetter

But Nuff - I’m partly playing devils advocate here but wouldn’t you have benefited from a grant system and no loans / fees at all?

Yes of course, but I wasn't alive then (or at least I wasn't in 6th form)! I can only compare what I lived through vs what's happening now.

I think it was less to do with the party in power and more to do with geo-political events.

We were in a post communist post Berlin Wall period, tech hadn't taken off yet to start pulling societies apart, it felt like women were in a better position than ever.

I'm the same age as you and didn't anticipate things going backwards at the rate they have. If I could go back to the 90s I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I remember that Blair promised he wasn’t going to introduce tuition fees. What was the first thing he did once he got into power?
He ruined the NHS (and don’t get me started about his war crimes)

That’s not my opinion Fluffy, it is opinions expressed on a thread elsewhere. My view is that the 80s were not actually very accepting times at all. So it’s interesting others have the opposite perceptive.

I grew up in the Blair era. I think there are always wider, increasingly global factors, at play in the 'success' of a country in any one era of government. Ireland, Iraq, Diana etc are all interesting in terms of the legacy.

Either way, we will not have a Labour government again for at least 2-3 generations, if ever. Politics, media and tech companies are part of a shifting landscape in terms of how democracy functions.

Ok, I see the question now.
My life was under the Tories ( ah the thatcher years 😬) and labour but was much better under Labour - but I wasn’t rich. No rose coloured glasses.

You see I would never want to go back to the 90s. I didn’t of course hate it at the time as it was all I knew but having experienced the convenience of technology along with a more tolerant approach to life generally - I’d hate to go back.

@Wasloafbetter

That’s not my opinion Fluffy, it is opinions expressed on a thread elsewhere. My view is that the 80s were not actually very accepting times at all. So it’s interesting others have the opposite perceptive.

I didn't say it was your opinion.

So is this a thread about a thread? Which thread are you talking about?

In some ways it was better, but the global economic situation was better as well, so it's not all down to the Blair government. I remember the coalition government and thinking how useless they are and that it can't get worse, and then with each subsequent government it did get worse. Now I'm thinking as awful as Boris is, we may yet live to regret him once a new government comes in.

Yes things were much better pre 2010.. The Labour Government 1997 to 2010 was far from perfect but it tried very hard to make up for the lack of investment during the Thatcher Years.
Among other things. They introduced child tax credits and tax credits to support low income families,
New deal to support people into work
Every child matters which brought together support for children , including Sure Start centres,which offered childcare as well as support and education for parents
Education maintenance allowance for low income kids 16+ which led to the greatest increase in 16-18 year olds in education in a generation.
The youth service to fund youth centres
Care to Learn to support teenage mother's to stay in education
They rebuilt and repaired schools
Introduced maximum 30 children in primary schools
There are many other examples but these are the ones that come to mind because I worked in Education.
The difference was despite the short comings of the Labour Government. They believed fundamentally in public services.

Fluffy you did ask me if I you was getting confused with the 60s, so I’m not sure what you meant if you didn’t think that was my opinion.

No, it isn’t a thread about a thread.

What it comes down to is that there was generally more funding for things which in effect doesn't make things seem so hopeless.

It was harder to become homeless under a Labour government, a mentally ill person might have a care coordinator who only has 7-8 other people to look after rather than 20-30, things such as Surestart centres would exist to help support those at the bottom rungs of society, local swimming pools would not get closed, sports fields paved over, etc.

Conservative ideology is essentially personal responsibility and that everyone is responsible for their own situation but real life doesn't really work that way. They also believe in taking a household credit card bill approach to public spending which is absolutely bizarre when you think about it.

People tend not to think of governments in a Macro sense along the lines of how decisions made now will affect my life in 5-10 years. An example of that would be people blaming Sadiq Khan for knife crime problems. I would say that there we're just seeing the long term effects of Cameron and Osbourne's 'Big Society' and austerity rather than anything a mayor with limited spending and police powers can do.

I don't think you can cut funding to all sorts of community and social programmes such as Surestart, local youth groups, education, etc and expect there to be no issues 5-10 years later when kids who would have been at infants and primary school at the time of those cuts are now in their teenage years having had less support and opportunity than they might have had before all those cuts. I'm not saying that it's an excuse for driving those people into crime but it certainly is a contributing factor.

It's the same with most things, the NHS is now in a state because of the austerity inflicted upon it over the past decade, the police aren't able to investigate crimes properly because of all the cuts when Theresa May was home secretary, ditto with convictions due to the cuts to courts and the justice departments.

The big problem is our electoral system though. FPTP should not give a party that gets 35-40% of the vote the majority to inflict its ideology on the country.

Purely in terms of education - I started teaching in the Blair years. The big difference to me is that schools had money, and there was a sense that the government cared about state schools and what happened in them, and valued them. You felt a level of central government investment in state education.

I don’t think our current government care a bit about state schools. They don’t use them, they don’t understand them and they don’t value them. Successive conservative governments have cut and cut funding so schools are operating in increasingly challenging circumstances without the funds to do so (which only makes circumstances more challenging). The only thing in terms of education the government has invested in recently is ofsted inspections. That says it all. In the budget they were proudly proclaiming that by 2025 they will return school funding to pre 2010 levels. I mean. That’s just shit, isn’t it? Zero aspiration for anyone who uses state education.

Public services were much better. I am the same age as you and am also a teacher. The level of support for pupils with SEND was incomparable to today. I had daily LSA support for any children who were working significantly behind. Children with a statement of SEN had a full time 1:1 rather than a few hours here and there as is often the case today. Children with additional needs have disproportionately born the brunt of lack of funding.

The last time Labour were in power loads of Iraqi children were killed. Not sure why anyone would vote for them (or tory’s)

I worked for the NHS under labour ,yeah they may have poured more money into the NHS ,but it certainly didn't make patient care any better ,it all became all about targets making everything look lovely and polished on the outside whilst the rot was going on under neath ,too much focus on documentation to the detriment of patient care
And then of course Iraq