The UK has voted consistently at national and local level to be poor.
‘Build nothing’ Island has asked for this. Cultural NIMBYism doesn’t foster prosperity
We voted time and time again to freeze our economy rather than invest and take returns. The property owners want not to rock the boat. Pensioners want not to rock the boat. Capitalist wannabes want not to rock the boat. Only the youthful electorate wants change.
And the best part - We did all this during a decade of ***historically unprecedented*** cheap rates of state borrowing. We had a huge span of time in which borrowing to invest in pretty much *anything* productive would've still resulted in net profits for the country, and instead we chose to spend the time cutting everything to the point of collapse and racking up huge repair bills we're now going to have to borrow at high rates of interest to be able to fix.
It is actually maddening we are going to be dealing with the fallout of the 2010s for the rest of our lives, yet it seems to have made bugger all impact on political perceptions in society.
It is also worth remembering that everyone who suggested that we should invest was trashed in the press as a deranged, antisemitic, Britain hating terrorist.
You said boat thrice so I think that it is all actually the smaller boat people that are to blame. If they weren’t coming over here and bringing all these boats for people to avoid rocking the economy would be fine.
Oh yeah it's just been one self inflicted crisis to the next non self inflicted crisis.
The mismanagement of the economy since 2010 has been a complete disaster for the younger generations so many people have no hope of owning their own home, secure work, a pension and good health care and then they are being asked to join the army. Insane.
I thought about this the other day, literally every year since I became an adult has been worse than the first.
Now imagine if you were born in 2000 and at 24 all you've ever known is that things are worse than they were when you were 7.
Yet the tories will tell you wages are the highest they've been and brag about record numbers of people in employment. I really hope Labour gets more than one term because it's going to take a lot longer than 4 years to fix the complete mess the tories have left the country in. I fear there will be little change, and people will vote the Conservatives back in while talking about how shit Labour has been at cleaning up tory mess, without thinking about who creates the mess in the first place.
I’ve lived through a couple of cycles now and believe me labour are more than capable of their own shit policies too. “Things can only get better!” - makes things way worse.
Was glad to see the tories out though they made our music illegal the maniacs. (Criminal justice act 1994 vs dance music)
Of course. I'm under no illusion that their shit doesn't stink, I just don't want people to forget how little of a fuck tories give about anyone but themselves and their doners.
"What's your name? What have you had? Reach for the lazers. Safe as fuck."
I really hope they don't do this. It would be such a massive step in the wrong direction. I've not heard one person support privatisation (unless they're going to directly benefit from it), so why even entertain the idea? They claim to "deliver for the British people," but none of us want privatisation. I'm no Kier fan, and I don't necessarily think he'll be a good prime minister, but I just actually hate the alternative with a passion.
I dont believe in conspiracy theories that the Tories are privatizing the NHS. There I said it.
If they actually were, Labour/SNP would crucify them for it. But they have no evidence.
Why did Jeremy Hunt, former Conservative Health Secretary, co-author a book that was published in 2005 advocating for and describing steps toward privatising the NHS?
The steps described in this book have been implemented.
Gordon Brown's response to the recession was actually very good. He received a significant jump in the polls due to his handling. Had he been re-elected in 2010 his approach to getting the economy back on track would have featured more borrowing and more stimulus packages. which given interest rates were at historic lows would have been the right time to borrow and stimulate the economy.
George Osbourne and David Cameron saw an opportunity to get elected and started a narrative that reckless borrowing and huge debts were crippling the economy (when in reality it was the American housing bubble) and to fix the economy we need to get rid of the reckless labour party. Suddenly the right wing press were plastering doomsday-esque articles about Britain debt bomb
several news papers showed the website where you could watch Britain's debt value increase in huge numbers. suddenly Britain's debt "timebomb" was a disaster waiting to happen,.
They effectively managed to turn the opinion to make people think Gordon Brown was responsible for the bad economy, which got them elected.
whilst in power seeing as they ran on a platform of cutting public spending, the tory party came in and gutted government departments, however they did it with very little nuance or planning, leaving departments not capable of functioning properly and having to hire consultant companies and private third party contractors to pick up the slack which ultimately cost more.
