To feel utterly miserable about a future with Andy Burnham as PM?

[OneWarmHazelQuail]

I feel like I'm being stung in every possible way at the moment- £15 a day on tube to work, high mortgage costs, high energy costs, private schooling for SEN child (I was told state wouldn't be unlikely to assist him as he isn't mute or violent). My parents have had to help fund schooling it felt like my only hope as son has behavioural issues.

I also have an unsold old home that I have to rent out as it wouldn't sell. Buy-to-let mortgage costs, agent fees, maintenance and tax put me in a loss position.

I can't bear what the future holds with Andy Burnham. I have no doubt that he will find new and imaginative ways to keep me in this financial nightmare. I'm literally struggling from food poverty but regarded as rich by policy.

YABU- Andy Burnham is actually going to make things better

YANBU- I'm screwed

Proof please. Ta.

My husband works a low paid job and has had to go part time (shorter days) - my commute to work takes 1.5 hours each way so we're not able to manage childcare (only runs from 8am to 6pm) with him working full time as well. We haven't found a way round this logistical issue. The extra pay would help if we could figure this part out.

Maybe you are a min wage /UC type that is immune.

Either way a government that is this catatonic isn’t healthy for any of us.

I hope you can take the recession/depression that will follow the Burnham ‘government’ - and I say that lightly, as he has no right to call himself a PM in a democracy. No one knows who he is! He is not my PM - he is an illegitimate imposter.

Just an observation on the thread. There is no one as salty as a person who voted for Brexit (which so many of us warned would be disastrous) and now too embarrassed to admit their own stupidity and desperate to pin it on 'the deal'. Really pathetic.

@redange .....How so? Tell me more.

At least noone is going to accuse him of getting a millionaire to buy him his clothes.

OP....family? friends? This might sound crazy a Church?

He intends to squat illegally in No10 so that’s the least of Burnham’s problems.

Burnham is a big problem. He is the final straw that will see the end of the Labour Party. He has zero understanding of how people are feeling. Meanwhile Rupert Lowe is saying he would scrap inheritance tax and protect small businesses, and farmers, and people that work to improve themselves.
And Nigel being threatened and AW being murdered has made the loony left stop being a joke but being actually recognised as psychologically unstable.
Handing the UK back to the Right, on a plate.

It's really worrying the amount of people on mumsnet who will reply extremely aggressively when they clearly haven't actually read or understood what they're replying to

You mean like the ones under Ted Heath’s government? And the accompanying three day week? Those power cuts which are the only ones I’ve experienced in my lifetime. Your posts are getting more ridiculous.

The UK is skint. For years and years no party has addressed this, just tinkered with finances and taxes - robbing Peter to pay Paul as it were than address the fact we have little to offer as a country in the world and making money.

Taxes and us buying things is the biggest way governments make money. But when we are hit with things like Brexit, downturns of economy, wars, covid, well, we don't have much anymore and people with the cost of living aren't spending.

It doesn't really matter which person is leader. Until we find ways of making money as a country, we are screwed.

Sadly I think Starmer was pushed out. Sure, he made mistakes but he also was calm, considerate and I think he went into politics for the right reasons, rather than an ego trip. He did very well on the international stage too. Sadly people in the UK want big personalities now after Boris etc regardless of ability.

I genuinely can't take anyone who uses the phrase 'the loony left' seriously

Hi, all.
Please bear in mind when replying here that OP has posted as she is at a low ebb (please read all her posts not just the OP for context), and Mumsnet is here to support parents when they need it.

OP - we hope things feel easier soon. If you're desperate, there may be some useful links on this list: https://www.mumsnet.com/i/mental-health-webguide

Thanks, all.

The Labour government that you voted for and crowed on here for is sinking faster than the titanic. Burnham is lining his own pockets by seeing it through to the end.

I pay a bit of tax on my state pension. I get a few pounds a week more than the basic SRP because I paid into SERPS for years, and that is enough to take my state pension over the personal allowance. I also pay tax on every penny of my "gold plated public sector pension" of £300 a month.

They don't seem to have sussed out a way of collecting tax from SRP yet, but they'll have to soon, if they don't increase the personal allowance.

