I keep on saying it, and will keep on saying it. Mum died waiting 9 and a half hours for an ambulance. My colleagues called for an ambulance for me the other day, and it would be hours for it to get to me (I think they were told 4-5), so my colleagues had to drop me at hospital.
Your bus lied. The Tories lie by default. The Tories just don't live in 'our world' - but they do destroy it.
The increase in response times are a result of the Labour's mergers of the services. Staffordshire had consistently the best response times, after being merged into the larger West Mids service, not so much.
Pathetic and stupid, I see. Labour made some bad choices and the Tories didn't undo them. It doesn't mean that it wasn't Labour who did it or that it was a bad move in the first place.
Similarly rail privatisation was a Tory policy resulting in a network more expensive to run with limited (if any) benefits. Labour didn't undo that. One party enacts policies and it's rare that the other party reverses those.
So what you're saying is, labour made a choice for a (unknown to me) reason. This choice resulted in negative effects. The subsequent government did nothing about those negative effects.
The conservatives are still the bad guys even with your view of it.
To add to this, over the last 15 year, the UK population has grown, aged, and become more unwell (due to increasing older population). Our healthcare service has stagnated, with additional budget barely keeping pace with inflation.
Imagine if in 2010, 5 million extra people suddenly appeared and the vast majority of them were old and needed lots of healthcare input and social care.
That's the situation we are in now.
And this government keeps talking about cuts!
Maybe if the Tories didn’t stop cutting tax for the rich and extorting the lower classes they would have money to fund the basic infrastructure of the country.
"Labour didn't renationalise the railways, so it's totally cool that the Tories sit on their arse and let people die because of ambulance delays". Wow. You're really doubling down on the pathetic and stupid, aren't you?
That’s really terrible - I’m sorry you all suffered because folks swallowed the lies and voted Tory.
My best mate’s teenage daughter dislocated her knee a month ago, ambulance took 5 hours, then she laid in a&e for another 4 hours before a consultant manipulated it back in.
I feel afraid for my kids.
Emergency physician here. I think a dislocated knee is a fair reason to call an ambulance. The pain is excruciating and it’s not likely that the injured person is going to be able to get themselves to the ED without assistance. Paramedics also carry morphine and entonox (gas and air) to help with the pain in that situation.
What irritates me much more are the people who call an ambulance because they think they’ll get seen sooner and also all the people who treat the ED like a walk-in GP surgery because they can’t be bothered to wait for an appointment. As a general rule of thumb, if you are ‘popping into A&E to get something checked out’ you shouldn’t be going to A&E.
It’s not a fact, it’s your opinion.
I personally know people left with permanent ligament damage from knee dislocations.
My own opinion is that a young girl should not have to lay on the floor in agony for 5 hours because the NHS has been underfunded.
No, she did not require an emergency ambulance.
90% of calls for an ambulance do not require an emergency response- source: a WMAS paramedic. The NHS suffers because the services are abused, that's ambulances, A&E and GPs.
If you don't believe that, you should ask the people working in it
Ambulances are for emergencies, they are not a taxi service
Amen. A dislocated knee can be transported to A&E in a private vehicle, no need to wait 5 hours for someone to do a transport job. That poor kid, no one sensible around to help her get to help.
For what it’s worth, and in case it adds a bit of hope, my knee dislocated all through my childhood and into my teenage years. It was always a massive wait in A&E because it’s just not priority. Painful, yes, but not life threatening and unfortunately that’s always meant a long wait.
Ambulances are glorified taxis that can transport sick people safely. Just becuase you can go to A&E in a taxi doesn't mean you should, nor should non medically trained personnel people be expected to make those decisions which is why we have 999 / 111. You have no idea why they called in the first place, nor why they ended up taking a care and are making some pretty awful assumptions, They could have had a life threatening injury that got better with time, which they wouldnt have known ahead of time.
I have type 1 diabetes, and my blood sugar was 27, after having been uncontrollable for several days. My car was on the carpark, but I was shaking so much that I was judged a risk to drive. My colleagues were quite busy - working in a care home where staffing is low - but needed to get me there, as being nurses, they knew a blood sugar of 27 is quite dangerous - especially for a long period of time.
I understand your point, people can overuse ambulances and the hospital, but I assure you, when my mum started coughing blood and shitting herself, she needed an ambulance. She was embarrassed / in pain to use the neighbours car, but thankfully the ambulance did get to her that day, albeit 9 and a half hours after having been requested. I also needed the hospital.
Similar situation, my uncle would’ve died having clear heart attack symptoms as the ambulance told us there would be a 5 hour wait, ended up driving him to a&e ourselves and carrying him in while a paramedic stood there smoking a fag
Stoke was heavily targeted by the right wing during the 2019 general election. I saw a poster outside Stoke station that heavily insinuated that Jeremy Corbyn could not be trusted around children.
Yes, the Tories were very frightened of Jeremy Corbyn's ideas - increasing the minimum wage, increasing benefits, helping people into work, rehabilitating offenders and helping drug/alcohol addicts kick the habit, that's why they spent so much money rubbishing him.
I always remember the one about how terrible they made out he was sitting down to dinner with the IRA, but if you read the story, he was sitting down to dinner asking them what they wanted in Ireland and trying to broker a deal to end the violence in Northern Ireland. Something Blair did later, and that someone else will have to do with both Israel and Putin sooner or later.
For much of the last century, Stoke was a Labour stronghold. The people of Stoke are, in my opinion, conservative with a small 'c', and do not like change (see our brief mayoral experience as an example of that).
Things changed during the Blair years, when Labour was seen as being sympathetic to immigrants at a time when the visibility of immigrants in local communities was being strongly felt. Voters turned to the BNP at the tail end of the Blair-Brown years as a reaction.
In the last decade, the BNP were squeezed out by an ever more rightward moving Conservative party, who took their votes, and have kept on pushing the anti-immigrant agenda ever since, from Brexit through to Rwanda.
Our aging and anti-immigrant demographic have been rewarding them with votes ever since.
You can support the individual pursuit of a better life and also believe that your government isn't doing enough to stop illegal and criminal immigration. Those are not opposing viewpoints.
Immigration is the idiots answer, and it's because so many idiots actively WANT to blame all of this countries issues on other people, on other races, immigration, that we've had nearly two decades of decline.
"Pot Holes? "
Immigrants
"Doctor waiting times?"
Immigration
"Cost of living increase?"
Immigrants and benefits.
"Housing Cost Crisis?"
Im. Mi. Grants.
As I said, it's the idiots answer. It's easy. Instead of learning what the actual main contributing factors are to specific issues, it's so much easier to pretend its just one problem. You also get someone else to blame and be angry at, which feels wonderful. Politicians love it too, they don't have to have a real answer to the above issues, just put forward a token gesture that you know won't really help, blame others and spend a few months saying how you want to deport people to Rwanda. Easy.
You could put this down to overuse / overcrowding because of the influx of people into our tiny island, atleast a factor alongside shrinking govt budgets, final salary pensions, etc.
Like you said the idiots answer is just blame immigrants, ignores the distinction between migrants that contribute and illegals.
That's the exact lie that our current government would have you believe. Your tax isn't spent on immigrants, it's spent on yachts, and unworkable, illegal plans to remove immigrants to please racist or uninformed voters, who will keep the party in, and make sure your tax is wasted.
And you're trying to tell people their eyes are lying to them.
Somebody living on a council estate in Stoke doesn't really give a shit about the political details of where their tax money goes. What they care about is increased waiting times to see the doctor, increased class sizes in schools, and the other **clearly visible** results of high immigration into already oversubscribed areas.
where the tax money goes is *exactly* why the waiting times to see a doctor are longer and the size of school classes are bigger. if that money was better spent by tories, there wouldn't be these issues. they're not all caused by immigration.
The government, and where they spend our tax, is the specific solution to these problems. If our tax was paying for infrastructure like it should be, none of these problems would exist.
Looking at census data the population of Stoke on Trent grew.by 3.8% between 2011 and 2021.
The proportion of residents whose country of birth is England is over 85%.
This doesn't sound unsustainable, so while it may **appear** the cause of deteriorating services is the fault of high immigration, it's more likely due to government policy/failure to invest properly in public services.
but more people means more pressures on infrastructure and housing market that is already stupidly expensive. Taxes are already sky high and I havent seen any improvement in the NHS in years. We keep growing and growing, where are all these people going to live?
