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.

It was loads better under a labour gov, nhs was better funded, schools better funded, more help for the poorest and most vulnerable people.

Unfortunately people have short memories and/or a selfish attitude.

They still do get ema

There are still sure starts all over Northern Ireland

What a morally bankrupt response, to deflect the blame from the Labour administration that did wage the Iraq war (among other illegal wars.).

The Conservatives have likewise cravenly followed America into equally disgraceful warring in Libya, Syria, Ukraine under Cameron, May, Johnson/Sunak.

But Labour did do that (and Yugoslavia and Afghanistan and...)

That's why I included the inequality graph in which only the US is more unequal than the UK.

Wages, infrastructure, inflation, food inflation, energy security, etc are all factors.

But the fact remains that a lot of people like say Nurses, who could afford to buy a house 13 years ago, are priced out now in the U.K.

Morally bankrupt to state facts?

You are morally bankrupt to deny the Labour administration's war crimes.

First few years were great. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had a vision for the country for everyone to prosper

we were just coming out of a very difficult time and Labour winning and very quickly making changes felt so positive

i was deeply disappointed with the Iraq and and found Dr David Kelly death very concerning

i continued to vote for Labour but not with the same belief in the party and that has never returned

I didn’t. I said the war would have happened anyway regardless of who was in government. Howard, who was the Tory leader at the time, also said it. So, presumably, he’s also morally bankrupt.

The Iraq war was inevitable as soon as Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait on 2 August 1990. It was not started by the Western powers. Read my lips, even better - read the history, it was Saddam Hussein who invaded, with his greedy eyes fixed on Kuwait's oil wealth. What, in your view, would have been a better response? Does America, as the default global police, allow that to happen?

Do you permit Bashir al Assad to massacre his Shia/Shi'ite/Kurdish Christian minority populations wholesale? With chemical weapons and nerve gas? From Russian suppliers? It's so easy to write, be kind. And so cheap. And IMHO, more morally reprehensible to sit on your hands and drive on by. There are a lot of wrongs, and not many rights in this story.

DH drove across Iraq and Syria in April 1987, in the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq war. He drove through Mosul (it's been flattened since) past a huge mosque in the centre of the city which was surrounded by what he initially thought were ceremonial piles of clothing. They were the widows and orphans of that war, sleeping outside on hard ground in open air, hoping for a safe sanctuary.

verdantverdure
13 years later... the Tories have put an average of £500 a month on people's mortgage payment and Rishi Sunak has been on the radio blaming people for having big mortgages!

(Jack from Guildford was asking what he should do now his monthly mortgage payment was going up from £1500 a month to £2800 a month)

Where did you get £500 a month from? I can't see that figure in your links - £200 a month is mentioned (assuming not on a fixed rate). Jack obviously has an unusually large mortgage but he's only in his early 30s (your second link) so he could extend the term when his fixed rate deal finishes at the end of this year.

Why did the European Central Bank raise interest rates 10 consecutive times if it's a Tory problem?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/european-central-bank-holds-interest-rates-steady-after-10-consecutive-hikes.html

And the US?
US mortgage rates have hit a two decade high of 8%

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67152845

BIossomtoes
Howard, who was the Tory leader at the time, also said it

As we learnt yesterday - Howard also said he would not have lied about the evidence/legal opinion or kept his cabinet in the dark. Howard's cabinet may not have agreed to support his decision -therefore the outcome may have been different.

Chilcot exposes how Blair kept ministers and generals in the dark

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/jul/06/chilcot-exposes-how-blair-kept-ministers-and-generals-in-the-dark

Sorry @verdantverdure. There are facts, even if they don't support your preferred narrative. Only trying to keep you honest.

Fair enough.

Does America, as the default global police, allow that to happen?

Did you realise Team America: World Police was a satire?

"From Russian suppliers?" Because you think I'm like the halfwits you usually converse with who think if something is rUsSIan it is just twenty bajillion times eviller than otherwise.

I don't believe in the bogeyman, I don't believe America gives a fuck about anything but money and power, and I don't believe in a pax americana achieved by destabilising and then destroying the rest of the world.

I did a thread a few months ago entitled

^Who was PM during the best of times for you?
^
Three guesses who most people said...

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/amiibeingunreasonable/4774120-who-was-pm-during-the-best-of-times-for-you

Ah, welcome, Team B @Deathwillbebutapause.

No I don't think the Russians are any more evil at population level than any other nation. Putin? I have reservations about his intentions. cf Ukraine, etc.

It wasn't a Utopia, but looking back now it seems like one. Public services actually worked. There was money in the school where I taught. Looking back now it just seems mad how much better it was.

BIossomtoes
people could get an NHS dental appointment

15 October 2007

Patients pull own teeth as dental contract falters
Survey reveals lack of access to NHS treatment

Large numbers of people are going without dental treatment and some even report extracting their own teeth because they cannot find an NHS dentist in their area, a survey reveals

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/oct/15/health.healthandwellbeing

I know @Verdantverdure. Tony Blair topped it by a slam dunk. The current iteration of the Labour Party isn't keen to be reminded of Tony Blair. And I state this as a floating voter planning to vote for Sir Keir Starmer next year. But I am not addressing @Deathwillbebutapause's half wits. I am talking to the ten or twenty regular posters on politics whose usernames I know because we regularly engage, very respectfully for the most part, around the issues that we all recognise as important to the society in which we live, and which we would all like to see improve. Even when we disagree on how to get there, which we often do.

I tend to assume that I disagree with everyone about something, but I find the views of people who also care about the state of our country interesting and I enjoy the discussion.

Exactly!

Why do you keep tagging me? As for your weird comments about Islam (not my faith, as it happens), best kept for your strange little echo chamber.

I will stop if it offends you. It's not personal; this is social media. And I am free to disagree with you, and to point out the deficiencies in your arguments. Which you have not addressed with information or opinion.