Starmer surprised

[Andthereitis]

At the state of finances and the state of the prisons.

Has labour not been a very effective opposition asking difficult questions to government ministers across the spectrum of ministries?

Nothing should be a surprise to a good opposition who have clearly been leading in the polls.

That and they still haven't publicly declared they fully know what a woman is.

And the fact that the previous occupiers tore out the copper piping and RCDs to give to their mates to sell.

The prisons data is published weekly.

As per the economic data, I'm guessing Labour do not trust the OBR.

Do you think it is there fault, it isn't a week since the handover what do you think they should have achieved that the Conservative didn't manage in 14 years?

Good. Glad you’re getting it. Not too many years ago I was living in my work premises when someone ripped me off. I lost my house and couldn’t even afford to rent a room in a shared house. I got help from nobody. Everything I have is because I got off my arse and earned it. I have all the time in the world for people that genuinely need help. They don’t get the help they need and it’s a tragedy. People that think this country should be some kind of Orwell novel need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

I was wondering about the OBR stuff

I'm becoming convinced there is either a little social media team within the conservative party with a mission to rile people up about Labour being in power or it's Russian bots/AI attempting to drive discussions towards the right wing.

Either way, we're all exhausted. I agree with pp who called a busted clown car that's left office. I want politicians to be so dull I don't recognise them. I just want them to get things working again. Schools. NHS, police, SEN provision.

I'll pay all the tax that's asked for this instead of it going towards wallpaper or yachts thanks.

👆

Completely this. Whoever is still sucking lemons about Labour being in power, well, your guys should have done a better job rather than failing govern on almost every conceivable front. They lost hard because they deserved it.

Fingers crossed Labour do better.

In legal ways I hope?

Animal Farm or 1984?

Yeah, think they are paving the way for new/increased taxes tbh. They have access to all this information, it’s a way to soften people up before the rises start.

I think knowing it's bad and then seeing how bad are different.

It feels like the last 2 years has been a series of chickens coming home to roost after chronic underinvestment. Schools and hospitals literally crumbling concrete, prisons 2 weeks away from being at absolute max capacity, there's a £10bn backlog of maintenance needed in hospitals.

I'm not surprised there are a load more of these disasters waiting to come out of the woodwork that they have been briefed on now the Tories aren't hiding them and hoping the issue doesn't surface before the election.

We’ll see I guess. I don’t think that’s the intention, but polls show many people would be ok with higher taxes if things just worked.

In February, the Chief inspector of prisons raised serious issues that he had discovered at a detention centre and got no reply from the then Home Secretary, James Cleverly. The Inspector Charlie Taylor gave a very good interview to Radio 4 about this particular visit and issues with prisons generally.

Opposing political parties do get access to senior civil servants during an election campaign, so to say that everything Starmer has allegedly discovered is a surprise is simply untrue.

There's also an enormous amount of data freely available in the public domain published on a monthly basis, i.e. all kinds of statistics and other data.

People that think this country should be some kind of Orwell novel need to take a long hard look in the mirror.

The road to Wigan pier ?

Starmer knew the prisons were pretty full. But the government had said they were tackling the issue. Turned out they lied. The prisons are predicted to be totally full by the 1st of August.

Wait until they see what's happened to the probation service.

It does feel like the issues with the NHS, where the Conservatives under funded a supporting service like Social care, which is funded by local Government, where there were dramatic cuts to funding and this has a massive impact on the NHS. People not being able to get a care package when medically fit for discharge delays the discharge so takes one of the few beds in the system out of the numbers, which means someone waiting for an operation has it cancelled or someone waiting in A&E has to be on a trolley in a corridor for 48hrs.

Similar scenario with the prison estate. The detention centre mentioned, a lot of those people are given leave to stay, but the system is so backlogged because of massive cuts to that area, the court system has huge backlogs, probation etc

Its all coming home to roost and I wouldn't want to be in Starmer's shoes, the rhetoric will quickly change, 14 years of mismanagement and under funding will be blamed on the incoming PM.