Positives about the next Labour government

[Pickman's model]

A temporary lull in senior government figures actively courting Nigel Farage for his dogshit takes and a loss of clout for GB News, I guess?

He'll be invited to Downing Street in the absence of Margaret Thatcher

 

[Rob Ray]

Semantics over how bad things are while minimising lived experiences from people who work in the public services feels like the sort of thing I can expect from Labour tbh

It's not semantics. If I say a thing has collapsed I sound ridiculous if I then say a year later it's collapsed. What's collapsed? The thing that had previously collapsed?

You can say the service has collapsed in a specific area, which fine, it's specific and draws attention to actual issues, but there's still millions of people doing their jobs as best they can and vaguely saying everything's collapsed doesn't help them in any way. In fact what it does is persuade people there's nothing to be done because it's all irretrievably fucked anyway.

 

[SpookyFrank]

It's not semantics. If I say a thing has collapsed I sound ridiculous if I then say a year later it's collapsed. What's collapsed? The thing that had previously collapsed?

You can say the service has collapsed in a specific area, which fine, it's specific and draws attention to actual issues, but there's still millions of people doing their jobs as best they can and vaguely saying everything's collapsed doesn't help them in any way. In fact what it does is persuade people there's nothing to be done because it's all irretrievably fucked anyway.

The people doing the jobs are the people using the word collapse.

 

[two sheds]

You'd hope that any Labour government would do something about the chronic underfunding of councils since the worst affected are Labour areas.

Because I've lived across South England for most of my life I can't actually recall any time that I've voted for someone who actually got in. Which does tempt me to vote for the local candidate who (unlike the local tories) doesn't seem like a headbanger, check on the things she promises before the election and then start an extended correspondence with her. And yes I know that won't make any difference either.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

In fact what it does is persuade people there's nothing to be done because it's all irretrievably fucked anyway.

or persuade people that the only answer is privatisation / private health insurance

the argument needs to be that the NHS / whatever public service is being failed, not that the NHS / whatever is failing.

 

[SpookyFrank]

You'd hope that any Labour government would do something about the chronic underfunding of councils since the worst affected are Labour areas.

For a long time that was true, particularly in the Cameron/Osbourne era when there was a clear policy of protecting local authority funding in tory areas, but it's pretty much spread everywhere now. The list of councils at or near the point of complete ruin includes major cities, commuter towns and leafy shires.

I haven't heard a whisper from Labour about fixing LA funding. They muttered something about social care but no details and, crucially, no talk of increasing funding.

 

[newme]

You'd hope that any Labour government would do something about the chronic underfunding of councils since the worst affected are Labour areas.

Because I've lived across South England for most of my life I can't actually recall any time that I've voted for someone who actually got in. Which does tempt me to vote for the local candidate who (unlike the local tories) doesn't seem like a headbanger, check on the things she promises before the election and then start an extended correspondence with her. And yes I know that won't make any difference either.

I've been here 11 years and this is the first time I ever saw anyone doing door to door, labour candidate. It's basically been a tory lock the whole time. I know people who had an issue, wrote to the tory mp, it worked so they then voted for them indefinitely. I kind of get it, they got an actual result from that person and it helped whereas otherwise they had none. Have written to mine and it helped. I'm still not voting for them and I need to write to them again after an nhs prepaid thing went tits up and they charged us £600. That can make or break people so if it gets reversed..

 

[SpookyFrank]

In fact what it does is persuade people there's nothing to be done because it's all irretrievably fucked anyway.

That explains why millions of public sector workers still get up and go to work every day.

Oh wait, no it doesn't.

 

[newme]

For a long time that was true, particularly in the Cameron/Osbourne era when there was a clear policy of protecting local authority funding in tory areas, but it's pretty much spread everywhere now. The list of councils at or near the point of complete ruin includes major cities, commuter towns and leafy shires.

I haven't heard a whisper from Labour about fixing LA funding. They muttered something about social care but no details and, crucially, no talk of increasing funding.

LA underfunding is fucked all over. You would think that would be an easy win really but since they aren't shouting about it I can't see it happening.

 

[SpookyFrank]

LA underfunding is fucked all over. You would think that would be an easy win really but since they aren't shouting about it I can't see it happening.

Starmer is basically refusing to spend any money on anything. It's all just vague promises of reform. Unless that reform starts with winkling out all the layers of private sector parasitism from the public sector, which doesn't seem like it will be a priority for a labour party that now gets most of its funding from the private sector, it's just more titanic deckhair stuff at best.

 

[two sheds]

For a long time that was true, particularly in the Cameron/Osbourne era when there was a clear policy of protecting local authority funding in tory areas, but it's pretty much spread everywhere now. The list of councils at or near the point of complete ruin includes major cities, commuter towns and leafy shires.

I haven't heard a whisper from Labour about fixing LA funding. They muttered something about social care but no details and, crucially, no talk of increasing funding.

