What are you expecting?

[Lovepeaceunderstanding]

It is all but a forgone conclusion that Labour will form our next government.
How are you expecting your life to change as a result?
what are you most looking forward to or dreading?
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Tax rises right left and centre

Cantthink- is that a typo? You must mean IF Farage gets in we are fucked. What with his big promises and no explanation of how he’ll achieve them, Liz Truss on turbo economic plan. And your daily reminder that Reform is a private company with Farage as the majority shareholder. It’s a grift.

Honestly, more tax for less output but before anyone yells at me, I 💯 accept the Tories have been a disaster ( although I’ll give May a break as she was serious and diligent) but the UK is facing some really difficult structural problems, mainly the dependency ratio- there will come a point where it’s just not reasonable to expect working people to support a higher and higher number of non working people- there will be a limit and I suspect it might come sooner than expected. It’s also going to be v difficult for the transition to net zero not to be regressive and I haven’t seen anything in the Labour manifesto that makes me think they’ll avoid that. Long term I’m hugely in favour of UK leveraging wind power but it’s how you get to that steady state that will be tricky. Education- possibly controversially I don’t think the current system is fixable. Might be time to look at a whole new model.

I'm looking forward to having a government that spends our money on running the country. I'd say I'm looking forward to the Tories being out of office, but that isn't enough for me. I want to see this heartless, brainless, duplicitous shower beaten so badly that they can never come back.

Helena - what do you think the tories have been spending money on?

I expect you’ll say wasting it on ppe, contracts for their mates etc. but really the vast, vast majority of the money has been on running the country!

I don’t think you can expect waste and inefficiency to shrink under Labour- they where the ones who maxed on PPF after all, and that really was a scandal!!

Having a credible adult in charge. More responsible spending of our tax dollars. Better relationships with international partners, due to having a credible adult in charge. Steady improvement over circus tricks and “bold ideas”. NHS recovering.

Bad: Woman's rights eroded, Higher tax

Good:

NHS recovering? How? The problem with the NHS was that it was designed for a time when people retired, lived a few years and then died. We now have enormous numbers of people living for years with multiple health conditions. And we have lots of expensive treatments which people are understandably keen to have - both of these are only going to increase. How are you going to fund it?

We're one of the richest countries in the world and have the highest tax burden since the Second World War, borrowing has doubled - and there's never any money for anything. Running the country. The only running the country the Tories have done is running it into the ground. The NHS is on its knees. The care system has collapsed. There's no money for schools. They want to take away disability benefits. There is shit in the rivers. And you want these shysters back in power? I hope they sink without a trace. I hope they disappear into political oblivion Canada-style. Because that is the only way the better-off will stop unleashing torture on the rest of us.

Wrong, it was conceived for a time when people had lifestyles that were life sustaining rather than destructive, when contributors were outnumbering non-contributors by more than a mere fraction and when the world and his wife weren't coming to take advantage. Plus it was actually ran to be efficient and functional, not a pig through for parasites.

I'm expecting it to be the lowest voting turnout we could imagine.

No matter who of the many people I encounter daily, every one thinks all the parties are a shit show, and don't want to vote for any of them.

I think it's clear now that Labour will be in power.

But I think it will take a generation of immensely clever and strategic government to get this country back from the brink that it is on. At least.

And I don't have much hope that Starmer and his party can do that. I still try to have hope though. A change at this point is better than where we are.

I'm expecting whoever is in Number 10 after this election to begin the hard work of rebuilding this country.

After 14 years of decline.

Me too. I’m expecting the NHS to be performing much better in a year’s time. By the end of Labour’s first term I expect to get a GP appointment when I need it and to have an NHS dentist again. Not much to ask, is it?

Blossom- I can’t tell if you are being sarcastic? How do you imagine this will happen? Where will the dentists come from? How is the NHS going to see more patients more quickly?

Of course I’m not being sarcastic. Streeting has explained over and over how he plans to improve the NHS. Why not check out their manifesto?

I’ve looked. This is what they say, I don’t see how this will deliver meaningful change - it’s tinkering round the edges. And I love the irony of using private healthcare whilst taxing private education.

” We will do this by incentivising staff to carry out additional appointments out of hours. Labour will pool resources across neighbouring hospitals to introduce shared waiting lists to allow patients to be treated quicker. Recognising the urgent need to bring down waiting lists, Labour will use spare capacity in the independent sector to ensure patients are diagnosed and treated more quickly.”

Pooling resources from neighbouring hospitals. 🤣🤣🤣
Yet again Labour shows it only cares about cities and knows nothing about rural/coastal communities.

Quite! A plan based on overworked people who are already striking doing overtime and sharing already overstretched resources doesn’t really seem much if a plan at all.

It is very slim. Reading that quote I’m not sure they’ll do much

Live - exactly it was made at a time when there was far, far less demand and far, far fewer expensive treatments- as a model it no longer works. It’s very simple!

@Meadowtrees

"What with his big promises and no explanation of how he’ll achieve them, Liz Truss on turbo economic plan"

So Liz Truss disastrous mini budget was £40 billion underfunded. The current Reform plans are £141 billion underfunded.

@HelenaWaiting

"We're one of the richest countries in the world and have the highest tax burden since the Second World War, borrowing has doubled - and there's never any money for anything"

Because the government is spending record amounts on interest on the £2.5 trillion national debt (roughly the same amount as is spent on education).

Plus an aging population, plus low productivity, plus large numbers of workers economically inactive etc.

@Luckingfovely

"I'm expecting it to be the lowest voting turnout we could imagine"

If you fancy a bet on the election (it's very in fashion at the moment) then the Sky bet is doing an under or over bet on the turnout. Currently they have it at 64.5% which would make an "under" bet interesting.