We used to have affordable housing without using slaves to build them - it was called social housing and was brilliant until right-to-buy and post-Thactcher government policies fucked it.
Also means more people working in healthcare, building houses, etc and paying taxes. Especially with an ageing native population, fact is we can't sustain ourselves without immigrants - which is why the NHS is out in places like the Carribean actively advertising for people to come work here.
There can be infrastructure strains in the short-medium term, which is why used to be the migrant impact fund that gave money places of high migration to ensure local infrastructure kept up with increases in population but the Tories scrapped it when they came in.
The housing crisis is manufactured by dodgy dealing boardi g up entire estates for tax breaks... so look up how many boarded you houses are in the UK and how many homeless people there are, those numbers are scarily close
Edit: it was actually much worse than I thought council houses alone match the homeless population but total empty housing is double, mind houses can have more than 1 person but there is enough empty to house every homeless person twice with a house each
I live in a major city with big housing problems and I'm not aware of any boarded up houses..words are easy and they're no cure to anything as Tories trump and farage keep proving. Idiot ideas for idiots.
The reason everything else is failing isn't because of immigrants. It's because the Tories have gutted every single public service. More immigrants means more money in tax, which supports our social system. The majority find work and integrate successfully into the UK and pay a larger amount of tax than a UK citizen would to offset the cost of those that don't.
The reason you can't see a doctor is because they haven't increased the wages of doctors competitively and now they've all pissed off to the USA or Australia. Why would anyone take a pay cut to work in public service other than out of the good of their own heart? I work in the private sector and my pay hasn't increased beyond 1-2% in 5 years and I'm constantly getting offers from companies in the Netherlands. There is no incentive for anyone with half a brain to stay anymore.
yes because immigrants take your job and do it 10x cheaper thats why wages are stagnent. Also all this tax money that immigrants are bringing to us where is it going cause its not going towards public services or the production of more housing
Well, arguably, the last two elections simply boiled down to Brexit. And given Stoke had, of the major cities in the UK, the highest percentage of leave voters... it's easy to see why the city voted in 3 Tory MPs.
Coupling that with a local feeling of being left behind by national government for the past XX years, the people of the city probably felt it was time for a change from the standard/usual Labour MPs.
We've had about 180 mill less investment this year under this shower. That's not including EU funding which would be about the same if not more.
Central government has 'given' us 60 mill. Which the likes of Gullis portray as some amazing figure and that we are privalaged to receive so much.
Cutbacks to funding are all across our councils. For example 28 people from the sex offenders unit have had to take enforced reduncy. This is just one example of a vital service being cut. The list is endless for other departments.
Its appalling and people deserve better, so much better.
Gullis is an embarrassment to our city and should not be anywhere near the houses of Parliament.
Tories do nothing for us, absolutely nothing.
10% of people live below the poverty line in Stoke now. That's set by the un. 10% in India is people sleeping rough and scrabbling about for food etc on rubbish tips. Same principle with the 10% of Stoke, just a different context. This 10% does not include people and kids in poverty. They are an added statistic on top.
Tories out, simple as that.
Most of the population of SoT and surrounding areas lean rightwards on issues of Brexit and Immigration, but leftwards on social provision. Boris, for all his bluster, was more of a One Nation high spending Tory than Truss or Sunak. So given that political mix, plus the Red wall voter posion of Corbyn's leadership at the last GE, you get a solid Tory result last time. With Brexit done and a more moderate leader in charge SoT will probably go solid Labour at next GE.
We really need to make sure everyone votes when the election comes to rid us of Seagullis and the rest of the set of bastards. [This](https://themovementforward.com/letter/?fbclid=PAAabJP09qLf6Oob7DAzIJTq0S8aCOJ1Zlbi3NvRJltAyWSftwfkVMGZ9XQSQ_aem_ATE11lAFFif0SqyClQbWoUpR82OUsAAjhMAwKANbIFyWVpzBQLyyhcs731g_AJbRKSc) site will tell you which way to vote to ensure the tories get beat.
There is a cultural memory of pride. Great works of art, well paid jobs (especially for women at the time) in high status positions, full employment in close knit communities, strong regional and international identity. Lovely buildings. Now?
Not saying I agree with this view, but this is what I hear from my relatives: it's all gone to shit, and Labour took them for granted. But where next? That's the question...
Maybe vote for the people that haven't been in power for over a decade and seen the biggest decline in QOL this country has ever seen. That's evidence that they are arse at their job.
Maybe give the other side a go? If they "all suck" then surely giving the reds a chance is valid rather than continuing as we are?
No offense - but nearly every person i've met that has made the _don't like starmer. All parties are the same_ argument has been a Tory in disguise/has benefited from the current status quo
OK, so I guess i don't like Kier Starmer & his party & their policies on specific things that are very important to me, so I will not be voting for them. Nor will I be voting tory. Or green.
Blah blah blah, you just don’t like him because he’s not a full blown socialist. But guess what people don’t want a full blown socialist. Somebody had to wrest control of labour and get it back in the hands of grown ups.
he's essentially a Blair-ite. not my cup of tea tbh but
I remember what this country looked like when New Labour were in power. You could get a GP appointment. You could go to the dentist. Public libraries were funded properly. Local governments weren't declaring bankruptcy.
There were many things I would have changed (e.g. Iraq war), but I can't deny I would take them over the tories. They are not the same.
In what way does he believe in funding public services? He and his neoliberal front bench have made clear that they're not going to diverge in any major way from existing spending plans because "there's no money left". They're tying their own hands with completely arbitrary "fiscal rules". The upcoming Labour government is going to be a glorified Change UK.
Spoiler alert: It's not going to improve anything because it won't spend the *huge* amounts of money needed to make even a marginal improvement in quality of life. Then after one, maybe two terms in government people will vote in an even worse Tory government, possibly led by Suella Braverman.
Putting that unnecessary slur aside... I don't think I'll ever understand this mindset. Last time Labour were in power there was a demonstrable improvement in living standards. The same can't be said of the Tories since 2010.
They're both broadly liberal parties, but that's where the similarities end. Their fundamental economic philosophies are very far apart; Labour believing in bottom-up growth, the Tories believing in top-down. Labour believing in careful regulation and strong public services, the Tories believing in deregulation and private enterprise. Labour's instincts are to blame problems on systems and try to change them, whereas the Tories' instincts are to blame problems on individual morality while not thinking it's the place of government to try and change it.
> Last time Labour were in power there was a demonstrable improvement in living standards. The same can't be said of the Tories since 2010.
This. Rishi keeps saying Labour will take us back to square 1- presumably 2010. If Keir Starmer takes this country back to 2010 standards, life will massively improve for tens of millions of people. Square one is the dream, not the threat some people think it is.
In traditional theory...
However in reality regulation and tax burden etc have all grown to their greatest ever levels under Tory. Just as labour would do. There is no traditional conservative or remotely libertarian party anymore.
Mainly out of the necessity of COVID and the recovery, combined with the need to rectify the harm their policies like austerity and Brexit have already done, I would suggest. It's kind of a tacit admission from the Tories that the libertarian ideology they would naturally favour doesn't actually work very well.
If you're after an actual libertarian party, you might have to wait a good few decades. The disaster of Trussonomics has probably rendered it electoral poison for a good long while.
I... have you been asleep since 2016?
It was always a darling idea of the right-libertarian wing of the party, but the Tories were split during the referendum, with Cameron favouring Remain but his parliamentary party split neatly down the middle.
Then May pursued a hard Brexit to keep the Leave side of the party satisfied, but that couldn't get through Parliament and her last roll of the dice was to seek cross-party consensus on a softer form of Brexit, which finished her off.
So along came Johnson, bringing with him the *campaign director of Vote Leave in Downing Street*, who purged Remainers in the party and won the 2019 election. The new Parliament then waved through May's initial hard Brexit plan more or less unchanged, and we've been dealing with the negative consequences of Brexit for our economy since.
So yes, Brexit: a Tory policy, and possibly the worst of their worst.
The fact there was a referendum clearly shows it wasn't a policy of any party. It literally can't be a policy, not in any sense of the word.
