2024 Election thread

Seem to remember you're a teacher so can understand why you're keen 😉

I said it was down to me. What part of that don't you understand?

Pretty well established that Labour's big boost in education spending has completely transformed secondary schools, especially in London. Weird that you would think that a negative.

Here you go.

You figured incorrectly. We don't do public projects. Private clients only.

The regulatory framework was much, much less onerous under Labour: that's the difference.

Maybe it is a hobby horse of mine, but a lot of the growth under the Blair years wasn't sustainable which led to the GFC.

I don't really believe governments create growth. They can encourage or hinder it a bit at most. They can decide what to do with a portion of the proceeds, which may feed back positively or negatively but again it's incremental.

People took progressively greater financial risks because they (wrongly) felt safe to do so. That has more to do with human nature than which colour rosette the government wears.

I replied to your reply to my post. It's a discussion forum - we don't get to choose who replies to what.

I’m not a teacher.

I didn't say Labour caused the growth. I said there was unsustainable growth, so those rosy years should be viewed in the context of what came later. I think the period would also have been relatively rosy under a Tory government and also would have culminated in the GFC.

Labour were also fortunate to inherit an economy in a good state from the Tories when they came to power in '97.

Thanks for your value added contribution, as ever.

Indeed, but that wasn't happening and, in any case, it is hard to see in isolation. Would Labour have spent so much on schools if the economy wasn't so good? It's probably true that they would have spent more than the Tories, but then I wouldn't have expected Labour to be the government that introduced tuition fees and started to lock people up for 30 days without trial (plus all the other stuff).

I don't agree with Stevo_666's politics, but it's clear that the Tories are more likely to give him what he wants (wealth protection, lower taxes relative to Labour etc.) If that is not the case, then all the people who vote Labour for more social justice are being misled.

I agree to an extent. In the early days that certainly had things going their way outside their control. I think they spent wisely but the gold sell off was stupid and I'm not convinced the way they did PFI was the best solution (I'm pretty sure I remember you have strong views on that but can't remember which way). I don't recall tax rates being particularly high but my salary more than doubled (probably trebled) over the period so that would have hidden the worst of it. I certainly can't remember their financial policies doing anything to suggest Stevo's dire warnings of 'if you think it's bad now wait until you see what it's like under Labour' which seems to be entirely related to their ill-fated late 70s antics. To be honest, I can't really think of anything Labour did that affected me massively either way unlike the Tories since 2015 (actually the coalition were bad for me personally with the HICBC).

My issue now isn't so much with specific policies or tax rates as the total incompetence that has been shown in the last 9 years which feels like it must be holding back growth. Everything feels that bit worse than it was, paying more and getting less. Even allowing that whilst the Blair Government was a reasonably 'lucky' Government the current one has had more than its fair share of 'bad luck' it really is hard to see how any other Government could make things worse. I'm still struggling with the idea of voting Labour but short of not voting I'm not sure what the option is although it is pretty irrelevant in these parts.

We're all going to be paying more tax for the foreseeable.