To think Rishi is right - the government cannot be everything to everyone?

[Cuppasoupmonster]

Don’t get me wrong, the Tory government hasn’t tried to be anything let alone everything.

But I think he was right when he said there’s too much reliance on the state to provide for each and every issue the public face.

We could free up a lot of funds by taxing big corporations properly, cracking down on non doms etc. But even then, I’m not convinced the socialist utopia of generous benefits, a five star NHS, cheap and available high quality public housing, instant mental health support etc that is often discussed on here could ever be financially viable.

AIBU?

@Havanananana where do you life? Comparisons with much smaller countries don’t work, because you can’t really do economies of scale with larger populations. It’s like when posters talk about the Scandinavian model when our population is over ten times that of Sweden.

No, he's not right! They've been in power for 12 years, they could have been something for everyone. It is a crap excuse for their poor management of this country! I'm sick of people making excuses for these self serving MPS that make up our government, most of the people in it are in my view unskilled workers who shouldn't have a job in government. Take Jeremy Hunt for example, what qualified him to oversee the NHS (a pretty important job which he did very badly) and now he's been given the job to run the U.K. economy! It what other industry would you be qualified to do that? They just cherry pick morons to put in positions of power at the moment! The government should be a little bit of everything to everyone! It's only here to serve the rich and the bigots at the moment!

The links the Sunaks have to Modi and India's support for Russian mass murder/starvation/destruction in Ukraine should be investigated, interesting Sunak wont increase defence spending, though with his aim to have an even smaller GDP, he may well reach 3% of GDP by default.

No Govt can do everything but we are living in a country with a barely functioning health & ambulance service and a government that is deliberately making the economy smaller by not joining the single market.

the Tory mantra of lower taxes so we can better spend the money ourselves is BS for their "smaller state/rich get richer" belief.
Ever tried hiring more nurses or building a new school with you and few neighbours?

You’d think my OP said the tories are great and have tried their best 🤔

I hear these sound bites like tax the rich and big corporations, I agree we should but in a global world it will never happen.

Companies and people can move money around very easily, what we need is global cooperation to do this.

As we found out the Americans just stop other countries doing this by adding tit for tax taxes to exclude our companies trading there

We are not the power we were when we had the empire and most of our wealth came from pilfering the riches from that empire, I feel we will have to get used to a lower standard of living here as unlike the Americans who have the desirable dollar as the currency can print money.

There is waste in public spending, but a fair bit of it is as a consequence of the government. I work in local govt and we spend an awful lot of time bidding for money that we may or may not actually ultimately receive.
If the government actually just told us what we would receive, we could actually spend our time delivering projects, rather than writing bid after bid.

Also, instability in public policy is not good, not only in terms of the policy itself, but also the impact on all the activities undertaken by staff to support those policies. Every time the govt make policy on a whim, or U-turn rather than following an agreed strategy, countless hours and huge amounts of money spent by officers and civil servants on delivering that policy essentially go down the toilet.

Also, there are some services which need to be provided by the state, as commercially they are not viable, yet they are necessary for a better society. But this government just do not seem to grasp that and have cut and cut funding.

@Cuppasoupmonster sorry no, haha! Just get on my soap box and know a lot of people try and sympathise with the government! The rant wasn't aimed directly at you! Sorry

@ethelredonagoodday this is so depressing to read. I really despise the hatred a lot of civil servants receive (when Mogg was relishing in the fact he was going to make so many hardworking CS redundant)! They are easy scape goats, when all eyes are on the government! If the MPs in power actually knew how to run a business let alone a company, we'd be in a much better place

Well. People are trying to look after themselves but Government actions are making this harder.

£30bn of headroom in July has now become a £50bn deficit. Why? Was this the public's fault?

Are the recent sharp rises in mortgage rates the public's fault or were they vastly accelerated by a totally unnecessary Trussterfuck?

The BoE then had to prop up markets by £60bn in the following days, underwritten by the Treasury. Why should we pay more tax for that when the Government caused the panic that made it necessary?

Brexit is costing the country £120bn per year in GDP which equates to £40bn tax revenue. Rejoining the single market would plug almost the entire deficit and cost us nothing. It would also reduce inflation (by removing artificial trade barriers and import costs) and improve the value of GBP limiting the need for further rate rises. Why is Mr Sunak "I am being honest with the public" refusing to mention this elephant in the room? Why should we all have our standard of living decimated just so that he doesn't have to admit he was wrong about it?