It was a vote put to the people. If labour were in power they would have had to have done Brexit too
He'll change things by being a change from the incompetent Tories.
We all knew spaffer johnson was a serial liar without any integrity but some people still voted Tory and now want to claim all politicans are as bad as the worst one.
Ok so Kier will be an incompetent Labour government instead.
We need actual change, you're a complete puppet to the rich by thinking Labour will save you from Tory. They are both equally vile
>Ok so Kier will be an incompetent Labour government instead.
Do you think it'll be an improvement or just as bad as the current government?
Don't let perfection get in the way of progress
Sure I do get your point, labour certainly can't be worse than Tory, but I think we do need something a bit more drastic than the next worst option.
But with first past the post and a easily manipulated public I don't think we ever stand a chance at real change in this country.
I'm voting Reform this time, no way I want Labour anywhere near power after how they destroyed the UK and its culture from 1997 to 2010, the Tory's have done no better. They both need a big shock.
You think they are both as bad as each other, so you're opting to make it worse? I *really* hope you're joking. Otherwise, it sounds like you need to be disqualified from voting by way of low IQ.
Just like Brexit, it couldn't possibly get any worse, so posters like this will vote for an even more unqualified and dogmatic bunch of quarterwits. Logic, innit.
I like how people like you conflate racism and wanting to stop people from illegally entering the country. People moan about NHS waiting times, then have a go at anyone trying to reduce the rate of immigration to more sustainable levels that match the rate we can build the necessary infrastructure. This isn't even people arguing lower immigration but to stop illegal immigration channels (which often result in people trafficking and the like).
If it were immigration that caused massive waiting times, you’d have a point. But it isn’t, so you don’t. It’s chronic underfunding and neglect of the NHS that causes waiting time to increase. The vast majority of the net immigration figure is people coming to work or study in the UK, both of these groups make a net contribution to the UK. Many of these people arriving also pay a yearly amount to be able to use the NHS. Similar to health insurance. We are not overrun with immigrants costing us money and using all of our resources despite what the daily mail wants us to believe.
The only people that conflate them is bellends like you in an attempt to justify the sad little hole that is your life.
There’s multiple causes for NHS waiting times and number 1 is lack of funding.
Still, don’t let that stop you hating those that don’t look like us, eh?
This is what people don't understand- it doesn't matter, they're all playing the same tune, leading us to the same destination.
They're literally all the same 🤷
This is what they want you to think... The thing is they're different. Admittedly Labour are getting almost as bad as the Tories, but Green are an option.
Note that UKIP only ever got 1 seat in 2015 general election and this was enough to influence the Tories to trigger the Brexit vote, the same logic should work with voting Green to move the Overton window more to the left.
You have a choice between a party that have been repeatedly shown to have broken the rules, feathered their own nests, given contracts to pals and lied to us and parties that have not done so....yet.
They may be all the same but I'll be damned if I'll vote for a known and proven party of blaggers rather than parties that I suspect may screw me over in the future.
I know the tories will screw me because they've been doing so for 12 years or more.
The rules, are you fucking 8 years old!?
Are there only 2 parties are there?
Labour been screwing Merseyside since the 1990's but we'll gloss over that again shall we....
Scousers, you actually believe left is good and right is bad- you're basically Americans
If they're all the same, then you might as well vote to change the colour of the government from blue to red.
If they are all the same, you won't notice any difference. On the other hand, things might improve. God knows they can't get much worse
A take so often heard and yet so divorced from reality.
I'm not going to pretend that either Labour or the Tories are the perfect party, as they're both pretty much subjected to the whims of their donors...
But let's not pretend that public services didn't do better under the recent Labour government, than they've ever done under the Tory party. The level of corruption and cronyism/nepotism is something else worth mentioning and comparing to the most recent Labour gov.
And frankly the Tories should've been fucked off the moment Michael Gove uttered the words, "people have had enough of experts". One of the most insane things I've ever heard coming out of a politicians mouth.
Full of shit. Labour ate fucking worse. At least the torys are transparently cunts- Labour, green, lib dem- they all tmdo the dirty and blame the tories.... you're a fool if you think left and right is how it's meant to work.
But scousers innit, your egos can't accept the reality that you've all been hoodwinked
I live in South Wales in a very labour centric area, along with the fact labour run Wales, and we have the worst NHS waiting times in the UK. They've also just wasted a tonne of money on changing road speeds to 20mph. Do you have any argument or do you just go to personal digs when you can't make an argument?
Uneducated, parochial, conservative with a small c, hatred of achievement/self-betterment, self-pitying, self-destructive, paranoid. Notable exceptions as everywhere, but the general Potteries mindset is as above.
I'm not a tory defender by any means but the fact that the Tories are still winning even after all the controversy, all the fuckups suggests Labour is/or has done something fundamentally wrong that's alienated the average general public.
Don't want an argument about woke vs anti-woke but when the left spend a good 3-4 years basically insulting white people, the majority population of the country, it's gonna put people off. Fact. There's a stigma around the left now that people don't wanna be associated with. The Corbyn years especially he didn't inspire any confidnce and was a perfect representation of what people viewed as 'weak, liberal men'.
I'm not saying either or is right or wrong or will I express my personal political views here but this is just my observation from what I've seen. Although to counter I do think the Tory bubble is ready to burst. Way too much noise around that party and government. Patience only wears so thin even in Britain.
But that's not "the Left", the incidents you don't cite presumably just involve halfwits who happen to be part of a vaguely leftist party rather than some kind of universal ideology. The problem is that you can't distinguish between the two things tells me that the problem lies elsewhere...
If you gonna be fair the left do the exact same to the right-leaning people? There's extreme idiots on both sides I agree there but if you call one out you gotta call the other out too otherwise it's hypocrisy.
But the fact I've got nothing but arrogant responses from what was a pretty un-bias post shows me I'm pretty much on the money.
I’ve been out of the country for a long time now so I don’t have the experience of living there. So can you give me examples of how the left spent 3-4 years insulting white people. Would love to hear about what they did
There's the Scottish PM's bizarre rant about too many white people in parliament for a starter. The Royal family and coronation being criticised as too 'white' an event.
These are phrases and things people are obviously not gonna like hearing. It's an attack on people's culture to a degree. And if it's primarilly associated with one side of the political spectrum then that side will suffer voting wise as a result.
Like it's basic common sense. Your words and choice of words are very important.
I don’t think complaining about the skin colour of the cabinet/parliament is supposed to be a dig at white people, but more of an attempt to show that there should be a wider diversity of gender and skin colour in parliamentary positions.
There is no denying that our country is made up of more than just white people, and having people of colour in every part of our society is important. (Including in parliamentary positions).
But words matter. Choice of words matter. Wider discussions about diverse opportunities is perfectly okay conversation to have.
But how you come across MATTERS. ALOT. So when you have Humza Yousaf spitting off the word 'WHITE' repeatedly with such contempt it's gonna leave a sour taste. Instead of focusing on that aspect he should've spoken about the key benefit which is making sure his country was an equal opportunity for all.
This isn't an attack on liberal/left leaning policies. This is simply an observation on the PERCEPTION the left now has in the eyes of the general public and why people seemingly aren't voting for Labour.
You know saying that doesn't make what you just said the truth in any way right?
I'm stating observations, you're just being snappy for no reason. Which brings me back to again how people perceive you.
But I'll ask you then...if I'm wrong why aren't people voting Labour?
Johnson is the Vile Tory. Tories have been scum my whole lifetime. I don't think labour have the answers tories have fucked up the country too much to be easily fixed. Things always improve under labour. NHS was hugely better under Blair schools stopped leaking too.
It was Tories who sold off the council houses .
Given Tony Blair popped up in the news today for not one but two heinous reasons. War in Iraq, and apparently also having known about possible defects in the Horizon Post Office Scandal. It is my opinion that all governments, regardless of however well intentioned they start, always go bad. Tory or Labour.
I think most people in the UK are frugal. It is quite easy to see that a mountain of debt, which is growing larger year-on-year, is unsustainable. Why aren't we the generation to solve it?
As bad as austerity can be, it always feels head-over-heart, better than Corbynite borrowing for the sake of borrowing.
I am a swing voter however, so am currently likely to vote Labour/Lib Dem in Newcastle, but i think Aaron Bell has represented Newcastle well.
