AIBU to think it doesn't matter whether the government is Labour or Tory?

[Chowtime]

As I approach the grand old age of 60 I've been looking back on my life and I realise that whatever government being in power hasn't really effected me at all.

I've never been poor enough to need any benefits, and I've never been rich enough to not worry about money. I'm in the middle and so must millions of others be.

I can honestly say it hasn't made any difference to me.

I think thats interesting.

It's made a huge difference. You're just not interested enough in the detail of public policy to be noticing. And that's fine - in a way it should be unnoticeable.
What things have you noticed be better or worse though? Eg isn't it harder to get a GP appointment now? If you had children: when was their schooling and were you happy with it?

I've noticed it's harder to get housing and a GP appointment but thats due to the increased population, not government policy.

There are 15 million more people in the country now than there were the year I was born, so it's that that has effected housing and NHS. Thats a global problem, not a political one.

It is not to do with the increased population, but very much to do with government policy.

You read the right wing press don't you. Lack of investment and years of austerity has led to our current crisis in public services and poverty but it's all been blamed on immigrants. And who has been letting in the immigrants?

I'm saying that migration isn't caused by Labour or Tory governments. It's a global problem - caused by issues within the country they're migrating from, like Ukraine and Syria.

That isn't something a UK government can control.

What makes a difference to the poorest makes a difference to us all. Poor people don't exist in a vacuum in unpleasant places we don't have to visit. They use the same services as the rest of us, and the poorer they get the more they need them and the tighter they're stretched. Anyone who isn't sufficiently wealthy as to be untouchable should listen very hard and care very much about the respective administrations plans for the poorest people in society because poverty is extremely expensive and the middle will be paying for it.

So essentially, you're so privileged that the choices made by the government don't effect you?

This, they're all the same narrative is such a load of bollocks

For example, see the image below with regards to NHS waiting lists

Is this another labour bashing thread with a different perspective?

But it is a political problem re how to deal with an increasing population, no?

You're correct that a rising population is a global problem, but there's different ways of dealing with this issue, and that's where politics comes in.

Well there is definitely very little difference between this allegedly Labour government and the Tories. Even down to the backhanders.

I say this as someone brought up staunch Labour, and later a member of the Labour party in my own right. I stopped being a member when Tony Blair became leader and he transformed it from being a socialist party to a Tory lite party.

I've never voted Labour since although if I lived in England I would have voted for Labour when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. But living in Scotland I wouldn't have voted for Scottish Labour.

The Labour Party used to have beliefs and policies. It no longer does. At least the Tories are honest that they are about maintaining the interests of the rich and powerful. Labour are doing that whilst pretending they have the interests of the country at heart.

As a civil servant, it feels pretty different working for a govt not slagging you off in the press every other day.

The tories and honest do not often fall in the same sentence.
Listen to the nonsense Cleverly is talking about the Chagos Islands given back to Mauritius. He started the process in 2022, hoping to finish in 2023. And now he is all over it as if it is a bad idea dreamt up by labour.
The problem is if these people say something often enough too many people believe to. The is an enormous lack of critical thinking skills in this country, as evidenced in this thread.

If you genuinely believe this then you are coming from a pretty uninformed position.

Well, whoever you vote for the government always get in.

Labour generally do much better with public services though, whereas Tories always try and dismantle them.

easy and simplistic to blame immigrants - maybe you cant get a GP appointment due to an increasing older population needing more appointments and a lack of preparing for this by successive Govts

For examples - figures show:

Summary - outpatient attendances by age and gender (incl. maternity specific attendances), 2019-20

Women comprised 55.5 million attendances (57.8 per cent), compared to 40.6 million for men (42.1 per cent).

For women, the age group with greatest number of attendances was 30-34 years (4.5 million) for men it was 70-74 years (4.3 million). ( Women mainly maternity)

The most attendances were made by patients aged between 60-79 years with 30.6 million (31.9 percent) for both males and females.

You mean asylum seekers not immigrants. We let in hundreds of thousand of immigrants to work especially in the NHS. I don't understand how you came to the conclusion that the comparitvely tiny percentage of asylum seekers have caused the kind of deprivation and neglect we experienced under the Tories.

No it's another "They're all the same as each other" thread. 14 years of the Tories has left a lot of voter apathy in its wake. 🙄

I think the tens of thousands killed by austerity measures would disagree with you, were they still alive to do so.

So would the disabled people driven to suicide and poverty by the previous government's scapegoating tactics.

So would the million children in poverty.