I don't expect the state to fix my problems. I expect it to run the economy competently and fix the problems it has created. What I do not expect is being told that because of politicians' incompetence - as a lone parent - I should pay yet more tax when we cannot access any services that we need anyway. Oh and rumours today that they want to also screw over my pension to pay for the mess they've made. On what planet would that be acceptable?

My response to him is this, fine but can you tell us in detail where our money has gone over tha last 10 years . Seems reasonable to me , they would never do it , why ? Because there would be uproar .

He is gaslighting everyone trying to pretend that this mess is our fault and we should just suck it up, when he won't take the very obvious actions that could improve the situation. Instead he wants to hammer the same people again: those on PAYE who have been hammered with tax rises and real-terms salary cuts too in many cases, for over a decade already.

Don't forget that as the third PM since an election was held he is claiming a mandate on the basis of their last manifesto while simultaneously claiming he can break all of its pledges because circumstances have changed. Cognitive dissonance much? Can't have it both ways. Either the mandate based on that manifesto exists still, or it does not.

This, and this again.

Wealth inequality and lack of social mobility absolutely has to be tackled but yes we also do need to be realistic about what can be achieved with the money we have.

People do seem to have ridiculous expectations on what the nhs and the state can provide.

Yes he's right. He mentioned taxing dividends as a start to stop people earning money without paying tax. I bet he'll forget he said that. Stop errant parents declaring their whole income for child maintenance.
I don't agree we have a 5 star NHS mental health service or state education we have had 12 years of public services being utterly annihilated.

Yes, he blamed the 3 million he excluded from the covid support schemes!

Its not unrealistic to not have to wait 1 or 2 years for an operation or 18 hours outside AE.

How much is this all costing us in lost productivity? how many people have had to give up work and/or claim benefits because they are incapacitated with easily treatable conditions?

I agree that some expect a lot to be provided with no onus on themselves to improve their lot. You only have to look at the number of sad face stories with a couple in a two bed flat demanding a larger home because they have taken the decision to have three or even four kids when they earn very little.

I was raised that you have the children you can afford. We are relatively wealthy and only have two because that is affordable no matter what goes wrong. I would have loved more dc but not at the expense of their quality of living. I simply cannot understand the mindset of people that have multiple dc when there is only one parent working in a minimum wage role.

That being said if the parents won’t take responsibility then it has to be up to the government to provide simply because the children are not responsible for the choices of their parents and they have the right to not be raised in poverty. We are a developed country and we need to start acting like it and supporting these families so the children have the capacity to make better choices. We can’t just leave them to it as we are now, it’s utterly immoral that children are cold and starving in this country. And unfortunately this government is failing massively on that score egged on by those who don’t think we should take care of innocent children who had no say in the circumstances into which they were born.

So it is all poor peoples fault?

What about the millions of money paid out for PPE that was never useworthy? Or the billions defrauded through the business help scheme?

Frankly if our government had not been utterly corrupt, there would be more money around.

Depends how you look at it.

For current funding and current demands then yeah thats what you'll get.

If you want a reasonable service from the nhs you have to pay for it.

And reduce demand.

Sunak is talking shite and deflecting blame. No one thinks the government should be everything to everyone. We just think that they should be competent, which the Tories are not.

Sunak and his party have wrecked the UK. They should accept responsibility for their massive cock ups, lies and corruption and stop shifting the blame to tax paying citizens.

Tory Bastards.🤬🤬🤬

I agree. We have the highest number ever of working-aged adults on long-term sick. Delays in treatment costs the country money and in some cases means the treatment is more expensive than if it had been done at an earlier stage.

@TooBigForMyBoots

People absolutely do think the govt owes them a living.

Many on higher rate tax - especially those having personal allowances confiscated too - already pay tax at these kinds of rates. Especially when you add in our much higher than average rate of VAT.

Not quite true, there is the funding for more staff but the UK simply doesn't have enough people - we have shortages across all sectors, not least health care.

Leaving the EU ensured more left the UK and cut off an easily accessible supply of semi and skilled Labour.

We are authors of our own misfortune, encourage by Sunak and his ilk.