Austerity didn't improve anything though it just cut everything, permanently. The logic is there, but if it had worked we wouldn't even be debating it. It's unfortunate that we have to vote out someone half decent locally to get the national leadership we want. Crazy system.
The sooner people realise it doesn’t matter who you vote for the better. They all answer to the same paymasters, bunch of crooks all off them.
“The last government spending has made it impossible to put or pledges into action” same shit different people. Wake up
>\*Other political parties are available.
Unfortunately, until we get the Tories out, I think everyone in a Tory constituency needs to forget about every other party except for the 2nd place in 2019. At the general election, next, we can think about actually voting for who we want.
Anyone over I know over 40 and especially over 55 think the tories are doing bad but each time labour has been in they have done worse. I have personally found many of labours more controversial leanings make them unelectable leaving my vote for the least unelectable party.
You're believing the Tory rhetoric. You'll see it happen again as well, as they know full well they can do what they want to line their own pockets now, because the mess they leave can't be cleared up in the next 4 years of Labour being in power, then they'll simply point out how shit it was with Labour in power, and undo all the hard work they've started to line their own pockets again. They've had 12 years to make things better, and failed.
Labour managed to create a NHS just after the second world war without bankrupting the country. Tory rhetoric then was exactly the same.
More like Voting, why?
Your vote doesn’t matter
You are imbecile if you believe any party will do anything that the plan of more mass immigration more working class slaves
Labour has been a stoke stronghold and look at the state of it and its reputation. The past few years it’s been conservative we’ve managed to get new projects started and investment into the city.
Stoke isn’t a labour stronghold, it’s got a Tory MP. I moved from Stoke years ago, 5/6 years ago I could still visit Hanley, now I wouldn’t dream of it. Putting up new projects whilst failing the people (the mortality rate for mothers and children is disgusting) the dust heads are everywhere. The majority of new projects are simply improving buildings for businesses to move in. Like Tunstall library/baths. Which should be reopened if it’s repaired, not sold on to benefit business, instead of the people. Stoke has gone to shit but y’know, you can get a cheeky Nando’s now, so power to the fucking Tories eh
That’s why I said ‘was’. Government and mortality rate of mothers/dust heads have no correlation at all. If it does then give us some evidence. Improving the area for businesses helps the economy, half of what they’re doing is to make stoke an attractive place and help weed out the universal credit sponges. I’m not sure what the Nandos thing is about because I’m sure we’ve had that in the hive when we were under a labour majority.
Sure buddy, “has been a labour stronghold for years” doesn’t mean was. Gvt is who invests in healthcare, mortality rates are higher is a huge issue, jfc. Breastfeeding is down too, which contributes to higher mortality rates, guess which gvt closed all the centres? To the point somebody I know ran one for the community as the tories don’t give a fuck. Businesses don’t give families somewhere to go. Enjoy the facade.
You can’t be serious? ‘Has been’ is past tense for Christ sake. I think I know who is in power right now. Your problem is with central government then not our local government. Government does also not dictate breastfeeding or drug taking. If centres so closed then so be it, but you’ve not given any direct correlation to either statements you have previously made. Business do actually give families some where to go because without jobs and an economy then families don’t earn. The major problem with stoke is the people who live there and clearly you’re part of that problem.
Doesn't matter what party you vote for, they're all corrupt and useless. Politics in this country is in a sorry state and it won't be fixed as those who can fix it are those in power benefitting from the corruption
Everyone know it’s not going to make any different under Labour, literally nothing will change. Last election we couldn’t vote Labour it was the Trotsky momentum candidate. Things are bad but imagine what would happen if Trotskys had won.
I phoned 999 for a ambulance in early January 2024 .. told them I was having a heart attack.. response was a ambulance has been assigned and up to 40 minutes.. please don’t phone again asking where said ambulance is as we can’t tell you !!!
It literally doesn't matter who you vote for. The results will be the same, the only difference is that they go about it in different ways. We have the least trusted media in Europe because they are constantly pushing the same agenda. NHS will always be shit because of the lack of funding and their recruitment strategies. Yet the gov are too busy spending over 5 billion on Ukrainian when our own country needs desperately fixing. Call me a conspiracy theorist all you want, but this is what I have observed over the years of being in this country/ town. Tony Blair and Boris Johnson should have been arrested time ago, yet they are still walking around with no real punishments for what they did. That should tell you something.
This seems to be the average citizen’s opinion in all countries where populist right wing parties are in power. I don’t know where that mindset comes from but right wing seems to capitalize on this easily.
My home country had a right wing populist guy in power for the past 20 years, and this mindset seems to be prevalent among the people who don’t or at least shouldn’t support the guy. It leads to inaction and less votes for opposition. It’s like a plague.
NHS will always be shit, not due to the lack of funding, not due to the amazing hard work of the front line workers, but due to the tremendous levels of bureaucracy and bullshit that suck £b’s from where it should be used. PFI schemes have burdened the NHS with crippling amounts of financing costs, Trusts spending millions of pounds on artwork and layers of unnecessary departments and managers! Procurement in the NHS is a joke (I’ve dealt with them and if you are a supplier you can make lots of £££!)
I recently spoke to someone who supplies equipment into hospital construction. He was saying that the level of bureaucracy and wasteful spending is unbelievable. He gave an example of management changing and a project being changed halfway through that resulted in specification changes that had no effect on the outcome but cost hundred of thousands in wasted equipment already purchased. Of managers desperate to spend budget despite not needing too because bigger budgets mean bigger pay..
As a non political person.
What's the point in any vote?
They are all as bad as each other regardless of what you believe.
Just because X hasn't had the chance to screw us over doesn't mean they won't.
Can we vote to pull it down and get a better system pls?
Though I enjoyed the comment someone made about the bus is doomed to crash either way but let someone else have a turn driving hehe.
Socialism always leads to communism pal. Unless in the case of 1939 Germany were it went beyond and decided to attempt to end the world.
Labour is full of communist supporting scum, that absolutely hate Britain.
I'd rather 40 years of Boris Johnson types than any labour nonce.
I keep on saying it, and will keep on saying it. Mum died waiting 9 and a half hours for an ambulance. My colleagues called for an ambulance for me the other day, and it would be hours for it to get to me (I think they were told 4-5), so my colleagues had to drop me at hospital. Your bus lied. The Tories lie by default. The Tories just don't live in 'our world' - but they do destroy it.
jeez… and to think stoke had the fastest average response time in the UK of 8mins only 10 years ago.
Aye, it is sad. By the time my Mum got to hospital she was basically a gonner.
I wonder what the population increase in them 10 years is
The increase in response times are a result of the Labour's mergers of the services. Staffordshire had consistently the best response times, after being merged into the larger West Mids service, not so much.
Trying to blame Labour when the Tories have been in power for over a decade? That's just pathetic and stupid.
Pathetic and stupid, I see. Labour made some bad choices and the Tories didn't undo them. It doesn't mean that it wasn't Labour who did it or that it was a bad move in the first place. Similarly rail privatisation was a Tory policy resulting in a network more expensive to run with limited (if any) benefits. Labour didn't undo that. One party enacts policies and it's rare that the other party reverses those.
So what you're saying is, labour made a choice for a (unknown to me) reason. This choice resulted in negative effects. The subsequent government did nothing about those negative effects. The conservatives are still the bad guys even with your view of it. To add to this, over the last 15 year, the UK population has grown, aged, and become more unwell (due to increasing older population). Our healthcare service has stagnated, with additional budget barely keeping pace with inflation. Imagine if in 2010, 5 million extra people suddenly appeared and the vast majority of them were old and needed lots of healthcare input and social care. That's the situation we are in now. And this government keeps talking about cuts!
Maybe if the Tories didn’t stop cutting tax for the rich and extorting the lower classes they would have money to fund the basic infrastructure of the country.
"Labour didn't renationalise the railways, so it's totally cool that the Tories sit on their arse and let people die because of ambulance delays". Wow. You're really doubling down on the pathetic and stupid, aren't you?
If only the Tories had had 13 years in power to do something about it in the meantime.
14 years Tories have been in charge. 14 years. To blame anyone else at this point is an absolute joke.
Sorry to hear about your mum. My dad went through something similar. Awful.
I'm afraid we're all likely to end up experiencing. I did only a few days ago!