I can’t see anything remotely stable about them - can you? She could have been much more descriptive and it would still be accurate.

@ThatSunnyCrow ,

Thank you too for your polite reply! You clearly also have reasoned opinions, even though you disagree.

I just thought I might try to persuade you (and everyone else reading) a little bit!

I grew up in the 70s and 80s and remember going into the cellar to get candles out when we had regular power cuts (in London!). Thatcher was a breath of fresh air and I loved the way she took the unions on and the idea of ‘trickle down’.

We also entered the EU and had a North Sea oil boom, so we basically got lucky and squandered it over the next decades.

I don’t want to write too much of an essay but I have become more ‘left wing’ in the traditional sense as I have observed how trickle down didn’t work and government and central bank policies concentrated more and more wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

If you look at, say, an investment banker’s compensation from 2008 to date and compare it to a teacher’s or even a senior doctor’s, who has done better and why? Net/net the doctor and teacher are worse off on virtually every metric whereas the banker with a combination of salary and wealth, due to invested bonuses, is far richer, despite effectively blowing up the economy!

QE and zero interest rates brought high inflation, which was great for assets and business but appalling to anyone on a salary or fixed pension. And then we had all the grift during COVID. These were all policy choices, just the same as taxes are.

I don’t think the bankers took any more risk (on a personal level) than the doctors or teachers, they just have a far better lobby. It’s not talent but influence.

At a more fundamental level, technology and globalisation increases wealth inequality (especially intranationally). AI will have the same effect on steroids.

So, what are you going to do? You can either stop tech and globalisation (don’t see that happening) or redistribute more, especially from the super wealthy (I am not talking about taking more from the already squeezed middle).

Gary Stevens, although a little extreme, explains this well and backs it up with econometric modelling. Of course there is the other side with too high a benefit bill, and some taking advantage of overly generous benefits.

Anyway, it’s an interesting discussion. Politics is never black and white, although it is amazing how many only see one side of the coin.

Why don’t you just address the valid points? Crowed for? Oh please, I’ve repeatedly said I was disappointed. I still think it’s better than the alternative. And if you think Burnham’s lining his pockets you clearly don’t know how much the PM’s salary is.

What is being discussed though is people with pensions that give incomes of 50K plus, and there are plenty of them. They could probably live without the extra state 12.5K state benefit even accounting for the fact that about 5K of that would need to be paid back in income tax.

I have a feeling that we're heading for a real issue with funding state pensions in the next 10-20 years, so there may come a time where it needs to be means (and needs) tested, like any benefit.

Exactly, it's an indicator of this kind of very generalised thinking that lacks any kind of nuance or understanding that politics and society are very complex. You cannot just say 'the loony left' any more than you can say 'the uneducated right', as even though study after study shows the right wingers are less educated, reality is far more complicated than that.

Oh blossom, how naive. They don’t earn their millions in the job. It’s afterwards that it pays off - the circuits, the international events etc etc. Burnham has just sorted himself a very short term money spinner. We all know that.

I'm up for it so long as he does something different.

If he implements many of the things he has shown interest in in the past like LVT then it will be great.

If he backtracks and basically does the same treading water that everyone seems to do when they get in power so that he can survive until the next election without becoming too unpopular then probably best to ditch him asap and have another election.

Same old old is boring and doesn't cut it, no matter how unpopular it might be.

Shall we have a conversation about the brainwashing in higher education or would you rather leave that sticky hornets nest alone?

So agree with this.

Ultimately we all lose in this race to the bottom. We become active and willing participants in managed decline.

I’ve often wondered about the effects of the ‘cost of living’ narrative. Is it really a ‘cost of living crisis’ or is it a ‘lack of infrastructure and investment crisis’? If the latter, then robbing peter to pay paul some more benefits or subsidies is not the answer. The fault is not with ‘selfish’ aspirationsl individuals pursuing careers, trying to put a nest egg away for their kids.

Come to think of it, a lot of narratives rankle me. Take the climate crisis. Again, I think the main peoblem is lack of foresight, infrastructure. But the main narrative in the media seems to be about problems with individuals - oh that selfish person using air con to get some decent sleep, using their car to get to work, watering their garden so their plants don’t die, eating meat to keep their muscles in good nick.