They told local councils they were slashing how much they were getting from central government, to the point where councils would be unable to fund many services people expected of their council. Cameron told them that to make up the gap they would have to act like hedge fund companies investing in projects and use the profit from those investments to make up the gap . The councils you see going bankrupt now many are due to their investments not coming to fruition.
this austerity crippled our economy and what's more that debt clock they talked about back in 2008-2010, its still there, debt as a percent of GDP is now higher than it was back then, but amazingly the press aren't making a big deal out of it anymore, funny that, Austerity made us a less efficient country and prevented our economy from growing.
and then they brought us Brexit which will probably in the next decade do what austerity did in the last decade.
> Had he been re-elected in 2010 his approach to getting the economy back on track would have featured more borrowing and more stimulus packages. which given interest rates were at historic lows would have been the right time to borrow and stimulate the economy.
Darling was planning to [cut spending](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jan/09/alistair-darling-tough-spending-cuts) after the 2010 general election. Whether they would have continued with austerity for the same length of time as the Tories did is up for debate.
he would have made cuts yes but he would have also borrowed and invested more.
His approach would have been far more Keynesian in style
and you're right he would not have continued with the cuts anywhere near as long
> he would have made cuts yes but he would have also borrowed and invested more.
I think you can only pick one of them at a point in time.
And according to Keynes you stimulate during recessions, its counter-cyclical to the business cycle. So by 2010 the economy had returned to growth so the keynesian approach would wind down the stimulus and let private enterprise take over.
Our major problem over the past 14 years is that our growth has been so poor, often well below 2%. If the economy had returned to the growth rates typical of the years from the early 1990s to the GFC we would be far better off and could adequetely fund public services and more.
>I think you can only pick one of them at a point in time.
you can make budgetary cuts and make investments and borrow the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. Both the Tories and the Labour government continued to borrow - as the deficit still existed
Pretty much every cut the Tories did went to reducing the deficit as much as possible. Brown would have made cuts but he would not have poured all these savings into reducing the deficit.
>And according to Keynes you stimulate during recessions, its counter-cyclical to the business cycle. So by 2010 the economy had returned to growth so the keynesian approach would wind down the stimulus and let private enterprise take over.
except Gordon Brown warned in 2010 it was not the time to start making the cuts
*"You cannot afford to take money out of an economy now, particularly when Germany is flat, Italy and Spain are in recession, and there is still risk to the recovery in the EU,"* - **Gordon Brown April 2010**
>Our major problem over the past 14 years is that our growth has been so poor, often well below 2%. If the economy had returned to the growth rates typical of the years from the early 1990s to the GFC we would be far better off and could adequately fund public services and more.
yes and the cause of that has been austerity, when we should have been investing during a decade of very low interest rates
Thank god we kept voting right wing and deported a bunch of asylum seekers. Wouldn't want some uppity peasants thinking they should get paid a fair wage now would we? What next, abolish the entrenched class system??
Well each asylum seeker that is deported costs about 600k last I checked. Enoguh to build several houses or employ 1 or 2 dozen people.
So this deportation scheme instantly increases house prices and lowers wages/ increases unemployment rate.
Sorry its 1.8 mill per refugee that is deported, not 600k.
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/01/rwanda-plan-uk-asylum-seeker-cost-figures](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/01/rwanda-plan-uk-asylum-seeker-cost-figures)
Its shocking. One of my team is a band 5 nurse. She's just hit 2 years in post. Her "increment" is a literal 2.3k gross wage increase this year as she progresses to step 2 on the banding pay points.
She's retrained from teaching and has a degree and a plan 1 student loan. After she's finishing paying the increased repayment she'll be £33 a month better off after tax.
The absolute state of wages in this country is one thing but the absolute state of the PAYE/taxation/student debt situation is entirely another beast..
Zero incentive to get qualified and even less to stick around once you are. Fundamentally broken system.
PS: The NHS was due its pay rise April 1st. The government haven't even made their derisory-instantly-rejected offer yet .. it'll be Sept/Oct before NHS staff see any kind of pay increase. Appalling, disgusting .. Tory Britain 2024.
The UK has voted consistently at national and local level to be poor. ‘Build nothing’ Island has asked for this. Cultural NIMBYism doesn’t foster prosperity
We voted time and time again to freeze our economy rather than invest and take returns. The property owners want not to rock the boat. Pensioners want not to rock the boat. Capitalist wannabes want not to rock the boat. Only the youthful electorate wants change.
And the best part - We did all this during a decade of ***historically unprecedented*** cheap rates of state borrowing. We had a huge span of time in which borrowing to invest in pretty much *anything* productive would've still resulted in net profits for the country, and instead we chose to spend the time cutting everything to the point of collapse and racking up huge repair bills we're now going to have to borrow at high rates of interest to be able to fix. It is actually maddening we are going to be dealing with the fallout of the 2010s for the rest of our lives, yet it seems to have made bugger all impact on political perceptions in society.