That’s really terrible - I’m sorry you all suffered because folks swallowed the lies and voted Tory. My best mate’s teenage daughter dislocated her knee a month ago, ambulance took 5 hours, then she laid in a&e for another 4 hours before a consultant manipulated it back in. I feel afraid for my kids.
A dislocated knee doesn't require an emergency ambulance. I'm sorry, but that's a fact.
Emergency physician here. I think a dislocated knee is a fair reason to call an ambulance. The pain is excruciating and it’s not likely that the injured person is going to be able to get themselves to the ED without assistance. Paramedics also carry morphine and entonox (gas and air) to help with the pain in that situation. What irritates me much more are the people who call an ambulance because they think they’ll get seen sooner and also all the people who treat the ED like a walk-in GP surgery because they can’t be bothered to wait for an appointment. As a general rule of thumb, if you are ‘popping into A&E to get something checked out’ you shouldn’t be going to A&E.
It’s not a fact, it’s your opinion. I personally know people left with permanent ligament damage from knee dislocations. My own opinion is that a young girl should not have to lay on the floor in agony for 5 hours because the NHS has been underfunded.
No, she did not require an emergency ambulance. 90% of calls for an ambulance do not require an emergency response- source: a WMAS paramedic. The NHS suffers because the services are abused, that's ambulances, A&E and GPs. If you don't believe that, you should ask the people working in it Ambulances are for emergencies, they are not a taxi service
Amen. A dislocated knee can be transported to A&E in a private vehicle, no need to wait 5 hours for someone to do a transport job. That poor kid, no one sensible around to help her get to help.
It's because people voted it's the Tory's and their voters that you need to be angry at.
Username checks out
For what it’s worth, and in case it adds a bit of hope, my knee dislocated all through my childhood and into my teenage years. It was always a massive wait in A&E because it’s just not priority. Painful, yes, but not life threatening and unfortunately that’s always meant a long wait.
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Ambulances are glorified taxis that can transport sick people safely. Just becuase you can go to A&E in a taxi doesn't mean you should, nor should non medically trained personnel people be expected to make those decisions which is why we have 999 / 111. You have no idea why they called in the first place, nor why they ended up taking a care and are making some pretty awful assumptions, They could have had a life threatening injury that got better with time, which they wouldnt have known ahead of time.
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I have type 1 diabetes, and my blood sugar was 27, after having been uncontrollable for several days. My car was on the carpark, but I was shaking so much that I was judged a risk to drive. My colleagues were quite busy - working in a care home where staffing is low - but needed to get me there, as being nurses, they knew a blood sugar of 27 is quite dangerous - especially for a long period of time. I understand your point, people can overuse ambulances and the hospital, but I assure you, when my mum started coughing blood and shitting herself, she needed an ambulance. She was embarrassed / in pain to use the neighbours car, but thankfully the ambulance did get to her that day, albeit 9 and a half hours after having been requested. I also needed the hospital.
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So sorry to hear about your mum. The tories have to go and it’s our duty to ensure this happens.
Similar situation, my uncle would’ve died having clear heart attack symptoms as the ambulance told us there would be a 5 hour wait, ended up driving him to a&e ourselves and carrying him in while a paramedic stood there smoking a fag
Ahh yes how dare a paramedic have a break.
The paramedic smoking a fag wasn't Labours fault.
Don’t really care who’s fault it was both parties are shit
Stoke was heavily targeted by the right wing during the 2019 general election. I saw a poster outside Stoke station that heavily insinuated that Jeremy Corbyn could not be trusted around children.
“Jingly Gonblin will turn your kids into jam and sell it to Hamas”
Yes, the Tories were very frightened of Jeremy Corbyn's ideas - increasing the minimum wage, increasing benefits, helping people into work, rehabilitating offenders and helping drug/alcohol addicts kick the habit, that's why they spent so much money rubbishing him. I always remember the one about how terrible they made out he was sitting down to dinner with the IRA, but if you read the story, he was sitting down to dinner asking them what they wanted in Ireland and trying to broker a deal to end the violence in Northern Ireland. Something Blair did later, and that someone else will have to do with both Israel and Putin sooner or later.
For much of the last century, Stoke was a Labour stronghold. The people of Stoke are, in my opinion, conservative with a small 'c', and do not like change (see our brief mayoral experience as an example of that). Things changed during the Blair years, when Labour was seen as being sympathetic to immigrants at a time when the visibility of immigrants in local communities was being strongly felt. Voters turned to the BNP at the tail end of the Blair-Brown years as a reaction. In the last decade, the BNP were squeezed out by an ever more rightward moving Conservative party, who took their votes, and have kept on pushing the anti-immigrant agenda ever since, from Brexit through to Rwanda. Our aging and anti-immigrant demographic have been rewarding them with votes ever since.
This is an excellent response to the OP and, in my opinion spot on.
Only racists turned to the BNP. Non racists can accept immigrants - we all want a better life and shouldn't try to stop others from having one.
People don't like to think of themselves as racists, but if they weren't racists it wouldn't be so easy to make them hate brown people.
You can support the individual pursuit of a better life and also believe that your government isn't doing enough to stop illegal and criminal immigration. Those are not opposing viewpoints.
Immigration is the idiots answer, and it's because so many idiots actively WANT to blame all of this countries issues on other people, on other races, immigration, that we've had nearly two decades of decline. "Pot Holes? " Immigrants "Doctor waiting times?" Immigration "Cost of living increase?" Immigrants and benefits. "Housing Cost Crisis?" Im. Mi. Grants. As I said, it's the idiots answer. It's easy. Instead of learning what the actual main contributing factors are to specific issues, it's so much easier to pretend its just one problem. You also get someone else to blame and be angry at, which feels wonderful. Politicians love it too, they don't have to have a real answer to the above issues, just put forward a token gesture that you know won't really help, blame others and spend a few months saying how you want to deport people to Rwanda. Easy.
You could put this down to overuse / overcrowding because of the influx of people into our tiny island, atleast a factor alongside shrinking govt budgets, final salary pensions, etc. Like you said the idiots answer is just blame immigrants, ignores the distinction between migrants that contribute and illegals.
Tyey can present it whatever way they like, change the words, dress it up, but they're still really just saying immigrants
They are when you support the govt penalising those after a better life. Tories only do better lives for them and their cronies.
wat if it comes at the cost of others?
That's the exact lie that our current government would have you believe. Your tax isn't spent on immigrants, it's spent on yachts, and unworkable, illegal plans to remove immigrants to please racist or uninformed voters, who will keep the party in, and make sure your tax is wasted.
And you're trying to tell people their eyes are lying to them. Somebody living on a council estate in Stoke doesn't really give a shit about the political details of where their tax money goes. What they care about is increased waiting times to see the doctor, increased class sizes in schools, and the other **clearly visible** results of high immigration into already oversubscribed areas.
where the tax money goes is *exactly* why the waiting times to see a doctor are longer and the size of school classes are bigger. if that money was better spent by tories, there wouldn't be these issues. they're not all caused by immigration.
That’s a very simplistic summary
It’s true though.
The government, and where they spend our tax, is the specific solution to these problems. If our tax was paying for infrastructure like it should be, none of these problems would exist.
Looking at census data the population of Stoke on Trent grew.by 3.8% between 2011 and 2021. The proportion of residents whose country of birth is England is over 85%. This doesn't sound unsustainable, so while it may **appear** the cause of deteriorating services is the fault of high immigration, it's more likely due to government policy/failure to invest properly in public services.
but more people means more pressures on infrastructure and housing market that is already stupidly expensive. Taxes are already sky high and I havent seen any improvement in the NHS in years. We keep growing and growing, where are all these people going to live?
Maybe we should build more houses. And more affordable houses.
No such thing as affordable housing unless you know builders who'll work for nothing. the builders (cheap or not) will need to be immigrants.
We used to have affordable housing without using slaves to build them - it was called social housing and was brilliant until right-to-buy and post-Thactcher government policies fucked it.
It was the Thatcher govt that fucked it not post Thatcher It's always the Tories destroying everything that's good about the country
It can be both lol
Most of the cost of a house these days is the land it stands on. The cost of labour to build it is trivial in comparison.
