Scared of what labour will do

[Wantachangefor2024]

Is anyone else terrified of what labour will enforce. The tax on farmers. Will they means test pip? Will they tax state pension more? What else will they do and where will it all end. They ruthlessly without no care took away the winter fuel allowance. Means testing and taxing state pension would massively impact my family

@Katypp There is relevance in talking about "the last 14 years" because it directly informs what is happening now, and impacts on the speed of change. It's impossible to draw a line under the last administration's distraction and never speak of it again.

Rather different to talking about what was happening in 2015!

Katypp
You either say the past is irrelevant or you say it isn't.

I link to past articles for all parties.

Do they? When have they said that? Link if you would be so kind!

It would be counter productive to means test the SP.

fullfact.org/economy/state-pension-means-testing/

Defence spend over the last 14 years is very relevant, its takes many years to build up military capacity but only a stroke of a pen to reduce it.

We all saw the danger in 2014, the Tories ignored this and carried on taking donations from Russia.

Perhaps Crimea seemed a long way away?

But Ukraine was 3 years ago, yet again they ignored the threat.... the Tories were in power for 2.5 years of that and failed to increase defence spend.. Labour have been in for only 7 months but now a firm plan to increase to 2.5%.

Dereliction of duty, first objective of Govt is the security of the country.... yet Tory supporters divert to a Linkedin profile...

Talking of dereliction of duty, it's just as well JC didn't win the election in 2019. Or is that irrelevant because it didn't happen? What if it had though?

...but they didn't... as i said to another pp, its all irrelevant.

I did believe, after our sensible discussion on private rent, there were serious Tory supporting posters on here... you might note that i never once said "IF labour had won in 2015, we'd have more council houses...."

Why do Labour faithful always assume anyone who isn’t obviously a Labour fan, is a Tory. Peculiar. Mental models don’t allow any other option. So juvenile.

Traditionally, Labour governments have actually been better for the services, or they used to be before the Cold War ended. However, 1989 is a long time ago now.

IMO one of the problems is that then, most poiticians either had personal knowledge of military service or would have known people who did, because the services were so much larger, and of course from National Service. There are only a handful of those left.

The poster i highlighted said earlier they were a Tory.... but thankyou for your concern

I note you assume i'm a Labour faithful lol!

@Kittygolightlyy "Why do Labour faithful always assume anyone who isn’t obviously a Labour fan, is a Tory"

I don't think we do, do we? I try not to, although it usually pretty obvious.

The only people who will be 'massively' impacted by means testing are people with means. In a situation where there isn't enough money for benefits it makes sense to stop paying them to those who don't need the money. The reason the WFA cut landed so badly was because no means test was done. Its a cliff edge that has left some low income people much worse off. Had it been means tested and tapered it would have been fine. I'm not saying current means tests work well. There are flaws and inconsistencies and they are not imo sufficiently generous, but in principle I think they are fair and necessary.

How is it ‘usually pretty obvious’?

Talking of dereliction of duty, it's just as well JC didn't win the election in 2019. Or is that irrelevant because it didn't happen? What if it had though?

Fair question. I don't recall a big campaign on military spending

@5128gap exactly so. I don’t think the removal of the WFA is seen as a biggie here, because the majority of posters are not pensioners. There appears to be a view that we’re either on benefits or we have huge houses, gold plated pensions and are off on cruises several times a year!

Same reason as those who detest the government assume everyone who doesn’t constantly slate them voted for them, I guess. 🤷‍♀️

Still no answers on why the Tories didn't increase defence spend when they were IN power...

Its a fair question surely?

Defence spending was increasing again ('the UK currently spends 2.3% of its GDP on defence'.)

December 2024

Real-terms defence spending fell by 22% between 2009/10 and 2016/17 (from £57.1 billion to £44.6 billion in 2023/24 prices), before starting to increase again to nearer its 2010 levels.

Real-terms spending has increased each year since 2016/17, with the exception of 2023/24, and is expected to continue to do so. However, the fall in expenditure in the most recent year is likely to be an artefact of technical adjustments to the 2022/23 budget to finance the implementation of the new accounting standard, IFRS 16, rather than a decrease in available resource.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8175/

It's not as if the last Labour government were going to maintain defence spending after the financial crash (see also Labour leaders Miliband and Corbyn up thread);

March 2010

Alistair Darling admitted tonight that Labour's planned cuts in public spending will be "deeper and tougher" than Margaret Thatcher's in the 1980s, as the country's leading experts on tax and spending warned that Britain faces "two parliaments of pain" to repair the black hole in the state's finances.

^The Institute for Fiscal Studies said hefty tax rises and Whitehall spending cuts ... were in prospect during the six-year squeeze lasting until 2017 ...

departments not protected ... such as transport, defence and the Home Office [could] face budget reductions of 25%.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/mar/25/alistair-darling-cut-deeper-margaret-thatcher

I note that in 2010 Labour pledged to raise overseas aid to 0.7% of national output.

Bloody hell Clav, wit the best willbin the world, give it a rest.

Trump is fucking nuts and has turned the world on its head. Is now really a time to keep banging the drum for division? You seem nearly as behind current affairs as Braverman and she's still in 20fucking23.

DH is a supplier to the defense industry so our fortunes ebb and flow with it, but increasingly our work comes from bio-generated power. It won't be many years before we tilt harder towards that, because as a business you follow the work. We shall still for a while be competent to do defense work too, but I know that if there isn't enough of it to train our novice people, then the finesse will be lost.

Llttledrummergirl
Bloody hell Clav, wit [sic] the best willbin [sic] the world, give it a rest

You don't have to read my posts, it's not compulsory - plenty of other threads to read.

But you were fine with the 'divisive' post I was replying to??????

'Still no answers on why the Tories didn't increase defence spend when they were IN power...'

Tories did not raise defense spending because there was no reason to do so. Not until Putin invaded Ukraine. And now, it's a pickle.

Up until recent events, defence hasn't had to be particularly high on the agenda. If the tories had raised spending I might have wondered why.
It's not really been high on my things to worry about over the last few years compared to more concerning and pressing issues. I've probably been as guilty as everyone else with complacency and certainties we've come to rely on Now is time to be uniting and putting petty point scoring to one side.

I think the annexing of Crimea in 2014 was a reason & a warning to at least plan for additional spend, instead we went down the Brexit rabbit hole, that has cost 40 billion plus...

But the Tories did nothing after 2021, even after running down stocks to give to Ukraine.

@Llttledrummergirl If you'd seen the running down of Devonport, since at least 2008, when i first started going there, you'd be concerned.

I remember talking about security mattering and getting the usual on here a few years ago

The electorate were not there.

Now they might be given the threat

Then the small issue of a pandemic

I think I probably would. One of the bases we lived on when I was a child is still empty. For me, the shrinking of the military was coinciding with troops being brought back from Germany after reunification. Where we live, over the last 25 years, the military bases all have houses on them, I guess it crept up so slowly that you don't pay much attention.

I was surprised when they made the aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth as it's so big it would be a high value target in a war. It seemed more of a vanity project than a defence project, suitable for an era of no war. We need to change our mindset, low cost, high quantity arms that do the job.