To be worried about what the Labour government will do next?

[Scenicgirl]

Let's be honest, Labour has been a massive disappointment for this country, pissing off the pensioners with taking away the WFA, the farmers, NI changes which impact employers, immigration etc and today refusing compensation to the WASPI women after they ridiculed the Conservatives when they didn't commit to a solution. Don't we deserve better than this constant shit show of lies and deceptions which were clearly spouted out purely to gain power?
For the 1st time in my life, I worry about where we are heading.

You can’t really think Reeves is a socialist? Where is the evidence? She’d be more at home in Major’s Tory party.

"streamlining the public sector by requiring improvements in efficiency before huge payrises..."

Who would you be demanding efficiency cuts from then?

The NHS? We spent about 1/5th less on health per head than other European countries from 2010 to 2022. You think we should deliver healthcare even cheaper than we already do?

What about state education? At present state schools are expected to educate children for about half the cost private schools think necessary to provide good schooling.

Social care? Already on its knees.

DWP?

I know the right thinks the answer is to shift cash out of the pockets of the poor - who spend everything they've got straight away in the economy - and transfer it to the pockets of corporations and wealthy investors, who promptly take it off-shore.

Most farmers can already pass on 3 million in assets with no tax. Are you going to suggest than all inheritance tax should be abolished, so other rich people can make their children millionaires?

Fucking over of junior doctors is a strong statement. Like most people, their earnings did not increase with the COL during austerity. But junior doctors can spend a lot of money treating patients, and the price of new medications and more sophisticated surgeries has to be calculated by NICE. It's easy to declare that Cinderella must go to the ball and have the Rolls Royce procedure, and sometimes if the person is fairly young and generally healthy it's absolutely the right choice, but ordering the same treatment for my DMIL at 93, with dementia, is being profligate with limited tax payer resources.

@TizerorFizz

'We have unsustainable borrowing'.

Says who?

The deficit was higher following WW2 - you know, just before we embarked on the creation of the NHS and built millions of council houses.

The statement after the budget was it's high and is risky if we run into another event

It's not great to just keep going up with debt, the servicing costs taxpayers a lot and is more than the defence budget

Plus look at France and a few other countries where high debt has become an issue

@poetryandwine I think huge numbers of politicians are not “qualified” in any meaningful way and I don’t think political life attracts the best people. Who wants the death threats?! Or the not great pay? However they have advisers who might be useful and the civil service. They don’t work in a vacuum. What I don’t like are political decisions overriding sensible views and policies that would have attempted to prime growth. We get nowhere if we don’t get growth. Truss at least recognised this but spooked the markets. KK was the fall guy. She was incompetent but growth is still the number 1 priority. Without that we continue to be a diminished country.

Apologies, I hate that strike through function. I meant, of course, as you all understood that the fairly young and generally healthy should have greater access to the latest meds and treatments than those in their 80s or 90s.

I agree with desperately need growth, @TizerorFizz , and I largely agreed with your earlier comments about the NHS. The Tories drove it into the ground but I don’t think Labour can micromanage it back to life.

Liz Truss may be a point of disagreement. I suspect we could have an interesting discussion.

@izimbra Do you know the difference between deficit and debt? We have huge debts. We have not been at war. We are not defending ourselves. Just spending it on ourselves.

We cannot really compare our health spending with other countries. No one else has a nhs. Just us.

@TizerorFizz and @poetryandwine I think the professionalisation of politicians is a significant problem here. Politics used to be what people did AFTER a career in something else. It was often work via the union, or after creating a business on the Tory benches, but people went into politics with real world experience of the hurly burly world. And now, a PPE degree from a respectable university and a few years as a researcher/analyst/SpAd seems enough to get a shot at a constituency. Those people have no understanding of lying awake at night wondering how to resolve an industrial injury issue or whether they can meet this week's payroll if customer x's finances are as flaky as you suspect. Too many politicians have no hinterland.

Strong but accurate. Treatment of junior doctors and whether the NHS is functioning (it's not) or not are two different things.This is not the thread to go into the detail but junior doctors' earnings have suffered a lot more than most in terms of real pay erosion and even with the agreement that has just been reached, pay remains quite significantly below where it was in real terms 15 years ago. Hunt treated them with total contempt.