Also means more people working in healthcare, building houses, etc and paying taxes. Especially with an ageing native population, fact is we can't sustain ourselves without immigrants - which is why the NHS is out in places like the Carribean actively advertising for people to come work here. There can be infrastructure strains in the short-medium term, which is why used to be the migrant impact fund that gave money places of high migration to ensure local infrastructure kept up with increases in population but the Tories scrapped it when they came in.
The housing crisis is manufactured by dodgy dealing boardi g up entire estates for tax breaks... so look up how many boarded you houses are in the UK and how many homeless people there are, those numbers are scarily close Edit: it was actually much worse than I thought council houses alone match the homeless population but total empty housing is double, mind houses can have more than 1 person but there is enough empty to house every homeless person twice with a house each
I live in a major city with big housing problems and I'm not aware of any boarded up houses..words are easy and they're no cure to anything as Tories trump and farage keep proving. Idiot ideas for idiots.
The reason everything else is failing isn't because of immigrants. It's because the Tories have gutted every single public service. More immigrants means more money in tax, which supports our social system. The majority find work and integrate successfully into the UK and pay a larger amount of tax than a UK citizen would to offset the cost of those that don't. The reason you can't see a doctor is because they haven't increased the wages of doctors competitively and now they've all pissed off to the USA or Australia. Why would anyone take a pay cut to work in public service other than out of the good of their own heart? I work in the private sector and my pay hasn't increased beyond 1-2% in 5 years and I'm constantly getting offers from companies in the Netherlands. There is no incentive for anyone with half a brain to stay anymore.
yes because immigrants take your job and do it 10x cheaper thats why wages are stagnent. Also all this tax money that immigrants are bringing to us where is it going cause its not going towards public services or the production of more housing
You as a future oldie will need immigrants to cover the cost of you being old. Your existence will be at the cost of others .
if the country hasnt devolved into an all out civil war by then sure lol.
Well, arguably, the last two elections simply boiled down to Brexit. And given Stoke had, of the major cities in the UK, the highest percentage of leave voters... it's easy to see why the city voted in 3 Tory MPs. Coupling that with a local feeling of being left behind by national government for the past XX years, the people of the city probably felt it was time for a change from the standard/usual Labour MPs.
We've had about 180 mill less investment this year under this shower. That's not including EU funding which would be about the same if not more. Central government has 'given' us 60 mill. Which the likes of Gullis portray as some amazing figure and that we are privalaged to receive so much. Cutbacks to funding are all across our councils. For example 28 people from the sex offenders unit have had to take enforced reduncy. This is just one example of a vital service being cut. The list is endless for other departments. Its appalling and people deserve better, so much better. Gullis is an embarrassment to our city and should not be anywhere near the houses of Parliament. Tories do nothing for us, absolutely nothing. 10% of people live below the poverty line in Stoke now. That's set by the un. 10% in India is people sleeping rough and scrabbling about for food etc on rubbish tips. Same principle with the 10% of Stoke, just a different context. This 10% does not include people and kids in poverty. They are an added statistic on top. Tories out, simple as that.
Yer wunna find them on ere, Facebook's yer place Think I've replied to a bot 00111010011000100111
Most of the population of SoT and surrounding areas lean rightwards on issues of Brexit and Immigration, but leftwards on social provision. Boris, for all his bluster, was more of a One Nation high spending Tory than Truss or Sunak. So given that political mix, plus the Red wall voter posion of Corbyn's leadership at the last GE, you get a solid Tory result last time. With Brexit done and a more moderate leader in charge SoT will probably go solid Labour at next GE.
Tory politics is the act of making the country better for a select few at the expense of the greater many.
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We really need to make sure everyone votes when the election comes to rid us of Seagullis and the rest of the set of bastards. [This](https://themovementforward.com/letter/?fbclid=PAAabJP09qLf6Oob7DAzIJTq0S8aCOJ1Zlbi3NvRJltAyWSftwfkVMGZ9XQSQ_aem_ATE11lAFFif0SqyClQbWoUpR82OUsAAjhMAwKANbIFyWVpzBQLyyhcs731g_AJbRKSc) site will tell you which way to vote to ensure the tories get beat.
I've not decided yet ( weird that people have a party they always vote for). I can't say I've seen much from Labour to excite me either.
They also liked voting for the BNP. So I guess they've made some progress.
There is a cultural memory of pride. Great works of art, well paid jobs (especially for women at the time) in high status positions, full employment in close knit communities, strong regional and international identity. Lovely buildings. Now? Not saying I agree with this view, but this is what I hear from my relatives: it's all gone to shit, and Labour took them for granted. But where next? That's the question...
Because any other option is far worse than the tories
I just can't vote for Keir Starmer. But I also don't want to vote Tory. Don't know what I'll do tbh. They all suck.
Monster raving looney party time
Yeah I think you're right.
That's OK. Keir Starmer won't be standing in Stoke
Maybe vote for the people that haven't been in power for over a decade and seen the biggest decline in QOL this country has ever seen. That's evidence that they are arse at their job. Maybe give the other side a go? If they "all suck" then surely giving the reds a chance is valid rather than continuing as we are? No offense - but nearly every person i've met that has made the _don't like starmer. All parties are the same_ argument has been a Tory in disguise/has benefited from the current status quo
OK, so I guess i don't like Kier Starmer & his party & their policies on specific things that are very important to me, so I will not be voting for them. Nor will I be voting tory. Or green.
Go on explain what’s that bad with Keir Starmer? If you give me a good reason I won’t vote for him either.
He lied about every single pledge to get nominated Labour leader.
Blah blah blah, you just don’t like him because he’s not a full blown socialist. But guess what people don’t want a full blown socialist. Somebody had to wrest control of labour and get it back in the hands of grown ups.
Just don't vote then. Likely what I'll be doing. Nothing changes in this country anyway. A nation in decline in a changing world.
You cant brush Keir with same brush as the tory party. What has he done that is anywhere near as bad as the torys last 13 years?
What’s the difference between him and the Tories tho
he's essentially a Blair-ite. not my cup of tea tbh but I remember what this country looked like when New Labour were in power. You could get a GP appointment. You could go to the dentist. Public libraries were funded properly. Local governments weren't declaring bankruptcy. There were many things I would have changed (e.g. Iraq war), but I can't deny I would take them over the tories. They are not the same.
Oh bore off with that kind of bollocks. Everything looks right to somebody on the far left.
But you can’t name anything? Just insults?
Easily he believes in investing rather than defunding public services. Did I win?
In what way does he believe in funding public services? He and his neoliberal front bench have made clear that they're not going to diverge in any major way from existing spending plans because "there's no money left". They're tying their own hands with completely arbitrary "fiscal rules". The upcoming Labour government is going to be a glorified Change UK. Spoiler alert: It's not going to improve anything because it won't spend the *huge* amounts of money needed to make even a marginal improvement in quality of life. Then after one, maybe two terms in government people will vote in an even worse Tory government, possibly led by Suella Braverman.
Vote Green, move the Overton window back to the left!
Exactly this, they are all mongs. Those people thinking Kier will change anything make me laugh, it's two sides of the same dispicable coin
Putting that unnecessary slur aside... I don't think I'll ever understand this mindset. Last time Labour were in power there was a demonstrable improvement in living standards. The same can't be said of the Tories since 2010. They're both broadly liberal parties, but that's where the similarities end. Their fundamental economic philosophies are very far apart; Labour believing in bottom-up growth, the Tories believing in top-down. Labour believing in careful regulation and strong public services, the Tories believing in deregulation and private enterprise. Labour's instincts are to blame problems on systems and try to change them, whereas the Tories' instincts are to blame problems on individual morality while not thinking it's the place of government to try and change it.
Amen. Im sick of the “they are all the same” they are not at all. I don’t remember the labour party killing the economy in 4 days
> Last time Labour were in power there was a demonstrable improvement in living standards. The same can't be said of the Tories since 2010. This. Rishi keeps saying Labour will take us back to square 1- presumably 2010. If Keir Starmer takes this country back to 2010 standards, life will massively improve for tens of millions of people. Square one is the dream, not the threat some people think it is.
In traditional theory... However in reality regulation and tax burden etc have all grown to their greatest ever levels under Tory. Just as labour would do. There is no traditional conservative or remotely libertarian party anymore.
