The Labour Government

[BobKowalski]

A devious, high level political operative as Ambassador in the US capital with a whackadoodle President in power.

Definitely qualified for the job.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Because they shared a mutual friend?

 

[bluethrunthru]

They have done nothing they are all the same ........ this week ...... oh wait......

UK buys back 36,000 military homes after 'disastrous' privatisation

Military homes bought by Ministry of Defence in £6bn deal to end 'disastrous' privatisation sell-off that cost taxpayers £8bn.

www.bigissue.com

Labour promises £1bn to tackle homelessness in shift towards prevention

The Labour government has said it will spend £1bn tackling homelessness in 2025 by shifting to prevention to end homeless crisis.

www.bigissue.com

 

[TinFoilHat]

Personally, I think it’s a good call for a seasoned veteran who had fingers in all of Epstein's sex toys.

 

[TinFoilHat]

It goes much further back, the 2008 crash was just the coup de grâce. Our problems can be traced back as far as the 70s under Wilson and Callaghan where we failed to modernise our means of production and kowtowed to the union demands. Thatcher then systematically dismantled our manufacturing industry in favour of the financial serviced sector which makes your economy very prone to financial shocks along with the criminal sell off of our utilities.
Move along to Blair with his laissez-faire approach to spending, failing to put money away in case of further financial shocks and you end up at 2008...

At each stage there was an opportunity to do something which would have made it better in the long run for the residents of the UK but they failed.

Straight out the RW chattering classes handbook that.

Always the workers fault. Never the corporates/Banks.

 

[Kompany Car]

Which was the point I made. We know where the money goes, spent and is also wasted on deferred capital investment projects like HS2. Transparency is not the issue. Long term planning and competent management from central Govt is the issue.

It doesn’t help matters when you abandon your European industrial strategy overnight, change PM’s every 18 months - each with a differing idea of what direction to take - Johnson’s 1970’s Bennite levelling up to Truss and her libertarian far right voodoo economics. On top of that you can chuck in a pandemic and a European war for good measure.

What we need right now is stability of Govt for a few years, a consistent idea of where we are going and why. A govt that actually governs. It will make mistakes as all Govts do, but sensible, boring, technocratic governance will do for now.

Ok let me rephrase, accountability at the time of expenditure rather than a few years after the projects haven't been delivered to budget, in a timely manner and an acknowledgement where they have failed. A clear plan of how the failure will be prevented in the future and how the financial position will be recovered rather than just writing it off.

Its dead easy to keep spending money until you've used up your budget where oversight is poor and then ask for more, cap in hand a few years later, whilst only delivering a small percentage of what you promised to do. This issue is true not only for large projects like HS2 but for the thousands of projects run by both national and local government. I see it day in, day out with transport projects, many only costing a few million, where they are started, committed to in government plans, developed up to a AFC design, then shelved, never to be seen again. The same with defence projects, refits, facilities improvements, started and stopped continuously but its only a few million here and a few million there so you know its just wastage...

All I want for the tax I pay, is for people to say what they are going to do, deliver it on time and as close to budget as possible. It seems however like that is too much to ask.

I do agree that government should be boring, as with all the best leadership what you want are boring leaders that get on with the job, deliver and carry on quietly making things better and letting the actual results do the talking. The problem is everyone wants to be a celebrity these days.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Straight out the RW chattering classes handbook that.

Always the workers fault. Never the corporates/Banks.

I think he has failed to grasp how low down on its arse the country was back then. We ended going to the IMF for a loan - there was no money to improve and re-invest in the fabled "means of production".

There was still a textiles industry - my Dad then worked at Tongue dying in Middleton dying fabrics made in Lancashire - that went abroad because it was cheap not because of lack of investment. The motor industry was failing - instead of killing marques off BLMC just absorbed them and badge engineered versions of say the 1100 as Austin, Morris, Riley, Wolesley, MG and VDP whereas it would have been sensible to just do one version and go down the L, GL, GS, VDP and Sport route - and rail was sacrificed for roads travel among many other things. As for Blair - a thundercunt with questions to answer over Iraq/Afghanistan but the NHS was at its highest approval ratings thanks to investment and effort and there was Surestart for starters

 

[Kompany Car]

Straight out the RW chattering classes handbook that.

Always the workers fault. Never the corporates/Banks.

Tell me how it was the corporates and the banks ? Germany managed to do it, leading them to have a thriving industrial base. Take a look at British Leyland, Rover, Triumph etc, the joke being that you didnt buy a car made on a Friday because by the end of Friday nobody gave a shit so the quality was poor. More highly automated production lines didnt have this problem.

Its wasn't the corporates that were doing it, it was the demands of the market due to competition. The better you could machine components, the longer they last and the higher their reliability is. Germany arrived in the 80's seen as a producer of high volume quality products, the UK on the other hand outside of very high value low volume brands seen as no better than cheap imports from outside Europe.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Tell me how it was the corporates and the banks ? Germany managed to do it, leading them to have a thriving industrial base. Take a look at British Leyland, Rover, Triumph etc, the joke being that you didnt buy a car made on a Friday because by the end of Friday nobody gave a shit so the quality was poor. More highly automated production lines didnt have this problem.

Its wasn't the corporates that were doing it, it was the demands of the market due to competition. The better you could machine components, the longer they last and the higher their reliability is. Germany arrived in the 80's seen as a producer of high volume quality products, the UK on the other hand outside of very high value low volume brands seen as no better than cheap imports from outside Europe.

How old are you mate?

 

[Vic]

Matbe by getting all the ‘bad news’ out the way now then, yeah, they have 4 years for people to forget it ever happened.

But they need to start getting things ‘right’ pretty soon, or all the shit just goes on the list

The media thrives on things going wrong.

Would you notice if Labour does get 1000 more GPs in post next year?