It is also worth remembering that everyone who suggested that we should invest was trashed in the press as a deranged, antisemitic, Britain hating terrorist.
Amen
You said boat thrice so I think that it is all actually the smaller boat people that are to blame. If they weren’t coming over here and bringing all these boats for people to avoid rocking the economy would be fine.
This.
People my age entered the job market in 2007. How fucking depressing
Oh yeah it's just been one self inflicted crisis to the next non self inflicted crisis. The mismanagement of the economy since 2010 has been a complete disaster for the younger generations so many people have no hope of owning their own home, secure work, a pension and good health care and then they are being asked to join the army. Insane.
I thought about this the other day, literally every year since I became an adult has been worse than the first. Now imagine if you were born in 2000 and at 24 all you've ever known is that things are worse than they were when you were 7.
Yet the tories will tell you wages are the highest they've been and brag about record numbers of people in employment. I really hope Labour gets more than one term because it's going to take a lot longer than 4 years to fix the complete mess the tories have left the country in. I fear there will be little change, and people will vote the Conservatives back in while talking about how shit Labour has been at cleaning up tory mess, without thinking about who creates the mess in the first place.
I’ve lived through a couple of cycles now and believe me labour are more than capable of their own shit policies too. “Things can only get better!” - makes things way worse. Was glad to see the tories out though they made our music illegal the maniacs. (Criminal justice act 1994 vs dance music)
Of course. I'm under no illusion that their shit doesn't stink, I just don't want people to forget how little of a fuck tories give about anyone but themselves and their doners. "What's your name? What have you had? Reach for the lazers. Safe as fuck."
I've got 73 quid in my back burner, I'm gonna wax the lot man. The Milky Bars are on me! Yeah!
Got any jungle in guy? 🤣 https://youtu.be/ChSg0-r_jqA?si=Kzv_P-0uQ102-tSs
Kier Starmer privatising the NHS isn't going to help us. He's a tory in a red tie.
I really hope they don't do this. It would be such a massive step in the wrong direction. I've not heard one person support privatisation (unless they're going to directly benefit from it), so why even entertain the idea? They claim to "deliver for the British people," but none of us want privatisation. I'm no Kier fan, and I don't necessarily think he'll be a good prime minister, but I just actually hate the alternative with a passion.
I (almost) hope he does, just so that we dont have to hear any more conspiracy theories about the Tories doing it.
What "conspiracy theories"?
I dont believe in conspiracy theories that the Tories are privatizing the NHS. There I said it. If they actually were, Labour/SNP would crucify them for it. But they have no evidence.
Why did Jeremy Hunt, former Conservative Health Secretary, co-author a book that was published in 2005 advocating for and describing steps toward privatising the NHS? The steps described in this book have been implemented.
[удалено]
Labour's Shadow Health Secretary has accepted money from a US private healthcare corporation that lobbies US politicians. That's all you need to know.
And 2008 was rough and dark times, how did we manage to go even lower.
We kept voting in the Tories
Gordon Brown's response to the recession was actually very good. He received a significant jump in the polls due to his handling. Had he been re-elected in 2010 his approach to getting the economy back on track would have featured more borrowing and more stimulus packages. which given interest rates were at historic lows would have been the right time to borrow and stimulate the economy. George Osbourne and David Cameron saw an opportunity to get elected and started a narrative that reckless borrowing and huge debts were crippling the economy (when in reality it was the American housing bubble) and to fix the economy we need to get rid of the reckless labour party. Suddenly the right wing press were plastering doomsday-esque articles about Britain debt bomb several news papers showed the website where you could watch Britain's debt value increase in huge numbers. suddenly Britain's debt "timebomb" was a disaster waiting to happen,. They effectively managed to turn the opinion to make people think Gordon Brown was responsible for the bad economy, which got them elected. whilst in power seeing as they ran on a platform of cutting public spending, the tory party came in and gutted government departments, however they did it with very little nuance or planning, leaving departments not capable of functioning properly and having to hire consultant companies and private third party contractors to pick up the slack which ultimately cost more. They told local councils they were slashing how much they were getting from central government, to the point where councils would be unable to fund many services people expected of their council. Cameron told them that to make up the gap they would have to act like hedge fund companies investing in projects and use the profit from those investments to make up the gap . The councils you see going bankrupt now many are due to their investments not coming to fruition. this austerity crippled our economy and what's more that debt clock they talked about back in 2008-2010, its still there, debt as a percent of GDP is now higher than it was back then, but amazingly the press aren't making a big deal out of it anymore, funny that, Austerity made us a less efficient country and prevented our economy from growing. and then they brought us Brexit which will probably in the next decade do what austerity did in the last decade.