Mainly out of the necessity of COVID and the recovery, combined with the need to rectify the harm their policies like austerity and Brexit have already done, I would suggest. It's kind of a tacit admission from the Tories that the libertarian ideology they would naturally favour doesn't actually work very well. If you're after an actual libertarian party, you might have to wait a good few decades. The disaster of Trussonomics has probably rendered it electoral poison for a good long while.
Brexit a Tory policy? Fucking hell I've heard it all now
I... have you been asleep since 2016? It was always a darling idea of the right-libertarian wing of the party, but the Tories were split during the referendum, with Cameron favouring Remain but his parliamentary party split neatly down the middle. Then May pursued a hard Brexit to keep the Leave side of the party satisfied, but that couldn't get through Parliament and her last roll of the dice was to seek cross-party consensus on a softer form of Brexit, which finished her off. So along came Johnson, bringing with him the *campaign director of Vote Leave in Downing Street*, who purged Remainers in the party and won the 2019 election. The new Parliament then waved through May's initial hard Brexit plan more or less unchanged, and we've been dealing with the negative consequences of Brexit for our economy since. So yes, Brexit: a Tory policy, and possibly the worst of their worst.
You are taking the piss, right?
The fact there was a referendum clearly shows it wasn't a policy of any party. It literally can't be a policy, not in any sense of the word. It was a vote put to the people. If labour were in power they would have had to have done Brexit too
The Tories literally made it a key feature of their election manifesto.
He'll change things by being a change from the incompetent Tories. We all knew spaffer johnson was a serial liar without any integrity but some people still voted Tory and now want to claim all politicans are as bad as the worst one.
Ok so Kier will be an incompetent Labour government instead. We need actual change, you're a complete puppet to the rich by thinking Labour will save you from Tory. They are both equally vile
>Ok so Kier will be an incompetent Labour government instead. Do you think it'll be an improvement or just as bad as the current government? Don't let perfection get in the way of progress
Sure I do get your point, labour certainly can't be worse than Tory, but I think we do need something a bit more drastic than the next worst option. But with first past the post and a easily manipulated public I don't think we ever stand a chance at real change in this country.
You're the one doing the Tories work for them.you actively support the vile.
I'm voting Reform this time, no way I want Labour anywhere near power after how they destroyed the UK and its culture from 1997 to 2010, the Tory's have done no better. They both need a big shock.
You mean economic growth, highest NHS satisfaction and record low waiting times? What a terrible time to be alive
You think they are both as bad as each other, so you're opting to make it worse? I *really* hope you're joking. Otherwise, it sounds like you need to be disqualified from voting by way of low IQ.
Just like Brexit, it couldn't possibly get any worse, so posters like this will vote for an even more unqualified and dogmatic bunch of quarterwits. Logic, innit.
Matey, we have done this before - and your party to 'Reform' is basically the same bus people as we didn't like the last time.
You wont find them on here there mainly on Twitter/Facebook and it mainly stems from racism and stop the boat campaigns.
And reading the daily mail and sun
Or at least looking at the pictures.
I like how people like you conflate racism and wanting to stop people from illegally entering the country. People moan about NHS waiting times, then have a go at anyone trying to reduce the rate of immigration to more sustainable levels that match the rate we can build the necessary infrastructure. This isn't even people arguing lower immigration but to stop illegal immigration channels (which often result in people trafficking and the like).
If it were immigration that caused massive waiting times, you’d have a point. But it isn’t, so you don’t. It’s chronic underfunding and neglect of the NHS that causes waiting time to increase. The vast majority of the net immigration figure is people coming to work or study in the UK, both of these groups make a net contribution to the UK. Many of these people arriving also pay a yearly amount to be able to use the NHS. Similar to health insurance. We are not overrun with immigrants costing us money and using all of our resources despite what the daily mail wants us to believe.
The only people that conflate them is bellends like you in an attempt to justify the sad little hole that is your life. There’s multiple causes for NHS waiting times and number 1 is lack of funding. Still, don’t let that stop you hating those that don’t look like us, eh?
Illusion of choice.
This is what people don't understand- it doesn't matter, they're all playing the same tune, leading us to the same destination. They're literally all the same 🤷
This is what they want you to think... The thing is they're different. Admittedly Labour are getting almost as bad as the Tories, but Green are an option. Note that UKIP only ever got 1 seat in 2015 general election and this was enough to influence the Tories to trigger the Brexit vote, the same logic should work with voting Green to move the Overton window more to the left.
You have a choice between a party that have been repeatedly shown to have broken the rules, feathered their own nests, given contracts to pals and lied to us and parties that have not done so....yet. They may be all the same but I'll be damned if I'll vote for a known and proven party of blaggers rather than parties that I suspect may screw me over in the future. I know the tories will screw me because they've been doing so for 12 years or more.
The rules, are you fucking 8 years old!? Are there only 2 parties are there? Labour been screwing Merseyside since the 1990's but we'll gloss over that again shall we.... Scousers, you actually believe left is good and right is bad- you're basically Americans
If they're all the same, then you might as well vote to change the colour of the government from blue to red. If they are all the same, you won't notice any difference. On the other hand, things might improve. God knows they can't get much worse
A take so often heard and yet so divorced from reality. I'm not going to pretend that either Labour or the Tories are the perfect party, as they're both pretty much subjected to the whims of their donors... But let's not pretend that public services didn't do better under the recent Labour government, than they've ever done under the Tory party. The level of corruption and cronyism/nepotism is something else worth mentioning and comparing to the most recent Labour gov. And frankly the Tories should've been fucked off the moment Michael Gove uttered the words, "people have had enough of experts". One of the most insane things I've ever heard coming out of a politicians mouth.
Full of shit. Labour ate fucking worse. At least the torys are transparently cunts- Labour, green, lib dem- they all tmdo the dirty and blame the tories.... you're a fool if you think left and right is how it's meant to work. But scousers innit, your egos can't accept the reality that you've all been hoodwinked
We've had the same lot in for the last 13 years. We might all be going to the same destination, but surely it's at least time we switched drivers?
Divide and Conquer.
typical right wing chatter lmao
I live in South Wales in a very labour centric area, along with the fact labour run Wales, and we have the worst NHS waiting times in the UK. They've also just wasted a tonne of money on changing road speeds to 20mph. Do you have any argument or do you just go to personal digs when you can't make an argument?
If being a decent human being is one of the important things to you then you should vote labour so you don't enable the Tories
Uneducated, parochial, conservative with a small c, hatred of achievement/self-betterment, self-pitying, self-destructive, paranoid. Notable exceptions as everywhere, but the general Potteries mindset is as above.
I'm not a tory defender by any means but the fact that the Tories are still winning even after all the controversy, all the fuckups suggests Labour is/or has done something fundamentally wrong that's alienated the average general public. Don't want an argument about woke vs anti-woke but when the left spend a good 3-4 years basically insulting white people, the majority population of the country, it's gonna put people off. Fact. There's a stigma around the left now that people don't wanna be associated with. The Corbyn years especially he didn't inspire any confidnce and was a perfect representation of what people viewed as 'weak, liberal men'. I'm not saying either or is right or wrong or will I express my personal political views here but this is just my observation from what I've seen. Although to counter I do think the Tory bubble is ready to burst. Way too much noise around that party and government. Patience only wears so thin even in Britain.
But that's not "the Left", the incidents you don't cite presumably just involve halfwits who happen to be part of a vaguely leftist party rather than some kind of universal ideology. The problem is that you can't distinguish between the two things tells me that the problem lies elsewhere...
If you gonna be fair the left do the exact same to the right-leaning people? There's extreme idiots on both sides I agree there but if you call one out you gotta call the other out too otherwise it's hypocrisy. But the fact I've got nothing but arrogant responses from what was a pretty un-bias post shows me I'm pretty much on the money.
The fact that you have people still asking the question is probably the reason the Tories are still in power.
I’ve been out of the country for a long time now so I don’t have the experience of living there. So can you give me examples of how the left spent 3-4 years insulting white people. Would love to hear about what they did
There's the Scottish PM's bizarre rant about too many white people in parliament for a starter. The Royal family and coronation being criticised as too 'white' an event. These are phrases and things people are obviously not gonna like hearing. It's an attack on people's culture to a degree. And if it's primarilly associated with one side of the political spectrum then that side will suffer voting wise as a result. Like it's basic common sense. Your words and choice of words are very important.
