Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 59 total)
  • So what did the (Romans) Labour government ever do for us?
  • I_did_dab
    Free Member

    So what did the Romans Labour government ever do for us?
    My top picks:
    Spent money on the NHS – reduced waiting times, rebuilt hospitals
    Spent money on education – reduced primary class sizes, rebuilt university infrastructure
    Reduced the threshold for gift aid to £1
    Pushed the G8 for the Millennium goals for developing countries
    Introduced 'right to roam' in the countryside (sadly not for bikes)
    Banned hunting with dogs

    CaptJon
    Free Member

    Minimum wage
    Sorted out the banking crisis

    slugwash
    Free Member

    Created family tax credits for lower income households 🙂

    Tried to initiate ID cards 🙁

    fatboyslo
    Free Member

    The number of people unemployed in the UK rose by 53,000 to 2.51 million during the three months to March, official figures have shown. 👿

    Increased the CCTV ( surviellance) culture 👿

    Reduced civil liberties 👿

    Started to create a Police state 👿

    Banned hunting with dogs ….. 👿

    Started an illegal war 👿

    Helped create a banking crisis 👿

    Zulu-Eleven
    Free Member

    Invaded Iraq

    (Oops, sorry, you wanted to forget that one didn't you!)

    Pook
    Full Member

    Sure start centres
    child tax credits
    minimum wage

    fatboyslo
    Free Member

    Oh… nearly forgot the ID card fiasco 👿

    there's just so many things they got wrong it's hard to know what to put on the list 😉

    I_did_dab
    Free Member

    yeah yeah, someone else start a slagging off thread. I want to be positive today.
    Keep the good ones coming…
    You'll remember in the original scene it was the anti-Romans talking…

    kimbers
    Full Member

    freedom of information act
    without that we would never have learnt about expenses etc

    and both wars were done with the full support of the tory 'opposition'

    IanMunro
    Free Member

    Free porn films for minster's husbands 🙂

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    Double taxed pensions – dividends earned by the underlying fund are taxed and then the payment is taxed again (afaik).

    Repeatedly announced the same spending on NHS multiple times to fool the general public that the amount they were spending was more than it really was.

    Jiggered about with the FSA, BoE etc. and then let them have free reign, which contributed to the massive banking collapse.

    Kept going on about bankers bonuses. The chancellor of the exchequer basically has the top responsibility for the banking system, and GB was at the top of that for a decade. and then the excrement hit the aircon.

    Sold the family silver (well gold) at the lowest possible price he could have obtained. (Currency is secured against gold reserves).

    OK all of the above was GB specifically, rather than Labour in general.

    edit: oh and tax credits was one of many clever bits of politics from the biggest spin doctor of them all. Makes total tax receipts appear artificially lower, and makes total benefits payments look lower.

    So to the above add..

    increased tax in pretty much every year GB was at #11

    made the complete book of tax definitions about 5x bigger than it had ever been previously.

    kimbers
    Full Member

    whileim at it could someoone please explain why extra cctv is bad thing?

    in camden its help clear the streets of drug dealing

    kimbers
    Full Member

    oh and the smoking ban

    torys would never have gone for that!

    I_did_dab
    Free Member

    oh and the smoking ban

    How could I have forgotten that one. Very sad to see "cigarette pusher to kids" Ken Clarke back *shudder*

    kimbers
    Full Member

    and the gold thing is bollox 60% of the reserves were sold- less than 1% of our national debt (if theyd been sold at the highest price)
    hysteria for the gullable whipped up by the tory press

    pensions yes they fuct them royally though it was the pension holidays that did the real damage, lawson, lamont and brown guilty of that

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    Cut inheritance tax.

    Increased the stamp duty rate in line with inflation.

    What? They didn't do either of those? Ohh.

    (But yes, Sure start centres, child tax credits and minimum wage are all good calls).

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    andytherocketeer – Member

    Double taxed pensions – dividends earned by the underlying fund are taxed and then the payment is taxed again (afaik).

    actually removed a tax perk on pensions that unfairly benefited the richest. Middle earners pay tax to subsidise the richest peoples pensions –

    Sold the family silver (well gold) at the lowest possible price he could have obtained. (Currency is secured against gold reserves).

