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.

I think if you are white, 10 to 15 mins outside should be sufficient.

45 minutes otherwise.

My source is Dr Ronx in Operation Ouch...

Gordon Brown making it uneconomic for final salary private sector pensions to continue while public sector kept theirs, for one…

It was awful under Labour. I'd been brought up under the Tories, being told how terrible they were, but whilst the Tories fuck things over in the immediate term Labour were worse, they damaged the country in a way that will take decades to fix.

If you're only interested in the here and now, Labour help those on benefits and fuck over those on low to middle incomes. The Tories help the rich and fuck over those on low to middle incomes slightly less, but at the expense of those on benefits. Basically the middle is fucked either way, who you vote for depends whether you hope to move up the income scale or expect to slide down it.

The worst thing about the Blair/Brown years was the outright dishonesty. It was during their reign that "post-truth" politics took a permanent hold. Their use of spin has led directly to the environment we have now where truth doesn't matter, only what is said. Even if the truth is obviously different. Under the Tories in the 80s and 90s it was bloody obvious they were bullshitting you. Labour continued the bullshit but covered it with a coat of paint.

Im sorry for your experience but I agree with @herewegoroundthebastardbush

My whole family are/were NHS as was I having trained as a nurse in the 90s. There is simply no comparison between the two. The conservatives are an utter disgrace.

What worries me is posts like this. Labour have not pledged and will not pledge to put more money into the nhs so on what basis will there be any improvement whatsoever?!

Taking it from a working class teenager using it to become better educated doesn’t seem the right place to start.
even if you think austerity works, which I don’t. Plus there are plenty of links above to show economists don’t either.

Public sector worker have not kept final salary schemes fyi. It's career average for lgps now

Or ‘Profit From Illness’ as we sceptics called it.

You do know that the same finite amount of money can be spent in different ways? Less money for Tory donors, more for the NHS for example. Labour is also promising long overdue review and reform of the NHS.

OK, defined benefit schemes then if you want to be technically accurate!

Still way better than anything the private sector can offer - and there’s not the same wage differential any more at “normal” job grades, either, which was always the argument.

If investors take fright and stop lending a country money you kind of need to respond….. you can’t just put your fingers in your ears and carry on spending! We were in dire straits after the crash in 2008 and the Labour government. The Labour young have a huge wake up call coming…..

Back in those days I was raising a child and the one thing that sticks out in my mind is how jealous I was of my SIL and her DH.

They had lots of kids. Her DH had no job, but didnt stop baby no. 4 and they had 7 kids eventually while both jobless and seemed so carefree like tomorrow would never come, but to be fair the government put a cushion under both of their backsides.

They had a council house knocked through into next door and the benefits they received was over £80k but that included free housing/council tax/dentistry/medicines etc and it was a lot in those days. She used to hand me stuff like medicines, nappies, paracetamol, Capol, baby milk because she got it all free and of course I took it - both DH and I worked but had crap jobs and money was tight.

Her DH did not want to work because he could not afford the kids and he was open about this and used to laugh at us for struggling.

The tables turned just like my dad told me they would, but it did seem like the government looked after those on benefits better than workers back then.

And all 13 years of Tory government has done is make it worse. You can use Clav’s chart if you prefer - it shows the same thing.

There seemed to be a lot more money about. Being on certain benefits wasn’t so scary as you didn’t feel as though they’d be punitively snatched away at any moment.

You could literally go to A&E and be seen within an hour and that was here in London.

I don’t know how to describe it really, things just felt nicer. However didn’t they leave a ton of debt behind them as they left?

It will be the same today with Labour - anyone trying to better themselves are punished with extortionate taxes:

We currently have the highest level of tax for 70 years, far exceeding any Labour government in most of our lifetimes.

Let's get real here. The ratio of public spending to debt is now 100 percent or close.

That means little to no further public spending on services. All the money is used. Maybe there is a question about where it should be spent to get out of this stagnation we have.

The UK needs investment and growth. It's been run into the ground.

The only real choice you have is whether you believe the Labour Party will do a better job of that than the Conservatives. At present, the Conservatives have shown they can't do it.

This country will not get any better until the economy starts to grow consistently.

https://www.politicshome.com/thehouse/article/faced-highest-tax-burden-70-years-budget-fails-put-britain-path-prosperity

Errr because we are paying for the pandemic and two wars!

That was a real kick in the nuts and is destroying small councils now

No, because we’re paying off the Tory debt which has escalated since 2010. Look at the chart.

Life was good so why the Conservatives won the elections. Was it something to do with the levels of expenditure being unsustainable? The concerns about higher taxes like mansion tax? Or the low skill immigration flocking here?

BIossomtoes
You can use Clav’s chart if you prefer - it shows the same thing

I disagree - your chart doesn't include public sector bank debt - it doesn't compare % of GDP either does it?

PS: Net Debt (including public sector banks) as a % of GDP
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/timeseries/ruto/pusf

@BloodyHellKen you're wrong.

Exposure to Vitamin D from March to September, without supplementation and dietary support (which you told the PP they didn't need - and that the poor could access VitD from the sun alone during these 7 months) is absolutely wrong.

You're suggesting that the body stores VitD for 6 months?!! 🤣 No. A bit held in fatty tissue for what, 3 weeks, is completely different.

Vitamin D, iron and calcium are all interlinked. So I'm sorry BloodyHellKen, telling people in poverty that they don't need a good diet, and that they simply need to get out more, is massively, unequivocally and tbh, quite shockingly, wrong.

Every person in this country, and every other country for that matter, deserves to be well fed, and to have access to decent nutritional sources, and healthcare. Who on earth are you to suggest that people don't need good food, they just need to get outdoors? You madam, are completely wrong. And a damned idiot to boot.

All governments have a ton of debt. Brown and Darling had started to grow the economy again after the economic crash, but unfortunately Osborne and Cameron ruined all that progress with 'austerity', stifling any growth, wrecking public finances and leaving us with the stagnant economy we've got now. We've now got far worse debt and deficit and a smaller and weaker economy than we had under Labour.