To ask what the country was like under a Labour government?

[user6776]

I'm too young to remember a proper Labour government. I was 12 when the Tories got voted in back in 2010 so that's all I've ever really known.

How much better was it than it is now? Why did Labour lose the election back then anyway?

Interested to hear people's opinions.

Data and statistics can always be manipulated, they need to be read in conjunction with lived experiences. Just because reported lived experience doesn't live up to your data sets doesn't mean they aren't real experiences and answering the question.

I agree. But, equally, any one person's anecotal lived experience doesn't give a reasonable impression of any period of government.

Unfortunately, there will always be people who have experienced extreme poverty, NHS failures, poor education, homelessness, inadequate policing, lack of transport options etc under every government of every colour. The only way to reasonably measure different government's performance and priorities is to look at the bigger picture.

People asking what's changed after Brexit - well, we no longer adhere to a load of arbitary rules that ended up costing us a fortune.

Yes. now we make our own rules that end up costing us a fortune.

Interesting that you ask how much better it was then, rather than how was it different.
From my perspective, it seemed that money was being doled out left right and centre until it ran out, then people got angry and voted the Tories back in.
And there is the perpetual cycle- Tory government building up the nation's coffers but not really spending in the areas that people want.
Then Labour get voted in and everyone is happy again until the cash runs out. Repeat until fade.

Beginning of the slide for the NHS. Blair introduced PFIs, moving the spending from his balance sheet to that of the next 30 years, and top-sliced funding for often poor quality private companies who cherry picked easy cases.

This is an extraordinary thing to say when the current Tory adminstration will leave us with unprecdenated levels of debt - and catastrophic levels of growth (even before Coivd and Ukraine began).

@user6776 Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990, and took control of the country - and its oil. That would have crippled the US, UK and other Western economies, and so we took action and defended Kuwait in 2 ops - Desert Shield and Desert Saber. Hussein was pushed out of Kuwait but carried on in power in Iraq, undermining stability, and access to oil, in the area. We needed to take back control there to bring some stability back.

Russia are undermining our economy now with the invasion of Ukraine and it's contributed to the COL crisis. But Putin is a different fish and not one to take on lightly.

Honestly things were delivered, society was less overtly racist, and we paid a lot less tax. Rose tinted no, better quality of life, yes

society was less overtly racist

Lmao good one!

It's a fair comment. The Home Secretary didn't write about the Times about how division and hate.

@BloodyHellKen people need Vitamin D all year round, as well as a good dose of iron to help their body process Vitamin D. The human body does not store Vitamin D. Your argument doesn't stack up.

This aswell as more police, fire services, better nhs, councils actually had funding to look after the local areas basically everything you had growing up that has now disappeared or gone to the dogs.

House prices tripled between 2001 and 2007, an unprecedented increase in such a short time. Housing and renting is a person’s number one expense. The vast majority of the increases supported by housing benefit and tax breaks to Buy Toilet landlords.
The Country has never recovered from it, even the emergency low interest rates couldn’t prop it up forever. Hence the upcoming crash

All this stuff is rose tinted (not many from Wales rhapsodising as others are) but on this trouble was already brewing as Brown found out with his gaff that cost him politically

Policies then stored up issues, not dissimilar to Germany now

On spending most on here were banging the drum for more with no thought to amount to feel safe for a couple of years. Demanding restrictions and lockdowns etc probably same pp

In what way was it worse for non-public sector workers?

Labour stuck it all on the credit card and we're still paying off the interest.

Blair Brown had to deal with 4% to 5% interest rates, it was the Tories that had super low rates of below 1%... again, getting facts correct is very important.

We should be glad they didn't borrow on the bond markets, or we'd have been in a lot of trouble in 2008/9 and again in 2020.

Why did the Tories continue with PFI until 2015? if it were so terrible.

PFI in itself is ok, its the stupid contracts that are the problem.

Beginning of the slide for the NHS. Blair introduced PFIs, moving the spending from his balance sheet to that of the next 30 years, and top-sliced funding for often poor quality private companies who cherry picked easy cases

Tories introduced PFI under Major and PFI costs the NHS £2.1billion per year, less than 5 days worth of NHS spend.

society was less overtly racist
It's a fair comment. The Home Secretary didn't write ... about division and hate.

To be fair:

2002 -
The home secretary, David Blunkett, dug himself even deeper into the row over his claim that some local schools were being "swamped" by the children of asylum seekers when he unrepentantly accused his critics of being ridiculous and oversensitive.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/26/immigrationandpublicservices.immigration

2007 -John Reid was accused of impersonating Alf Garnett after he vowed to make life "uncomfortable" for illegal immigrants in the UK.
The Home Secretary launched a crackdown on "foreigners" who come to "steal our benefits".
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/reid-is-like-alf-garnett-456852

I agree it's a low bar but frankly this was a government that introduced crimes of racial and religious aggravated assault, introduced the Equality Act, and introduced statutory aggravation into sentencing. This was a government that created a peace process in Northern Ireland.

In other words they actually tried, in law, to address racism and division, instead of stoking resentment and hatred.

@Clavinova - you tell me whether you were supportive of our Powellite Home Sec in Braverman and then I will give a damn about your posts.

Quite.

It was far from perfect but everything was better. Much more support for families, the disabled, education. Less homelessness, far less poverty. The NHS worked. People could afford to stay warm in their homes.

The biggest difference was that they seemed to care about the vulnerable rather than this lot who actively want to kill people off.

Take a look at what’s happened to them since.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/751605/average-house-price-in-the-uk/

bombastix
you tell me whether you were supportive of our Powellite Home Sec in Braverman and then I will give a damn about your posts

With pleasure. She's not really my cup of tea and I have previously posted that I'm not keen on the Rwanda policy. However, I thought she made several relevant points re policing (or lack of policing) during the pro-Palestine marches and I don't think the march should have gone ahead on Armistice Day. I'm not bothered she was sacked.

How very fence sitting of you.

There is no polite way to put this, but you are wrong.

The body does store vitamin D and can do so for quite a while. The idea is that you get lots of vitamin D (primarily) from the sun in between March and Sept and then you have reserves to last you over winter until March. Many people don't build up enough stores of vitamin D because they don't spend enough time outside so we are recommended to take a supplement over winter. I can't remember how much off hand, but it's more if you are dark skinned as you absorb Vitamin D at a slower rate in northern latitudes.

I remember the euphoria when Tony Blair got in I felt so hopeful. Then came the war which I must admit mainly passed me by as a busy mum. Gordon Brown on the other hand gave off such bad vibes, I dreaded him taking control and yep he did mess up.

What most of us don't realise that after losing power and licking his wounds he turned his attention to Scotland and Wales.

He's pulled the strings in Wales for years before and through covid and after. He flies in has meetings, has the first minister of Scotland and Wales on speed dial.

We don't in Wales have well educated AMs who've had real jobs studied politics and history we've ex councillors who've landed in clover financially have never really stepped outside the principality and are scared of a first minister whos never either