    WTF – currency is not secured against gold and has not been for decades.

    Try again

    missingfrontallobe
    Free Member

    Spent money on the NHS – reduced waiting times, rebuilt hospitals

    Waiting times, fiddled in many NHS trusts & foundation hosps to meet the govt targets. Means patients in A&E are often bumpoed onto wards within 4 hours because they then meet the 4 hour wait in A&E, even though assessment & primary treatment may not have been completed.

    Rebuilt hospitals, well, remember pre 1997 election when Tony B.Liar said that new Labour would do away with private finance initiative? Nearly all hosps built under Labour have been PFI builds, placing NHS trusts & foundations in massive debt for 25 years or longer. Also means semi-privatatisation, as support services, catering, portering, domestic services are usually operated by the build company meaning staff with many years NHS service have in effect been re-employed but without the same contracts.

    Sure Start – shown to not have had any significant positive outcomes, hence plans to cancel the scheme.

    binners
    Full Member

    Paid inordinate amounts of taxpayers money on 'management consultants'

    Created a new quango a week

    Done away with hundreds of years of legal precedent by doing away with Trial by Jury when it suits

    Declared war on our civil liberties generally

    Be honest: did you see this in any manifesto's in 1997

    molgrips
    Free Member

    Hereford got a nice new hospital didn't it?

    Flaperon
    Full Member

    Smoking ban and 24 hour drinking. About the only two positive things to come out of the last 13 years that I can remember.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Freedom of Information act
    Operational independence for the Bank of England
    Smoking ban

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    devolution and massive NHS improvements

    missingfrontallobe
    Free Member

    TandemJeremy – Member
    devolution and massive NHS improvements

    in Scotland

    stumpyjon
    Full Member

    Much as I hated GB and his bunch I will grudgingly admit they got a few things right,

    minimum wage
    shifting interest reat control to the BOE
    smoking ban
    fox hunting ban.

    However the list of cock ups is endless.

    new schools and hospitals yay right up to the point you realise they were all done on credit.
    Massive waste of money on social engineering policies with no tangible benefits, ie no new infrastructure, no social benefit either according to a recent audit report.
    IRAQ IRAQ IRAQ
    Massive disingenous tax rises.
    Complete failure to control banks, personbal credit or house prices.
    Green policy to hide more tax increases
    Complete failure to use tax revenues to invest in the infrastruce of the country (PFI used instead, money wasted on social engineering)
    Devolution – massive waste of money and extra civil servents.
    Failure to get a grip on public sector unions (again)
    Where as the Tories last time seemed to think the service economy would keep us going (which was stupid at best) Labour are even more deluded in thinking you can keep the economy going by making the state the biggest employer.
    Generally made life less fair and more difficult for the minority of economically active people who keep the country going.

    Still got no faith the Tories will actually resolve problems.

    tron
    Free Member

    Indepdendence of the BoE for interest rates was a fantastic move. FOI is a fantastic idea, shame they obstruct it whenever they can. CTFs are a good idea too, as are free museums.

    Overall, however, I really don't think they've done anything like what they could have done to help people at the bottom end of society, particularly not considering that we've had strong economic growth for much of their tenure, and they've had big majorities.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Devolution is not a waste of money nor does it mean more bureaucrats.

    willard
    Full Member

    Did anyone mention PFI yet? It's great the way that they have used this to push through hospitals, housing and other fun stuff (in-flight refueling etc) without it showing up on the balance sheet. Luckily we will not have to pay it back, that honour goes to my kids.

    But they did give us Alastair Darling's eyebrows. How can they stay so dark when the rest of his hair is so white??????

    missingfrontallobe
    Free Member

    willard – Member
    Did anyone mention PFI yet?

    Several times, people hail the number of new hospitals as being something heroic, without realising the impact it will have in the not so distant future as PFI built trusts struggle to make the repayments.

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Tron – tax credits made a huge difference to the working poor as did the minimum wage – see Jojos post on the effect of tax credits to her.

