Are you glad you voted Labour ?

[Noangelbuthavingfun]

Sir Keir is firmly in his new seat and appears to be making waves... winter fuel, VAT on private school fees, UEFA watchdog type scenario, budgets... increase in CGT, 20% increase for Jr doctors, immigration learnings from Italy to pay other countries to take Immigrants and that's only what I briefly followed.
So my question is - are you still glad you voted Labour, or that they are in Power if you didn't? And what if you are not happy anymore - why ?
I'm on the fence so trying to be objective ;-)

There are a number of civil servants who earn as much as or more the PM. Here are figures from 2022. Why weren't the press hopping up and down then?

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/64ca69066ae44e000d11b414/150k_2022_Master.csv/preview

No. Nobody’s taken a pay cut, that I know of.

(If reports are to be believed, Case will be forced out by Labour anyway, Labour being so concerned about his inability to stop leaks. I may be wrong, but I don’t believe Labour ever campaigned against civil service leaks when in opposition.)

I may also be wrong about this, but I don’t believe Sue Gray is a civil servant, though she’s no doubt paid from public funds.

That's an odd comment. Good on labour getting rid of a leaky pot. Blaming them for not campaigning for him to go under Tories is silly. It was their job to get rid of worng'uns. I think they had other reasons to keep him though.

Didn’t vote for them as would have been a waste of a vote where I live, but I voted Lib Dem who did take over our seat from the Tories 🙂 I’d rather have Labour in government than Tories although I’m not thrilled that they’ve appointed a trans ideology sucker as minister for women & equalities.

OK, corruption and cronyism is a problem - particularly when the law is set up such that it allows it. That means that "wrong" isn't necessarily a matter of lawfulness, but (and I hate to use this word) morality.

At that point, it becomes a matter of scale. A few grand versus many billion. Which brings us back to your original comment of "Snouts, troughs, Labour…" - no government in history has handed so much money to its mates as the last Conservative government, so - particularly since you say it's not newsworthy - why are you singling out Labour with that comment?

Yeah. It’s the hypocrisy though. Yet another example, from the party that was so keen to promote itself as more decent than the others.

If you seize on leaks when you’re in opposition, don’t expect people not to point and laugh at you when you get upset about leaks when you’re in office and complaining about the dishonourable civil service.

Is the “mates” a reference to covid contracts?

It's not hypocrisy. It wasn't really their job as opposition. Stop trying to put everything on Labour!

You bet I am 😁 (& that's even after they took my winter fuel allowance away).

They haven't trashed Sterling like the last PM but one or sat on their hands doing sod all like the previous PM, so what's not to like.

If they keep going at the same rate as they are now, I predict an even larger majority next time around.

(BTW you'd think Tory Party interns would be more worried about fighting Reform than Labour , but there you go. Old habits die hard!)

It's a reference to many contracts that bypassed the normal tender process (or in which it was manipulated) over the last seven or eight years of the last government.

Which contracts?

Covid contracts were subject to assessment by the civil service. I’m sure that a) there was chaos and a lack of contingency planning in Covid procurement, but b) the ‘corruption tsar’ will find no government corruption and will recover next to nothing (that office will almost certainly cost more than it raises).

Hopefully it will be in the budget about lowering CB back to £50k, also closing the loophole to put money into pensions to lower salary amount

Also banning ICE cars by 2030. Personally I think Labour have been a bit lapse with this

I bet it doesn’t. Millions and millions of £ were handed over for unusable PPE, most of which ended up in landfill. Hancock’s pub landlord and Michelle Mone are the tip of the iceberg.

Yes.

Am I filled with a warm and fuzzy feeling that they're fixing all the problems that have been responsible for tearing the fabric of our nation apart? No, because I knew that such was the damage done by the Tories in 14 years, that Labour would need to make some unpopular decisions whilst having an eye on the much bigger national picture.

Am I pleased that the grown ups are now in charge? Absolutely yes. I just hope that they get a couple of terms to restore the nation, because KS has certainly not shied away from unpopular decisions.

Unusable PPE isn’t corruption. It might theoretically be fraud, depending on what was known and the representations made by the supplier, but it’s not corruption. I fail to see how a ‘corruption tsar’ could recover money from legal contracts, unless it’s just pursuing ordinary contractual remedy, which was done extensively under the last government.

I don’t know whether any facts about the publican’s actions are known. IIRC he’s denied wrongdoing and said he’s happy to answer anything.

Mone’s criminal case can’t be commented on. But the last government started civil proceedings to recover the money. Not exactly what a corrupt government would do:

https://news.sky.com/story/amp/government-starts-legal-proceedings-against-firm-at-centre-of-ppe-supply-row-12771483

Even as a Conservative voter, I knew the Tories' time was up and was pleased to see Labour get in and have a go at sorting this dreadful mess out. My only concern is that, with such a large majority, they have ultimate power over us all and that worries me - a healthy opposition isn't a bad thing.

The corruption was the VIP lane for Tory cronies and MPs’ invitations to them to put their applications in while bona fide suppliers were cold shouldered. I fail to see how that could be described as anything but corruption no matter how partisan you are.

Have you read the court judgments? What you say is just wrong.

I'm not talking about COVID contracts, although you get points for trying to focus on those instead of answering the actual question.

I'm talking about FP (GB) Ltd, JCB Service, QinetiQ, Harmony Bridge, Phoenix, and more. All of whom are majority owned by the same people who made millions in donations to the Conservative Party over course of the last government's time in power, and all of whom were awarded contracts after making those donations. Those five alone took over £10bn in public money, mostly for projects and services that were never fully completed.

So, again, I ask you - why does increased salary bands suddenly warrant a "Snouts, troughs, Labour..." comment in comparison to that?

It isn’t.

Yes. I don't think any of us voted Labour thinking it was going to be all fun and sunshine. We all know there is pain coming in order to to try and fix some of the mess the country is in. It means hard decisions. I'm pleased that Starmer isn't trying trying to be a people pleaser, that he isn't trying to line up media work for after his time as prime minister. He is making some horrible choices and taking the flack.

Top googling! These all seem to come from a Guardian article. That article prominently states “There is no suggestion that the individuals or companies named have broken the law or committed any wrongdoing”.

So what’s your point? That businesses have links to political parties, historically more usually the Tory party? That means nothing. There are civil service checks and investigations made into public contracts. Is the civil service corrupt?

If your point is that political support should rule out government awards to supporters, any Labour government is going to have to avoid any pay deals with, or legal change advantageous to, donor unions (leaving aside any deals with pro-Labour business interests).

I made my comments about the significant salary increase for Sue Gray clear before.