Indeed @Chipsintheair

I would go as a far to say that if we had a pandemic in say, 2007, the NHS and country would have coped a lot better. We are properly the sick man of Europe again now.

The last labour goverment introduced Children’s centre as part of their Every Child Matters programme. The long term research into the outcomes of the now adults who lived near those centres as children show that they did make a positive difference.

The big parties are all part of the World Economic Forum Uniparty.

When you vote for them you are only really voting for the colour of the tie, the policies only ever go in one direction. They will promise all sorts to get into power and then do as they are commanded.

They control this country’s response to it though. A bigger population isn’t an issue if you invest more and train and employ more doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers…that’s policy.
Im 60 in 3 weeks and worked as a teacher for 35 years. I can tell you that it has made a huge difference who is in charge, particularly in the last 25-30 years. Back when I was a kid I think Labour and Tory basically did similar things, albeit for different reasons. The Tories have gone much further right from Major onwards, and that’s meant a Tory government has been unhelpful for ordinary people.

Of course it makes a difference - the political dogmas of the Thatcher era have wrecked our social infrastructure - industries closing down, public services being hived off into private profit-making ownership - we are in a mess of their making. And they are mostly dead now so it doesn't make their lives a misery.

There isn't a pie that is national wealth to be divided up and therefore more people = poorer people/ fewer services.

The US population is 5 times the UK population. Does that mean 5 times the people competing for the same number of GP appts? Of course not: with 5 times the people they have many times the number of doctors.

The quality of immigration obviously matters. Back when most of our immigrants were from the EU they contributed more tax than the average UK citizen, were more highly qualified in skills shortage areas, most likely to start their own businesses and create jobs employing others, and used social housing and public services less than the average UK citizen. Therefore, they raised the average standard of living for the average UK citizen by their presence here and their contribution. But people thought this was a terrible thing, apparently.

It is absolutely Government policy to determine what immigration we allow and from where, whether that immigration is beneficial to UK citizens, and to ensure that sufficient additional tax revenue generated by the population growing from immigration is directed to expanding services to accommodate the growing population (while still making a tidy profit on top from the surplus tax revenues, if they have an appropriate immigration policy and are accepting the people we need).

Obviously Government policy affects every area of your life. The public and state sector ponzi schemes are draining tax revenues that need to be spent on education, infrastructure and supporting key growth sectors so we have productivity increases and rising living standards.

Not reforming the NHS into a functional system like most other European models means we have some of the lowest health outcomes in the developed world for not much less as a share of GDP.

Selling off water companies has meant they have extracted billions on dividends without any sustainable business plan to fund the infrastructure improvements to sewers and resevoirs to serve the current population and lack of Government regulation and enforcement means they continue to pump sewage into our rivers and seas.

Selling off utilities means we now have Canadian, French and other nationalised companies making huge profits on us paying the most expensive energy prices in Europe while they can subsidise cheaper energy for their own citizens and businesses. This also means the UK is less attractive for foreign investment.

We have an enormous trade deficit as a result of Government policy (quadrupled by Brexit) meaning we are extremely reliant on external investment to stay afloat.

We have no long-term industrial policy, healthcare or pensions policy, energy or food security policy. Brexit has left a £50bn per year hole in HMRC revenue, rising annually.

The education system is a shambles with no effective regulator to enforce the law and is not equipping students with the skills required in the modern economy. Young people are saddled with debt when higher education is free in most comparable countries.

Childcare is more expensive here than in the vast majority of countries. Germany, France etc charge a couple of hundred euros per month whereas in the UK people have to pay thousands. This harm productivity and economic participation.

Our tax system includes numerous cliff edges which are preventing economic growth and productivity increases which are the only ways to raise living standards. This is well documented in rigorous economic studies yet no Government has removed them. Consequently people either work part time, retire early or the highly skilled emmigrate, against lowering overall living standards and tax revenue.

All of these are Government policy choices. All of them are proved to be negative for UK living standards since there is decades of data from other countries proving that their models work far better, which our Governments could choose to emulate.

I find it insane that any adult could think Government policy doesn't affect their life. I agree that there's little worthwhile difference between Labour and the Conservatives because both have (different) but ineffectual policy objectives that will not improve things at all. But that doesn't mean policy is not important and cannot make an enormous different to people's lives if we actually had competent people in charge.

Totally agree there's no significant difference between any political party anywhere. Just tiny policy tweaks here and there. Democracy is an illusion to stop the plebs from starting a revolution. Anyone with truly radical ideas doesn't get anywhere near power.