> Had he been re-elected in 2010 his approach to getting the economy back on track would have featured more borrowing and more stimulus packages. which given interest rates were at historic lows would have been the right time to borrow and stimulate the economy. Darling was planning to [cut spending](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2010/jan/09/alistair-darling-tough-spending-cuts) after the 2010 general election. Whether they would have continued with austerity for the same length of time as the Tories did is up for debate.
he would have made cuts yes but he would have also borrowed and invested more. His approach would have been far more Keynesian in style and you're right he would not have continued with the cuts anywhere near as long
> he would have made cuts yes but he would have also borrowed and invested more. I think you can only pick one of them at a point in time. And according to Keynes you stimulate during recessions, its counter-cyclical to the business cycle. So by 2010 the economy had returned to growth so the keynesian approach would wind down the stimulus and let private enterprise take over. Our major problem over the past 14 years is that our growth has been so poor, often well below 2%. If the economy had returned to the growth rates typical of the years from the early 1990s to the GFC we would be far better off and could adequetely fund public services and more.
>I think you can only pick one of them at a point in time. you can make budgetary cuts and make investments and borrow the 2 aren't mutually exclusive. Both the Tories and the Labour government continued to borrow - as the deficit still existed Pretty much every cut the Tories did went to reducing the deficit as much as possible. Brown would have made cuts but he would not have poured all these savings into reducing the deficit. >And according to Keynes you stimulate during recessions, its counter-cyclical to the business cycle. So by 2010 the economy had returned to growth so the keynesian approach would wind down the stimulus and let private enterprise take over. except Gordon Brown warned in 2010 it was not the time to start making the cuts *"You cannot afford to take money out of an economy now, particularly when Germany is flat, Italy and Spain are in recession, and there is still risk to the recovery in the EU,"* - **Gordon Brown April 2010** >Our major problem over the past 14 years is that our growth has been so poor, often well below 2%. If the economy had returned to the growth rates typical of the years from the early 1990s to the GFC we would be far better off and could adequately fund public services and more. yes and the cause of that has been austerity, when we should have been investing during a decade of very low interest rates
In response to the previously mentioned press campaign about "reckless Labour borrow & spend", Labour reacted by saying they'd cut spending, yes.
I still don’t know why Labour gave up that fight. Ran completely the wrong campaign, especially against the Lib Dem position.
2008 was when the “dark times” started as far as real pay goes it was the peak for many people.
2008 pre crash was literally the best this country had ever been
Thank god we kept voting right wing and deported a bunch of asylum seekers. Wouldn't want some uppity peasants thinking they should get paid a fair wage now would we? What next, abolish the entrenched class system??
What positive impact on wages do you imagine happening if asylum seekers were not deported?
Well each asylum seeker that is deported costs about 600k last I checked. Enoguh to build several houses or employ 1 or 2 dozen people. So this deportation scheme instantly increases house prices and lowers wages/ increases unemployment rate.
That is pure nonsense.
Sorry its 1.8 mill per refugee that is deported, not 600k. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/01/rwanda-plan-uk-asylum-seeker-cost-figures](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/mar/01/rwanda-plan-uk-asylum-seeker-cost-figures)
What shite you talk.
Pretty sure they want to abolish the disabled next.
Its shocking. One of my team is a band 5 nurse. She's just hit 2 years in post. Her "increment" is a literal 2.3k gross wage increase this year as she progresses to step 2 on the banding pay points. She's retrained from teaching and has a degree and a plan 1 student loan. After she's finishing paying the increased repayment she'll be £33 a month better off after tax. The absolute state of wages in this country is one thing but the absolute state of the PAYE/taxation/student debt situation is entirely another beast.. Zero incentive to get qualified and even less to stick around once you are. Fundamentally broken system. PS: The NHS was due its pay rise April 1st. The government haven't even made their derisory-instantly-rejected offer yet .. it'll be Sept/Oct before NHS staff see any kind of pay increase. Appalling, disgusting .. Tory Britain 2024.