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UK politics general discussion

AstroDan said:
Reports from various sources including The Times, The Guardian and Sky News that the government could block the recommendations from pay review bodies for public sector pay in England.

Having been very much of the 'we respect the pay review bodies' paltry recommendations last year, this year the bodies are recommending, for example, 6.5% rises for all teachers. Even this, of course, would remain a real-term cut on top of the 13 years of non-stop real-terms cuts that we have seen since the coalition government came in from 2010 leaving all teachers many thousands of pounds worse off per year in real terms now vs. 2011. But we're in unusual times where we celebrate pay awards that are barely over half recent inflation levels. It is of course similar across the health service, police, prison service, civil service, council workers and other public sector workers.

Given the (healthy enough) pay awards we have seen in Scotland and Wales, if the government do indeed reject the review bodies offer for workers in England, expect calls for strike action to intensify, wider disruption to society to follow and the likelihood of a general strike to increase as workers in the same position in Scotland could be earning 10% more than the same worker in England, for example.
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The police federation (as close as police are allowed to a union) in the last couple of days has made a load of noise about balloting members on rights for strike action. All a bit toothless but you can bet this is because they have an idea what is about to be offered...
 
My year 7 son came home the other day telling me about his Geography teacher on his last day. He let them play on their phones most of them lesson and told them he was leaving to go and work for Amazon whilst delivering for Deliveroo due to his current "crap job with crap pay" being insufficient. I don't approve of my child being exposed to that but the guy had a point.

I wouldn't get out of bed for the money the likes of teachers and nurses get paid.

Like housing, it's another example of a broken market. If you spend years training and racking up student debt getting in to these professions, where else are you going to go once you qualify? If you spend 30 years growing up in this country, where else are you going to move to?

The East Coast Main Line has spent much of its privatised existence under public ownership. Many banks after the 2008 crash were effectively nationalised before being sold back to the private sector at a loss because they were too big to fail. The government has had to subsidise energy bills so that electric and gas companies can continue raking in private profits. Thames water is going tits up at the moment, and we all know what now follows. Something very wrong with this country.

These "market forces" are broken, a relic of failed ideology. The result will be a broken health service, closed schools, homelessness, strikes, civil unrest, government bailouts, national debt and poverty. So much for Thatcher and her widely revered policies fixing things and "leaving the country in a far better state" as she declared with tears of her own self pity in her eyes. I only wish this brand of politics did "leave Downing Street for the very last time".
 
We can keep blaming the Tories, and Thatcher in particular, but...
Didn't we get a nice Labour government after the Tories?
That nice Mr Blair will sort things out.
They did absolutely nothing to restore equality in Britain, they were too busy enjoying being in charge, dancing to Oasis with Cool Brittannia.
Not just Thatcher, blame Labour too, for failing to restore some balance when they had the clear opportunity.
New Labour, Old Tory...remember that one.
 
rob666 said:
We can keep blaming the Tories, and Thatcher in particular, but...
Didn't we get a nice Labour government after the Tories?
That nice Mr Blair will sort things out.
They did absolutely nothing to restore equality in Britain, they were too busy enjoying being in charge, dancing to Oasis with Cool Brittannia.
Not just Thatcher, blame Labour too, for failing to restore some balance when they had the clear opportunity.
New Labour, Old Tory...remember that one.
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There was waaaay more investment in schools certainly when I was in the early part of my career. The BSF programme, SureStart and National Literacy Programme were just two things that spring to mind. That Labour government really invested in education.

They didn't go far enough but my god it was leagues better than anything we've had since.

We even got pay awards in line with inflation. Since, pay has fallen, fallen and fallen more.
 
Whichever way you want to look at it, the country is just broken. It doesn't make enough money to meet its costs. If it was a private company we would have gone bust years ago. That's why the likes of teachers etc can't have proper pay-rises, because we apparently don't have the money to pay so many people an additional amount every single year going forward. We relied on cheaper foreign labour for so long that our companies got used to not spending money on training their own apprentices so now we apparently have a massive skills shortage (what a surprise). Unless you live in a shared house or with your parents no one wants to do the service sector or minimum wage jobs because there's no way you can afford a roof over your head anyway on that income so a lot of people just don't bother and choose 'another way' whatever that may be. I think we're all well aware of the wilful neglect of building enough housing supply which has led to the state of the current housing market too.

