The Sunak Government 2022-

[Junco Partner]

Another two words which might help explain it...

Excessive profiteering

[YorksHammer]

^^^^ Two words which might help explain it: UK and global

It doesn't help explain the 0 tax figure at all. There's a massive 'investment' loophole that wipes out the extra tax the treasury would get.

Guess who encouraged the investment earlier this year to specifically to avoid paying more tax?

Go on, guess.

Kwasi Kwarteng.

Who, of course, is funded by donations from fossil fuel companies.

And a lot of that investment was already promised ahead of the tax coming in.

It's a flawed tax, implemented by people with a vested interest in those companies continuing to make money.

[bubbles1966]

As Hannibal in the A-Team used to say, "I love it when a plan comes into contact with reality."

Or something like that.

[OFT]

The Cameron Government, The May Gov. The Johnson Gov, The Truss Gov, The Sunak Gov, have I missed anyone?
Genuine question:-
Is the nation better or worse after 12 years?

[DaveWHU1964]

The Cameron Government, The May Gov. The Johnson Gov, The Truss Gov, The Sunak Gov, have I missed anyone?
Genuine question:-
Is the nation better or worse after 12 years?

If a Tory genuinely feels it’s better now then fair enough, that’s their call. If they think that’s what the country believes then they would be deluding themselves.

[mumbles87]

The Cameron Government, The May Gov. The Johnson Gov, The Truss Gov, The Sunak Gov, have I missed anyone?
Genuine question:-
Is the nation better or worse after 12 years?

id argue its worse, however I dont think its as black and white as its the tories fault.

Could easily argue that Camerons gov had to act on the back of labours mishandling of the finance sector which party led to the crash , so they had to implement measures to combat that

However they didnt have to go for the brexit vote, which has caused so much issue in the country. Division has never been stronger. there never was a clear defined what brexit was so nobody could truly say I voted for this brexit or that brexit as brexit was just a name for everything. then to step down and not see it through meaning more uncertainty ..

then boris would have been an ok pm during good times.. his "charm" etc would have overlooked his dishonesty , but covid hit and his behaviours were not fitting of a leader of a country. Still a big kid ..

so outside influences and the way they have dealt with them have been the downfall

say we had sunak as leader during covid. I think he would have handled it far better and with a bit of respect.

[delbert]

The Cameron Government, The May Gov. The Johnson Gov, The Truss Gov, The Sunak Gov, have I missed anyone?
Genuine question:-
Is the nation better or worse after 12 years?

Worse, or at least it seems to be. Despite paying shitloads in tax nothing seems to be working as it should, they have all been weak. What we need is a short, sharp, shock of proper baby kicking Toryism, we need:

A government of bastards lead by Gene Hunt.
A government that twats wokery into unconsciousness and takes a steaming dump all over public opinion.
A government that does things for the good of the country, not for itself and certainly not to appease twitter freaks and wet liberals.
A government that actively looks for failings and head butts those failings into efficiency (NHS and Home Office, look out).
A government that promotes common sense over ideology (net zero hoofed onto a coal fired back burner).
A government that will move Brexit on.
A government we deserve........

[bubbles1966]

The Cameron Government, The May Gov. The Johnson Gov, The Truss Gov, The Sunak Gov, have I missed anyone?
Genuine question:-
Is the nation better or worse after 12 years?

To answer that, you need to remember 2010.

- Body bags from Iraq and Afghanistan what felt like every night;
- Social services systematically covering up child abuse in the name of diversity;
- Three million on the dole;
- The collapse of the banking system;
- The growth of widespread homegrown terrorism in the name of jihad;
- The SNP already in power in Scotland due to devolution;
- The low paid being taxed into poverty the minute they had the temerity to earn £96 a week

So, many things are better.

Many things are still wrong though but they aren't 'Britain' - they are the domain of the public sector. Defining Britain by the public sector is one of the biggest things that's wrong with it.

[Johnny Byrne's Boots]

I'm voting for delbert.

[YorksHammer]

Given that the 2008 financial crisis was a global issue started in America due to energy rises (in 2005) that led to inflation, a mortgage squeeze, and a property bubble burst that bled into other global financial institutions causing a global financial crisis that we were all in globally as a globe, I'm surprised to here you lay the blame for that and the subsequent unemployment rise (from ~5% to over 8%) at the feet of the Government of the time, Bubbles, when you're very keen to point out that the current crisis is a global one impacting the globe globally so we can't blame the Tories for the current woes of the country.

We - the common person in the street - are not better off. Local services closed, stagnant wages that aren't yet back at 2008 levels, and increased inequality caused by the rush for growth that led to insecure temporary work and removal of mechanisms that are to reduce poverty/lower inequality. You could argue we're not worse off, but we're certainly not better off.

Between 2008 and 2010, the stimulus program in place raised incomes fastest for the poorest fifth of society at 3.4%, while in the richest two fifths it grew by 0.3% (https://ifs.org.uk/publications/living- ... ty-uk-2013). Austerity flipped that on it's head and increased, rather than reduced, inequality. Wonder what would have happened had the work that was started in that two year period was allowed to finish.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

The collapse in our banking system?

