Is life really worse under Labour or am I taking the Torygraph (essential reading chez Moondog) too seriously? Particularly interested in what you old gimmers who remember thatcher have to say.

[moondog]

Thanking yew.

I have to go too bed, but Thank you moondog for starting a good, thought provoking debate!

Message withdrawn

From Wiki

Thatcher is well remembered for her famed remark "There is no such thing as society"[79] to the reporter Douglas Keay, for Woman's Own magazine, 23 September 1987:

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand "I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or "I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and then also to help look after our neighbour and life is a reciprocal business and people have got the entitlements too much in mind without the obligations...[80]

Moondog could have subtitled this thread

'What have the Romans Labour Party Ever Done For Us?'

And you don't think that happens now, Wendy?

My boy is due to start school next year. Small problem, though. I've already been told it's unlikely he'll be placed.

Does it happen now, Desi? Budgets actually reduced, teachers sacked? Not round here.

Not where you are, Wendy, no. I doubt it.

It's pretty grim where I am, though.

It looks like I'm going to have to home-ed my boy until a place becomes available. He was born here, and we live within five minutes walking of the school!!

They built a whole new housing estate, but didn't think to build another school block. And because it's a nice area, people from the city are getting on the list and usurping kids who already live here.

The council have told me that my son (who will be four) can get on a public bus with teenagers and go to school in another village four miles away.

I think not.

Teachers are better paid under labour. I also remember the teachers strikes of the 80s to get better pay. But in the last 10 years the divide between the good and poor schools has never been more apparent (parental choice is a concept, not a reality for most) and teachers cannot afford to buy a home in 70% of towns and cities in this country

My you have been busy while I have been cleaning my house in manner of surrendered wife.

Panna,I have a soft spot for Torygraph although obv. recognize that they spout loads of shit.I like knowing what the other side is up to and I would shoot myslef rather than be seen with Guardian (although fast being converted to Saturday's edition).

Torygraph quoting these stats today

Message withdrawn

Did he?

I ignore all guff like that on MN.Only here for the chat from real folk.

"The Cost of Living Under Labour report, which was commissioned by the Conservatives"

say no more

The rise in the price of eggs and bread is all Gordon's fault apparently (obv he controls the weather )

Who's Gordon?

At the very bottom of the Tory rising prices report - prob several paragraphs too far for the average Tory reader:

As a socialist, (I was what Americans call a red diaper baby), I often don't feel much love fo

r the US government. On too many things they've failed to reverse, or ocntinued, Tory policies. But I really really really don't want another Conservative (with a capital C) government.

I work for a Council which froze Council tax last year (not this year) and increased charges for home care, meals on wheels, residential care, after school clubs, by double digit percentages. I think that's a definition of stealth tax. And that by the way was a Lib Dem-Tory coalition.

And I have to say, Desi, that while it's a policy Labour has failed to change, that the creation of this lie about "choice" in schools and the outrageous situation your son is likely to be in, was introduced by a Tory government.

I think Surestart was one of the really good things which have happened under Labour - sadly it's already being wound up now, and while I think the children's centres are a great idea in theory, they're being starved of cash already.

Council tax is fucking staggering though isn't it?

That is very patronizing, Wendy, and not like you at all. Half the country vote Tory. Do you dislike us all?

Ruth Lee is a very prominent Tory. I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make with that last post.

Desi, I meant specifically this line:

"There is very little we can do about it because food and fuel are driven by world prices and I think it will last for some time"

Which trailed along right at the very end of the whole piece which generally blames the whole situation on the Labour Govt (currently Gordon's). If you read that far, wouldn't you go "OK, maybe it's not their fault then"?

Elkie, my kid goes to a SureStart nursery, and that's doing fine.

I'm a bit confused about SureStart, tbh. I live in a posh village (albeit in a bought council house), and the SureStart Nursery is the best one around. Everybody wants to get their kid in there.

It must mean something else in an inner city, but in my village, it's the coveted dog's bollocks!

Yes, OK, Wendy, as a Labour supporter I can understand your tactics

But to be fair, you could cut and paste any government line since the year dot to suit your own individual argument.

We could go tit for tat unto our graves. There is nothing Mrs Thatcher did that I couldn't counter-argue, and vice versa.

You vote Labour, I vote Conservative. Nothing will make us change our minds. Absolutely nothing.

Good night, red

G'night, blue

Yes, no one enjoys paying Council tax. Council tax was designed to be a Conservative policy, to divide and rule. To make people think, ooh I don't want to pay so much for social services for that scummy family on the estate across the road. It's meant to bring out people's meanest and nastiest instincts. It also hits hard at the people who only have a little, like people who are working full or part time but are struggling to make ends meet - one reason for that is that the highest band payers only pay 2.5 times what the lowest band payers do. Not sure what the answer is but I wish we could move away from funding local services through a Tory tax that was literally intended to make people vote Tory!

"They built a whole new housing estate, but didn't think to build another school block."

Why are you worrying? The free market will provide these things. Isn't that the message we've had for the past 25 years?

Life is worse under labour if you are currently middle aged and writing for the Daily Telegraph.

Has to be said that of Thatcher's worse points (among many) was permitting single organisations to own many newspapers. That's got us in the situation we're in today where anyone who want's a hope of getting elected has to go and promise Murdoch a load of tax cuts, before they even start on the electorate. Otherwise they'll just get gutted by the press from day one.

Desi, how much do you actually know about railways? Because your claim that they were brilliant as independent companies pre-British Rail and then appalling once nationalised just ain't true. As for today's privatised railway, consider this - it now costs TEN TIMES as much to build a sodding passenger footbridge as it did to open an entirely new railway station under British Rail. A lot of people are getting rich quick at the taxpayers' expense.

As for Thatch being working class, ho ho ho. She was that special breed of aspiring lower middle who can't wait to escape the working class tag. She hated the working classes and lost no opportunity to grind their faces into the dirt.

And the idea she wasn't into greed! WHO deregulated the city? Who made sure her mates earned millions out of privatisations?

Interesting quote from the loathsome Ruth Lea.

Council nursery places here aren't coveted but that's snobbery rather than sense for the most part, I covet a Children's Centre place for my child. Better wages and conditions for staff, and public service ethos at various levels rather than just being about cash. Sadly rather old Labour values.