This is an important point. Thank you for bringing it up

I miss the politicians who knew the world deeply. The Frank Fields, Alan Johnsons and Ken Clarkes. The politicians who stood up to say something of substance, rather than to make noise on behalf of party.

I miss them too. The thing the three you mention had in common was integrity, there’s precious little of it around now.

@izimbra
Public sector pensions are unaffordable. I know what doctors earn later and what they get when they retire. It's unbelievable. Managers also make up a huge amount of the NHS workforce rather than actual medics (fifth biggest employer in the world). Let's get rid of a load of people who don't seem very good at managing and their pension obligations too.

Weird argument. Why not keep the private schools. Then a proportion of kids are educated for free from the taxpayers perspective. Can't afford idealogy purity at the moment.

Don't know what you mean by that..poor people spend their own money as do rich people.

Farmers. To get £3 million you have to jump through so many hoops and have a very specific set of circumstances which I won't go into but can if you want a detailed discussion on tax law. Suffice to say very few working farms will be less than £3million. But the arguments against IHT on farms are well outlined in the press so I think it's fairly obvious again it's a bad tax that will lose taxpayer money and cause great destruction and misery.
Yes to the abolition of IHT. It's on assets that have already been heavily taxed and disincentivises people from earning money to be taxed the first time. But that's idealogical argument so no point us arguing the point as we won't agree with each other anyway.

@Papyrophile Yes. You are correct. Too
many have little real world experience that’s useful. However who wants to be an MP? Not the best people.

Blair increased doctors pay without suitable assurances about productivity and how we meet the needs of an aging population. The pay bar was fairly high after Blair.

In business life, pay is linked to productivity. The current nhs payments are not linked to anything. Just favouring those who hold us to randsom and shout the loudest. Like the 60s and 70s on repeat, There have been many companies who have struggled to give decent pay increases too. My DH’s staff took voluntary pay cuts to keep their jobs in 2009. Did NHS staff do that? Or sail into the sunset on gold plated pensions at 55? The difference is that companies have to earn the pay rise money and the restoration of salary money. The NHS can get less and less productive with no detriment. We just pay into a black hole. Lots and lots of people have not had good pay increases and now their employers are taxed even more.

Poor people are more likely to spend every penny they are given as they cannot afford to save any. Wealthier are likely to put some money by, not spend it all.

Thank you, although 2,100 criminals removed since July 24 hardly makes me want to jump for joy but great if it continues. The trouble is as word has got round that we are a soft touch it's a drop in the ocean (pardon the pun) compared to the numbers we are receiving.

That's always been true @Runninginthenight . But you cannot run a successful economy for the benefit of poorer people. It sounds hard-nosed, I know. it's only possible to attempt (probably unsuccessfully) mitigate the hardship. (Edit: I added final sentence.)

I think the situation in France is interesting. Governments are collapsing due to politicians not being brave enough to face the electorate after making unpopular choices. The pension age was recently changed from 62 to 64 (I think) but this is done as the country is running at a large deficit. Public sector pensions in France are massively unaffordable, but no politicians dare to admit this to the public. So the country is running into the buffers because the politicians are being nicey-nicey when what is needed is honesty.

Can we afford to pay the WASPI women what they want? No of course not. it would be daft to pretend otherwise. At least Starmer has the balls to say this. VAT on private schools will prove to be a disaster, but it plays well with the grievance ridden so they went with it. Big mistake.

I live in Scotland where vast amounts of money was thrown at thoroughly unaffordable public sector pay rises. Humza Yousef announced a council tax freeze on a whim as he wanted to appear nice. Lots of extremely wealthy pensioners will see their winter fuel payment restored. University is free. There is an extra £25 per child given to parents of children in poverty. Money is flung about like confetti in order to buy votes. And yet education is swirling the plughole in desperate need of proper funding, there are over 10,000 people who have waited over 2 years (!!!) for an out patients appointment despite record SNHS funding and councils are shutting any service they are not legally obliged to offer.

The most important attribute of a politician is to be brave enough to make the unpopular but right decision.

Agreed.

I agree with this. I also think that Labour are ruling for the benefit of particular sectors at the expense of others without a prospect of improving the lives of us all.

I agree with this.

Who’s benefitting? Public sector pay rises were a bit ott maybe.

More importantly, how do we get the conviction politicians to come back? And the next generations to stand up?