Plenty of posts pointing out things that have happened here being worse this time due to decisions taken by our govt. The same was true of 2008, a global event sprinkled with locally taken decisions (pre, during and post) that made things here tougher than they might have been.

[old fart]

The collapse in our banking system?

Plenty of posts pointing out things that have happened here being worse this time due to decisions taken by our govt. The same was true of 2008, a global event sprinkled with locally taken decisions (pre, during and post) that made things here tougher than they might have been.

such as?

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

such as?

Off the top of my head.

Borrowing to spend through a boom.
The push to follow Clinton's sub prime example.
PFI PFI PFI
Unfunded rises in public sector wages and pensions.
Bailouts of building and motor industries with no return.
Pushing HBoS onto Lloyds
Not getting any concessions when the banks came begging for a bailout

[YorksHammer]

The collapse in our banking system?

Plenty of posts pointing out things that have happened here being worse this time due to decisions taken by our govt. The same was true of 2008, a global event sprinkled with locally taken decisions (pre, during and post) that made things here tougher than they might have been.

Which is absolutely fair enough. But to suggest that somehow this was a mark against the previous government - and especially the 3% jump in unemployment caused by it - is a bit of a stretch, I think. I'm not completely in touch with what was going on then, I wasn't as political as I am now, but I think the Government here wasn't pushing sub-prime mortgages, for example. Had the US market not fallen apart so suddenly and Lehmann Brothers not crashed, might the rest of the world barely been impacted? A question for someone with much more knowledge than me.

It's a bit like someone saying it was Thatcher that caused the UK banking crash in 08 because she oversaw the deregulation of banks in the 80s - a very distant cause that could have been stopped had someone wanted to, but nobody wanted to.

It says a lot that 14 years later on banker's bonuses are going to become uncapped (I don't think this was abandoned by Hunt?) and the Tory Government are pushing for further deregulation of the banking industry, as I understand.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

It's a bit like someone saying it was Thatcher that caused the UK banking crash in 08 because she oversaw the deregulation of banks in the 80s - a very distant cause that could have been stopped had someone wanted to, but nobody wanted to.

But labour were in power in 2008 and had been since 97. Policies of deregulation and a desire to leap after Clinton and the glass-steagall act led directly to the rise of casino banking and the likes of Fred the Shred (who labour pressed the regulators to leave alone).

These were decisions taken here that meant we were hit harder than otherwise would have been the case. Just as now there were global and local problems. Lehman bros wasn't labours fault, RBS and the like were. Putin isn't the Tories fault, the chaos of the end of Johnson and truss were.

[bubbles1966]

Which is absolutely fair enough. But to suggest that somehow this was a mark against the previous government - and especially the 3% jump in unemployment caused by it - is a bit of a stretch, I think.

The question that was posed was whether the country was a better place.

That was answered without any mention of the government.

You're the one who has got all sensitive that a reminder of the reality of life then has been brought up.

[Junco Partner]

The Cameron Government, The May Gov. The Johnson Gov, The Truss Gov, The Sunak Gov, have I missed anyone?
Genuine question:-
Is the nation better or worse after 12 years?

To answer that, you need to remember what was promised in 2010.

They were going to 'pay down the debt'....they've almost tripled it.

12 years of austerity delivering nothing but a 12 year rut
Brexit being an almighty cock-up
Worst pandemic response in the developed world
Our life expectancy reversing
Millions of poor, hungry children
Most expensive rail tickets in Europe
Rivers of human excrement flowing untreated into the sea
Out-of-control inflation
Constant political scandals
Constant political corruption
A sinking currency
Food bank use up 2,400%
A fragmenting United Kingdom
Peace in NI tipped into a tailspin
Longest NHS waiting lists on record
Struggling public services
Prisons on verge of breaking down
A wave of strikes
Crime off the charts
Enfeebled armed forces
Lowest growth in the G7
Highest tax rates since the war

Even looking at the components of the Thatcherite utopia of a property owning democracy it's clear they've failed:
Home ownership dwindling to minority status
Car ownership dwindling to minority status
Share ownership dwindling to tiny minority status


They've made sure our country is no longer the stable, successful state it was in 2010.....but on the flip side a handful of billionaires have grown even more mindbogglingly rich, so you know it all balances out

[mumbles87]

Really hard to disagree with this

[Plashet Grove Pete]

"Worst pandemic response in the developed world".

Wow. Some people are certainly shifting their position given how they supported the actions taken to suppress Covid.

Hindsight, eh?

[YorksHammer]

The question that was posed was whether the country was a better place.

Yes, after 12 years of Tories being in power. To which you responded with a list of things that were 'left' by the Government before, things people regularly when damning the legacy of New Labour.

The truth is that New Labour failed miserably to protect the country against global financial problems by letting the city go unregulated far too long. The Conservatives have subsequently failed over 12 years to get the country back to anywhere near pre-Crash levels* economically.

Personally I have little faith that either Sunak or Starmer will succeed where the five PMs since the crash have failed. I'd rather vote for neither of them if there was a viable alternative that fell in line with my political beliefs.

(*They have arguably succeeded on unemployment, although how much of that figure is insecure work could reveal a bit of a false figure. Also, unemployment was only slightly higher than it is now pre-crash)