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.

Neglect increases with poverty. The levels of poverty now are far higher, particularly for single mothers, than they were under Labour.

Does that make it all ok then?

Weren't waiting lists around 2.5m in 2010, 4.5m in 2019 and now 7.8m.

The Tories have preceded over a trebling of the NHS waiting list, maternity failures & have seen the collapse of NHS dentistry as well & it wasn't great under Labour either.

I think the point is that social services (ie all the services available) were funded well enough that it happened much more rarely than it does now.

Overall, the reality is that people - back in the Blair years - people still bitched and moaned about folk living on benefits, but there wasn't so much venom and hatred about it. In fact, there wasn't so much venom and hatred about anything, to be honest...while I wouldn't say the country was a nice place to be, it definitely wasn't such a nasty place to be as it is now. But then...it wasn't in the Major years, either.

Ha ha - didn't you realise I was quoting (or attempting to quote) an extract from one of your posts! Unless you are really me of course;

jasflowers
they should never have allowed a Brexit vote, leaving the EU should have been put in a manifesto at a GE...

(They did pledge to hold a referendum in the 2015 manifesto).

jasflowers
The Tories have preceded over a trebling of the NHS waiting list, maternity failures & have seen the collapse of NHS dentistry as well & it wasn't great under Labour either.

Health is devolved - it's clearly no better in Wales under Labour now.

My geography teacher used to say that people become more concerned with immigration when things aren't going so well (I.e there's a recession etc. ) Looking back, I reckon he was right.

It doesn't sound too good here - 6 April 2006;

[Health Secretatary] Patricia Hewitt endured 50 minutes of catcalls, barracking and derisive laughter yesterday as she addressed the annual congress of the Royal College of Nursing. Almost 2,000 delegates in Bournemouth did not permit her to finish a prepared speech in which she battled, against persistent interruptions, to defend the government's record of increased investment in the NHS.

They shrieked in disbelief when she asserted that most trusts were not in financial difficulty, and started a slow handclap when she suggested that nurses could reorganise their rotas to make better use of permanent staff. The hostility continued when she repeated the government's boasts about record investment in new hospital building and bumper pay rises. After doggedly fielding a succession of hostile questions from nurses, she walked off to a deafening chorus of protest...

Her speech came after more NHS job losses were announced. Norfolk and Norwich University hospital said up to 450 jobs would go over the next 12 months to tackle a £14.8m shortfall. And Western General hospital in Weston-super-Mare said it was closing 56 beds and cutting 60 jobs to deal with a £6m overspend.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2006/apr/27/publicfinances.politics

Irrelevant, we are comparing life pre 2010 with life now & the wiating list has trebled and dentistry is fucked.

Wales of course isn't a separate country, so whilst health is devolved, Wales is also very much affected by decisions made in Westminster.

Maybe but at least the RCN never went on strike under Labour, they have under the Tories (for the first time ever) and may well do again before the next GE.

And yet...it still wasn't overrun and underfunded to the point of collapse like now, where services are actually being withdrawn because all the staff are on strike due to untenable working conditions.

With that said, Labour's last stint was characterised by an obsession with overinvestment in digital services - like the £12bn pissed up the wall on NPfIT, which was never going to be fit for purpose and ended up being used by one single hospital for a few years until it became clear that it was decade-old technology and no longer usable.

That’s because it’s funded by Westminster.

And yet...it still wasn't overrun and underfunded

Labour were clearly planning 'cuts' though;

April 2010
Labour plans “£15-£20bn” of annual 'efficiency savings' for the NHS by 2013-14.

... the cumulative ‘savings’ over four years would therefore be in the region of £50bn!

It’s highly unlikely to be achieved and so services will be in effect cut.

https://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/whitehallwatch/2010/04/nhs-efficiency-puzzle-solved-well-sort-of/

"Efficiency savings" are not the same thing as "budget cuts", though. The entire theme of Blair's approach was to save money through modernisation.

The Welsh Government didn't pass the full funding on here;

April 2022
Labour leader Keir Starmer has defended Welsh Labour's record on the NHS in Wales despite the Labour-led Welsh Government giving health services a smaller funding increase in Wales than the NHS in England is receiving.

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/put-labours-record-funding-nhs-23600620

You mean they allocated the money they were given by Westminster in slightly different proportions to England. That has absolutely nothing to do with not having enough funding allocated in the first place.

We have seen on this thread and others, many honest accounts from posters about how their lives were made better under the last Labour government.

Not a single poster has detailed how the Tories over the last 14 years have improved the lives of ordinary people or benefited society as a whole.

Not one.

The thread isn't called Life under Welsh Labour @Clavinova

The Tories have wrecked healthcare and somehow or other made the UK have one one of the highest "economically inactive" figures.

Not helped of course by people not being treated and relaxed pension age rules.

jasflowers
The thread isn't called Life under Welsh Labour

It seems highly relevant to the thread title to me. It's convenient to mention Wales when it suits. In fact, I remember back in December, the Chair of the BMA saying on Robert Peston's show that he worked in Wales (as a doctor) and boasting there was 'no strike action' in Wales that day. He didn't let on of course, that only two days before the interview, junior doctors in Wales had voted overwhelmingly for strike action.

jasflowers
[Angela Rayner] The Police are investigating a claim of electoral fraud, a 12 month time limited offence.

I thought they were also investigating matters relating to council tax (whether she claimed the single person discount). There is also the possibility that her brother was paying rent she didn't declare to HMRC.

Under the Labour government at least I could get an outpatient appointment. Under the current government? The waiting lists that I'm on in my area have collapsed TWICE. The first time I managed to get an appt due to GP chasing. This time, I got a dodgy text that looked like spam with a link. After verifying it was genuine there was a letter attached with a survey. The letter said if I didn't fill out the survey I'd be removed from the list entirely! I might get my next appointment eventually...

I mean...look, I'm no Labour supporter (although I'm not for the Tories either), but...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/food-poverty-sunak-un-children-b2542136.html

Really??? Even Cameron wouldn't have been this transparent about it.

And when we did they were pretty poor tbh. Wilson shut more pits than Thatcher and presided over a wage freeze

Unusual for you not to post a link Clav. Where exactly did you read this because it’s news to me.

It all comes down to the old adage: Hard times create hard men; hard men create good times; good times create weak people; weak people create hard times. It's old, and it's a cycle and someone will remind me of the original... but IMO, the UK is at (or nearing) the nadir of the downswing. I'm not going to be the person who suggests that life in the UK (or the whole developed world) is the worst it has ever been because on every important yardstick (health, longevity, access to education) life is clearly much better in the 21st century than it has ever been before.

Yes life was certainly far better pre NHS/Welfare state and Universal Education.

I long for the days when we had millions of people living in slums, child labour/begging and prostitution, whilst the top 1% lorded it over us all, without a care to our suffering.

I remember my mum telling me the smell that permeated the house as her Gran tried in vain to look after her own double incontinent senile mother, no incontinence pads or washing machines and her own brother dying from a cut, no antibiotics, survived WW1 only to die in agony with no medical treat as they couldn't afford a GP, her nephew had ricketts, died in his 20s, no work, v poor diet and died of TB.

Hard times but by golly they were men!!!