Well this is what I'm hoping. He's not made any promises so he's not been able to go back on them

A lot could be done without extra funding by things like allowing councils to build houses rather than private companies doing it, and certainly round here by making council tax punitive for 2nd homes. Might also reduce house prices somewhat, too, but won't hold my breath.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Well this is what I'm hoping. He's not made any promises so he's not been able to go back on them

A lot could be done without extra funding by things like allowing councils to build houses rather than private companies doing it, and certainly round here by making council tax punitive for 2nd homes. Might also reduce house prices somewhat, too, but won't hold my breath.

Nottingham city council, which was the most recent LA (and I think the largest so far) to go broke, has a private lettings company. They buy up properties and rent them out at market rates to generate income. They also own the city's bus company. Trouble is, every penny you make in commercial income as a local authority is a penny the government then decides you no longer need in funding from Westminster.

I like the idea of local authorities building homes themselves but I worry about the reality of how it would play out. In Nottingham, instead of building social housing they built luxury flats in derelict industrial areas in an attempt to lure other gentrifiers and, somehow, bring economic benefits to the city somewhere downstream. This clearly hasn't worked.

 

[Spandex]

Let's have a look the policies Labour announced at their last conference (potentially their last conference before the General Election, but probably not with the state of the Conservatives' polling at the moment):

Labour has pledged to raise business investment as a share of economic output to 11%, up from 10%

Uh... er... okay then...

Labour said it would fast-track planning processes for priority growth areas such as battery factories and 5G infrastructure

On the one hand reducing local control over major developments, limiting the power of local authorities to oversee planning applications by big businesses; on the other hand intended to promote hi-tech manufacturing jobs in the UK, which isn't necessarily bad thing.

A Labour government would replace the so-called "non-dom" taxpayer status

What does 'replace' mean? Need to see the small print on that one...

Labour says it will start charging Value Added Tax on fee-paying schools, and full business rates on those in England

Good. Not my preferred option of either converting to state schools or razing them to the ground and building council housing on the sites, but a small shuffle in the right direction.

Labour says it will crack down on ministers’ use of private jets, slash spending on the use of consultants

Let's see how they get on with that once in power, although Sunak has set a high bar for the use of jets and helicopters.

Labour said it would set up a cross-departmental infrastructure acceleration unit, responsible for ensuring crucial national infrastructure projects are delivered on time and on budget

LOL. Good luck.

Labour would introduce an Energy Independence Act to deliver some of its pledges around establishing a new state-run energy company, GB Energy, and providing 100% clean power by 2030

Only some of its pledges? Go on, nationalise the lot, rather than create a state run company for the Tories to sell off the next time they get in power. Then they might be able to force through what's needed for the 100% clean power target rather than miss it and say it was out of their control.

To combat a shortage of affordable housing, party leader Keir Starmer announced a target of building 1.5 million new homes over the course of the next parliament

Every government promises this and then fails to deliver. Better luck this time...

Starmer also pledged to build new towns

Who wants to live in Starmerville? Reeveston? Streeting-on-the-Nene?

Labour said it would invest an extra 1.1 billion pounds to provide National Health Service staff overtime to work evening and weekend shifts

A blue sticking plaster solution if ever I heard one, but I'm sure Wes Streeting has Big Plans for the NHS..

Labour said it would turn existing further education colleges for 16-18 year olds into Technical Excellence Colleges, which it said would align skills and training more closely with the needs of employers

What about the needs of students? There's been endless fiddling with FE colleges and here's some more, when what's needed is proper funding (I won't hold my breath for that).

Labour said it would empower the water regulator Ofwat to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses who are found to pump significant levels of raw sewage into rivers, lakes and seas.

Water bosses who are found to pump significant levels of raw sewage into rivers, lakes and seas should be pumped into rivers, lakes and seas themselves.

Labour announced a Community Policing Guarantee, promising increased patrols and 13,000 more neighbourhood police

More police on the streets, but what about better police?

All of this reads like the day-to-day doings of year 3 of a second term government, not the vote for us! cry of a party looking to get elected. The lack of ambition is staggering. Business as usual grey suited neo-liberalism. But at least we won't have this crazy-arsed Tory psychodrama running the country; we can have a crazy-arsed Labour psychodrama instead. A whole new cast of hateable fools to hate

 

[PTK]

I'm guessing you don't work in education, healthcare, social care?

Because if you do, it really does feel like the walls are coming down around you.

I also think a phrase like 'long-term decline' fails to do justice to the fact that there are people who cannot access services at all, and that there are people and political choices who are directly and knowingly responsible for that.

In SEN education for example, there are children with a legal right to specialist provision who cannot access it because it doesn't exist, or because capacity is a fraction of what it needs to be. This in turn puts a massive strain on local authorities who are spending thousands of pounds per day putting on taxis to get kids to schools 50 miles or more from their homes. And that's just the kids who made it through the assessment process. I teach kids 12, 13 years old who can't read, but who have no 'official' special needs. These children with unmet needs often go on to create havok in the overful, understaffed classes they're crammed into, sometimes meaning that nobody in the room is getting an effective education.

