What did the Conservatives ever do for us ? AKA lets apportion blame where it is due [smile]

[Dymaxion]

After 14 long years of Conservative government, we now have another Party at the helm. I can't help feeling that a lot of what has occurred under the Conservatives will be quickly blamed on the Labour party, who have only been in power for a week, so thought it might be wise to start a thread summarising the Conservatives legacy ?

To start,

1. Brexit is a fairly obvious one, the way in which this was handled by senior Conservative's was absolutely shocking.
2. Liz Truss's mini budget, what was your interest rate pre September 2022 and what is it now ?
3. The NHS, and social care in crisis.
4. Prison and court systems/probabtion in absolute tatters and fit to burst.

Feel free to add your own

...

The Environment/ climate change @HannibalHeyes

😁

They almost managed to kill off the NHS
Huge real cuts to school budgets
Brought in a post-truth culture

Cameron told us to vote remain.
Corbyn said nothing.

I blame Bojo for brexit - a high profile, charismatic campaign from him. To a lesser extent, I also blame Corbyn. He could have stood with Cameron and together they could have united most voters. He just said nothing. He was complicit.

Education was also well fucked before 2010. Teachers being attacked, on ADs etc (I know them).

Oh and Bojo personally cooked Covid on stag do in Wuhan.

From a dyed in the wool Tory voter:

"You can't just ignore problems, waste billions and then go to the country and expect them to let you ^carry on"
^
From a 2019 Tory voter:

"That thing where people don't believe the story they tell on breakfast telly so they tell a different one on the evening news an arf gets on your wick after a while"

From someone whose voting history I have no idea about:

"They've made everything worse"

They got a Covid vaccine sorted out faster than other countries and probably others parties here.

Conservative Mrs. May had something in her initial 2017 manifesto about care for the elderly. She had the guts not to run away from the topic. There was such a fuss about it. I think it was called 'the granny tax' or something like that. It was taken out of the manifesto. Blame goes to other members of her party, the bastard press who wittered on and on about it and the pratting sheep in this country who baaed what the pratting press told them to.

In the last year interest rates for savers definitely improved. I blame no-one. Maybe the Tories had a hand in that improvement. Perhaps it was the Bank of England wot dunnit.

Could it be argued that the Chancellor Rishi Sunak didn't do too badly trying to manage the financial situation at the time of lockdown, when many people weren't going to work. I don't suppose it was perfect but it wasn't all regarded as rubbish at the time.

I've been teaching since 2007. I cannot even begin to describe how much worse things are in schools under a Tory government. It's been a complete shambles.

Gay marriage.
covid vaccine

Liz Truss gate is an interesting one. No-one has yet explained how that budget managed to impact all developed economies in the same way. Everyone else's rates increased at the same time and at the same rate too. Was it just a case of bad timing?

They made a big show of the first vaccine in an arm in December 2020. But when did most of us get ours? July?

Most European countries had a better vaccinated population than us by December 2021.

That was one nationally positive thing (globally not so sure) and that was really down to researchers and the NHS, but the rest of the response was a shit show.

Gay marriage? Beginning to end? Genuine question. Or did they just sign off the hard work of others? I can’t remember.

To be fair to him, he did an ok job in difficult circumstances. What he didn’t do was acknowledge and set aside his privilege to really understand the hardship experienced but many. He was too out of touch and it’s only after his loss that I’m seeing any signs of humanity and humility.

Year by year huge cuts everywhere: police, NHS, education, social services. I doubt even with a very competent government all of the above will ever be completely restored as it was pre Tory government.

Furlough - although I didn't benefit, it helped many through a global pandemic.

Well I’ve just this second heard Keir Starmer is considering letting prisoners out early if they have served 40% of their sentence - to ease over population of prisons.

I mean that’s going to be great seeing your rapist walking about even earlier but yay… at least the Tory’s are out…..

Prisoners being released early was all over the news weeks ago whilst the Tories were still the government,mainly because the prisons are at bursting point this is not something Labour has just decided to do.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jun/20/prisons-in-england-and-wales-will-be-at-breaking-point-in-july-governors-told

And from last year

https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2023/08/prisons-breaking-point

My understanding is that the Tories were looking to do it, too. I heard Rory Stewart on radio this morning - interesting.