Crime is out of control due to a lack of police presence on the streets and pathetic sentencing due to overcrowded prisons and outdated sentencing guidelines. Want to go to the doctors? Good luck. Your local doctor is now trying to serve thousands of extra patients. Want to drive anywhere? Enjoy your increasing traffic and seemingly increasingly dangerous and incompetent fellow drivers. Most of our politicians are only interested in themselves and their own remuneration in the long run. I doubt it's even possible for the next government to improve things much, because the situation is just so dire now financially. I think if you look at most of the industrialized world now we're all reaching a stage where the capitalism that people enjoyed since the wars has now reached a stage where it doesn't work any more and many are having the same issues with housing costs etc. There doesn't seem to be much hope for the future if things stay the same.
 
If only the incumbents weren't spending millions on dodgy PPE and iffy contracts with mates over investing in the country.

Then when the news cycle gets to close push out some racism or transphobia to distract the masses and make them OUTRAGED at the things which are actually to blame instead of weak leadership.
 
AstroDan said:
There was waaaay more investment in schools certainly when I was in the early part of my career. The BSF programme, SureStart and National Literacy Programme were just two things that spring to mind. That Labour government really invested in education.

They didn't go far enough but my god it was leagues better than anything we've had since.

We even got pay awards in line with inflation. Since, pay has fallen, fallen and fallen more.
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Surestart was mopped up by the middle classes round here, not the intended target.
School investment fine, but there was zero effort to rebalance the working taxation system, business taxes and wealth tax.
Hip Tony didn't want to lose the middle class vote through taxation, so simply didn't spend on sorting poverty and housing.
Maggie flogged the social housing stock off, why did he not rebuild, instead of sucking up to the private sector builders?

We are all on the highway to hell...hottest June ever as well.
 
Way I see it , conservatives won’t fix the country, Labour won’t fix the country, Lib Dem who? - we need a new strong party in the UK.
 
Just read an article from a posh estate agent in today's I paper, which sent me bouncing off to house sale records and govt. homeless figures.
Bit of interesting inequality...
If the person who purchased Britain's most expensive house, said "No, flip this, it is silly, I will give all the money to the homeless for flat deposits instead", they could pay a five hundred pound deposit for every homeless family/household in England and Wales, with enough change for a week's aldi and a hundred quid deposit on their energy bill.
All from the sale of a single private detached house next to Regents Park, with four acres.
Ain't that strange.
 
I dont disagree about New Labour.

But one thing I can't bare is 'we're f****d anyway".

We're not. There's always another way.

Many European countries are in a much better state than us and public services are nationalised and have way more investment.

26 years of my 39 year life have been under the Tories.

People need to wake up and see what WE have all allowed to happen by virtue of our choices in elections and referendums over the last few decades.
 
GaryH said:
Way I see it , conservatives won’t fix the country, Labour won’t fix the country, Lib Dem who? - we need a new strong party in the UK.
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I think it's difficult to have a new strong and effective party under the current political system, which is why neither of the incumbents are in a rush to change it.
 
Whether you agreed with or voted for Brexit or not, we could potentially have had several years less of the Tories if the other main parties would have promised to respect the result of the referendum if they were to win the election. They wouldn't do that so a lot of people who wanted the Brexit vote to be respected only had one party left to vote for.
Anyway, as Rick said, whilst our political system stays as it is you'll always end up with Tory or Labour in power and they're not much different in reality. I don't have faith in any of them but others are free to keep hoping for better if that helps them out mentally.
 
BarryZola said:
Whether you agreed with or voted for Brexit or not, we could potentially have had several years less of the Tories if the other main parties would have promised to respect the result of the referendum if they were to win the election. They wouldn't do that so a lot of people who wanted the Brexit vote to be respected only had one party left to vote for.
Anyway, as Rick said, whilst our political system stays as it is you'll always end up with Tory or Labour in power and they're not much different in reality. I don't have faith in any of them but others are free to keep hoping for better if that helps them out mentally.
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It was a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Brexit was so obviously going to be a disaster that those who actually cared about the country had little choice but to push for the peoples vote. In order to try and protect us from the cluster f we are experiencing now.

But I do think the Corbyn factor was as strong if not stronger than the brexit vote. Some friends of mine hated brexit and didn’t want to leave but could t bear to vote for Corbyn rightly or wrongly.
 
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Each to their own, of course, but I still don’t quite understand why Jeremy Corbyn was so hated. I get that he had some extreme views, but I actually thought that a lot of his policies were great ideas, and I think he could have been a great Prime Minister, personally.
 
It was a combination of, in no particular order:
  • His own poor communication style
  • His lack of charisma and aesthetic - hugely important for a successful politician
  • His past practices and comments being resurrected and scrutinised
  • His leadership weakness, particularly the failure to kill off the idea of a second referendum and not stand up to backstabbers more decisively
  • Successful and unified attacks from the Conservative Party, their mouthpiece press outlets and social media regurgitators
  • The issue of apparent anti-Semitism and his apparent unwillingness to deal with it (contributing to the above)
 
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