    This has been a very redistributive government – pity its been done quietly

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    and massive NHS improvements

    and some massive NHS improvements.

    Still cost my wife and I some £6k to have the IVF we needed because of the postcode lottery that still exists.

    And as I have posted before, those working on the frontline aren't seeing improvements – the senior nurse overseeing our daughters in SCBU when they were born told us how much cut after cut is effecting the work they can do.

    But TandemJeremy knows this as we have discussed it before.

    But I do agree with the tax credits comment – they are making it viable for my wife to go back to work part time.

    Farmer_John
    Free Member

    Labour's focus was all about "investment". More accurately, they just focussed on spending more than was affordable and dud not focus on the value returned to the society that paid for it:

    e.g. Yes, hospitals were re-built but in most cases this hasn't resulted in measurable differences in clinical outcomes. The funding arrangement for the PFI deals means that we will be paying rates of up to 15% interest on the capital for the next 30 or so years – equivalent by one recent estimate to another £135Bn of public debt.

    e.g. We have spent £55Bn on rebuilding schools. Again, the link between the rebuilding and educational attainment is not clear – most researchers suggest that standards have not risen, so we are simply paying a lot more for no extra output.

    Fortunately for Labour, their "we are investing" line worked pretty well for 13 years as most of the public never questioned whether what we were getting in return represented good value for money, or how it would be paid for over the long term.

    llama
    Full Member

    Tax free bikes FTW

    andytherocketeer
    Full Member

    Stole back Railtrack just to prove that they had the power to tinker with a fully quoted PLC.

    Still not sure how paying tax twice on pension earnings is the removal of a perk.

    BoE responsibility for interest rates was a good move, but was done for purely party political and personal career reasons. If it worked, GB takes credit. If it failed, GB was not responsible for it failing, even though the failure would have been partly due to his prior actions.

    Bombed the **** out of iraq – just because.

    Caused a couple of resignations and a suicide by pulling a political fast one to make BBC "guilty" for spreading lies about WMD.

    binners
    Full Member

    Devolution is not a waste of money nor does it mean more bureaucrats.

    TJ – how can you possibly make a statement like that.

    3 words: Sottish, Parliament and Building. An utter money-no-object fiasco paid for by us. And for what. To give some fat-faced little nationalist a platform to grandstand his petty little predjudices. Oh.. and to create another tear of needless bureaucracy of overpaid suits who shuffle paper all day while thinking of more ways to interfere with peoples lives.

    Notice when they sounded out the 'North West' about having a 'Regional Assembley' everyone told them to Eff Off. As, unlike the Scots or the Welsh, we knew we'd end up having to pay for it ourselves

    Junkyard
    Free Member

    To give some fat-faced little nationalist a platform to grandstand his petty little predjudices.

    Cant think why the scottish have a problem with their neighbours they seem so tolerant and reasonable…cant see why nationalism is growing at all.
    Stops the tories rulling Scotland with only 1 MP which nearly happened this time doe sthat strike you as fair ?

    TandemJeremy
    Free Member

    Binners – it is not a waste of money – not that it cost nothing – and it costs the English absolutely zero. Try to understand how Scotland is funded – its called the barnett formula.

    Scottish devolution does not create an extra layer – what now happens is the scottish office is now overseen by democratically elected people not unelected bureaucrats. The same number of layers of government. Now some is thru holyrood some thru Westminster

    its done a lot of good so the money is well spent.

    Still – don't let facts get in the way of your petty prejudices will you.

    MikeT-23
    Free Member

    I'm with llama on this

    CYCLE TO WORK SCHEME

    not that I took adavantage of it, but I thought it a great initiative, and I'm surprised that on a cycling forum only one person mentioned it until now!

    the rest is just politics – dicks-in-suits squabbling for power

    mastiles_fanylion
    Free Member

    a fat-faced little nationalist a platform to grandstand his petty little predjudices

    I don't care if this is justified or not, it is very funny. 😀

    kimbers
    Full Member

    i forgot cycle to work scheme!

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 59 total)

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