That's what I mean by collapse. Not that no service exists, but that it exists for many in name only. And every broken component is putting yet more strain on those that are still just about holding up. The system 'works' in education only by burning through staff in fewer years than it takes to train them. Healthcare, likewise. Social care, probably even more so.

That's ghastly.

It angers me that the Starmer Party is not going to reverse this decline. Under Corbyn, we had well-founded hope that conditions would be noticably improved, but under Starmer there is no hope.

 

[SpookyFrank]

slash spending on the use of consultants

Five'll get you ten they just end up hiring some consultants to tell them how to do this.

 

[SpookyFrank]

Labour said it would invest an extra 1.1 billion pounds to provide National Health Service staff overtime to work evening and weekend shifts

Which will just mean more NHS staff off sick due to unsustainable workloads.

 

[newme]

Five'll get you ten they just end up hiring some consultants to tell them how to do this.

I was hired as an external consultant to work for a LA in house. They paid a premium for this of course. I found the exact same role in the same team in the same council. The salary was just higher than i got consulting and my day rate for them was so high they broke the national average for a year paying for that role for 6 months with the mark up.

I was the lowest paid and least experienced person in my company.

 

[Penfold01]

Labour says it will start charging Value Added Tax on fee-paying schools, and full business rates on those in England

Good. Not my preferred option of either converting to state schools or razing them to the ground and building council housing on the sites, but a small shuffle in the right direction.

The rub is that the policy is meant to pay for 6,500 extra teachers. Where do they propose to find these? Down the back of the sofa? This will not happen in one form or another.

 

[Spandex]

The rub is that the policy is meant to pay for 6,500 extra teachers. Where do they propose to find these? Down the back of the sofa? This will not happen in one form or another.

It's estimated that VAT & business rates on fee paying schools should raise £1.7bn per year net. Labour say they'll put this into the education budget, which should easily cover training and employing new teachers.

If it doesn't happen it'll be because Labour bottle it or fuck it up, not because its impractical.

 

[brogdale]

It's estimated that VAT & business rates on fee paying schools should raise £1.7bn per year net. Labour say they'll put this into the education budget, which should easily cover training and employing new teachers.

If it doesn't happen it'll be because Labour bottle it or fuck it up, not because its impractical.

But having the where-with-all to afford to employ more teachers does not address the issues that lie behind the existing recruitment and retention crises that beset the profession. Until and unless the LP are prepared to ditch the austerity approach to pay and conditions, nothing substantial will come of this pledge.

 

[zedr]

But having the where-with-all to afford to employ more teachers does not address the issues that lie behind the existing recruitment and retention crises that beset the profession. Until and unless the LP are prepared to ditch the austerity approach to pay and conditions, nothing substantial will come of this pledge.

exactly. there are plenty of trained teachers in the UK. just not enough who are willing to put up with the bullshit working conditions. I don't have any faith in the labour party to even begin to solve this.

 

[Spandex]

But having the where-with-all to afford to employ more teachers does not address the issues that lie behind the existing recruitment and retention crises that beset the profession. Until and unless the LP are prepared to ditch the austerity approach to pay and conditions, nothing substantial will come of this pledge.

Yeah, that occurred to me as I was typing my reply. Reeves has been clear that Labour don't intend to increase public spending, which means continuing with austerity levels of spending, which means the country will continue to fall apart, literally in the case of school buildings. But this is the Positives About the Next Labour Government thread, so let's find some crumbs of comfort where we can. And tapping fee paying schools for £1.7bn per year to put in the education budget is about as good as we're gonna get.

 

[Cat Fan]

They will make breakfast and after school clubs more widely available and longer term I think they want to make lunch in primary schools free. Sound idea to invest in the next generation.

 

[two sheds]

Are you sure he's not gone back on the fee-paying schools stuff already? He has on some of it.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

But having the where-with-all to afford to employ more teachers does not address the issues that lie behind the existing recruitment and retention crises that beset the profession. Until and unless the LP are prepared to ditch the austerity approach to pay and conditions, nothing substantial will come of this pledge.

Yeah I think they'd need to row back from all the top down control and continual extra layers of admin and inspection that makes teachers' working lives miserable wouldn't they. Except if you tried to identify the single human being least likely to do that there's every chance Starmer would be the one.

 

[Spandex]

Are you sure he's not gone back on the fee-paying schools stuff already? He has on some of it.

I'm not sure of any words coming out of Starmer's mouth. He's not exactly a reliable source for what he thinks or plans to do.

 

[DotCommunist]

less people will say 'who?' when I'm slagging off streeting and/or reeves et al. Thats all I have.

 

[Pickman's model]

They will make breakfast and after school clubs more widely available and longer term I think they want to make lunch in primary schools free. Sound idea to invest in the next generation.

I'm sure they've u-turned on at least some of that

 

[Silas Loom]

Have we already listed assisted dying in here? Starmer has promised a free vote in the next parliament.

So overdue.

 

[8ball]

Have we already listed assisted dying in here?

For Starmer, you mean?