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Have to agree with Sundae though: I didn't much like a lot of what the last Labour government did. They maintained the momentum on a lot of stuff (privatisation of various things, sell offs and anti-welfare). That's the problem really. A powerful ideologue like Thatcher doesn't just change the present, she changes the whole consensus. She shifted policy to the right and Labour moved to the right with it in order to 'modernise' and be 'electable'.
The Tories do as much as they can to strip down the state when they come into power (except for those parts of the state that they like obviously) in the hope that they will move things too far in that direction to ever go back to what was. They usually succeed.
So, now we have a government that claims to be for 'hardworking people: workers not shirkers' yet cut working benefits for families along with unemployment and disability benefits. They freeze public sector pay and accept zero hours contracts as part of the need for a 'flexible labour force'. Most of the people who are referred to foodbanks are not unemployed, they are families with working adults, often two adults working full-time.
They throw us the bone of raising the tax threshold, but allow fuel prices to skyrocket and cut the top rate of tax to the lowest it's ever been. Time and again, the people making decisions about farming out NHS services, or selling off the few remaining publicy owned services (Royal Mail for instance, which as usual is being sold off for a fraction of its worth) are shown to have direct links with those who will benefit from it.
the whole thing stinks.
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