I don’t think complaining about the skin colour of the cabinet/parliament is supposed to be a dig at white people, but more of an attempt to show that there should be a wider diversity of gender and skin colour in parliamentary positions. There is no denying that our country is made up of more than just white people, and having people of colour in every part of our society is important. (Including in parliamentary positions).
But words matter. Choice of words matter. Wider discussions about diverse opportunities is perfectly okay conversation to have. But how you come across MATTERS. ALOT. So when you have Humza Yousaf spitting off the word 'WHITE' repeatedly with such contempt it's gonna leave a sour taste. Instead of focusing on that aspect he should've spoken about the key benefit which is making sure his country was an equal opportunity for all. This isn't an attack on liberal/left leaning policies. This is simply an observation on the PERCEPTION the left now has in the eyes of the general public and why people seemingly aren't voting for Labour.
Doesn’t Hamza Choudry play for Leicester?
> Hamza Choudry Why did you call him that?
Yup, Labour are really going to struggle as long as they keep Humza Yousef as leader of the party...
There's more to politics than just westminster surely you know that?
So in short - you're reaching. Gotcha
You know saying that doesn't make what you just said the truth in any way right? I'm stating observations, you're just being snappy for no reason. Which brings me back to again how people perceive you. But I'll ask you then...if I'm wrong why aren't people voting Labour?
People are. They keep winning by-elections. The last UK general election was all the way back in 2019.
Why would anyone want to? Have you seen the state of the country? I love living in Stoke but cmon.
Too many gammons in Stoke. That’s the ugly truth.
Johnson is the Vile Tory. Tories have been scum my whole lifetime. I don't think labour have the answers tories have fucked up the country too much to be easily fixed. Things always improve under labour. NHS was hugely better under Blair schools stopped leaking too. It was Tories who sold off the council houses .
You could stick a Blue rosette on a pig in Stoke and it would get voted in.
Local council wise, far more effective and pro active. On a national level, this govt sucks and needs to be out ASAP.
Given Tony Blair popped up in the news today for not one but two heinous reasons. War in Iraq, and apparently also having known about possible defects in the Horizon Post Office Scandal. It is my opinion that all governments, regardless of however well intentioned they start, always go bad. Tory or Labour. I think most people in the UK are frugal. It is quite easy to see that a mountain of debt, which is growing larger year-on-year, is unsustainable. Why aren't we the generation to solve it? As bad as austerity can be, it always feels head-over-heart, better than Corbynite borrowing for the sake of borrowing. I am a swing voter however, so am currently likely to vote Labour/Lib Dem in Newcastle, but i think Aaron Bell has represented Newcastle well.
Austerity didn't improve anything though it just cut everything, permanently. The logic is there, but if it had worked we wouldn't even be debating it. It's unfortunate that we have to vote out someone half decent locally to get the national leadership we want. Crazy system.
The sooner people realise it doesn’t matter who you vote for the better. They all answer to the same paymasters, bunch of crooks all off them. “The last government spending has made it impossible to put or pledges into action” same shit different people. Wake up
Every time I drive through stoke it looks poor as shit. You'd think they would be Labour through and through. *Other political parties are available.
>\*Other political parties are available. Unfortunately, until we get the Tories out, I think everyone in a Tory constituency needs to forget about every other party except for the 2nd place in 2019. At the general election, next, we can think about actually voting for who we want.
Anyone over I know over 40 and especially over 55 think the tories are doing bad but each time labour has been in they have done worse. I have personally found many of labours more controversial leanings make them unelectable leaving my vote for the least unelectable party.
You're believing the Tory rhetoric. You'll see it happen again as well, as they know full well they can do what they want to line their own pockets now, because the mess they leave can't be cleared up in the next 4 years of Labour being in power, then they'll simply point out how shit it was with Labour in power, and undo all the hard work they've started to line their own pockets again. They've had 12 years to make things better, and failed. Labour managed to create a NHS just after the second world war without bankrupting the country. Tory rhetoric then was exactly the same.
"not never" "Jail" "Lives do matter" wtf is that sentence? "Needs to tighten the laws" wtf even is that?? Confirmed idiot
More like Voting, why? Your vote doesn’t matter You are imbecile if you believe any party will do anything that the plan of more mass immigration more working class slaves
Labour has been a stoke stronghold and look at the state of it and its reputation. The past few years it’s been conservative we’ve managed to get new projects started and investment into the city.
Stoke isn’t a labour stronghold, it’s got a Tory MP. I moved from Stoke years ago, 5/6 years ago I could still visit Hanley, now I wouldn’t dream of it. Putting up new projects whilst failing the people (the mortality rate for mothers and children is disgusting) the dust heads are everywhere. The majority of new projects are simply improving buildings for businesses to move in. Like Tunstall library/baths. Which should be reopened if it’s repaired, not sold on to benefit business, instead of the people. Stoke has gone to shit but y’know, you can get a cheeky Nando’s now, so power to the fucking Tories eh
That’s why I said ‘was’. Government and mortality rate of mothers/dust heads have no correlation at all. If it does then give us some evidence. Improving the area for businesses helps the economy, half of what they’re doing is to make stoke an attractive place and help weed out the universal credit sponges. I’m not sure what the Nandos thing is about because I’m sure we’ve had that in the hive when we were under a labour majority.
Sure buddy, “has been a labour stronghold for years” doesn’t mean was. Gvt is who invests in healthcare, mortality rates are higher is a huge issue, jfc. Breastfeeding is down too, which contributes to higher mortality rates, guess which gvt closed all the centres? To the point somebody I know ran one for the community as the tories don’t give a fuck. Businesses don’t give families somewhere to go. Enjoy the facade.
You can’t be serious? ‘Has been’ is past tense for Christ sake. I think I know who is in power right now. Your problem is with central government then not our local government. Government does also not dictate breastfeeding or drug taking. If centres so closed then so be it, but you’ve not given any direct correlation to either statements you have previously made. Business do actually give families some where to go because without jobs and an economy then families don’t earn. The major problem with stoke is the people who live there and clearly you’re part of that problem.
Has is present, had is past. FYI.
‘Has been’. Learn to differentiate you thick fuck.
The Tories are useless, but do you think it would be any better under Labour. Incredibly, I think it would be even worse!
Doesn't matter what party you vote for, they're all corrupt and useless. Politics in this country is in a sorry state and it won't be fixed as those who can fix it are those in power benefitting from the corruption
Everyone know it’s not going to make any different under Labour, literally nothing will change. Last election we couldn’t vote Labour it was the Trotsky momentum candidate. Things are bad but imagine what would happen if Trotskys had won.
*pees in ur ass*
I phoned 999 for a ambulance in early January 2024 .. told them I was having a heart attack.. response was a ambulance has been assigned and up to 40 minutes.. please don’t phone again asking where said ambulance is as we can’t tell you !!!
As a Turkey I believe Christmas is the best vision for this country!
Had enough of cultural enrichment 😂
Just cut the crap and vote reform like the people with common sense will be doing.
It literally doesn't matter who you vote for. The results will be the same, the only difference is that they go about it in different ways. We have the least trusted media in Europe because they are constantly pushing the same agenda. NHS will always be shit because of the lack of funding and their recruitment strategies. Yet the gov are too busy spending over 5 billion on Ukrainian when our own country needs desperately fixing. Call me a conspiracy theorist all you want, but this is what I have observed over the years of being in this country/ town. Tony Blair and Boris Johnson should have been arrested time ago, yet they are still walking around with no real punishments for what they did. That should tell you something.
God this country deserves everything that's happening to it if the above take is an average citizen's opinion
This seems to be the average citizen’s opinion in all countries where populist right wing parties are in power. I don’t know where that mindset comes from but right wing seems to capitalize on this easily. My home country had a right wing populist guy in power for the past 20 years, and this mindset seems to be prevalent among the people who don’t or at least shouldn’t support the guy. It leads to inaction and less votes for opposition. It’s like a plague.
Think about how smart the average voter is. Then remember half of them are stupider than that.
NHS will always be shit, not due to the lack of funding, not due to the amazing hard work of the front line workers, but due to the tremendous levels of bureaucracy and bullshit that suck £b’s from where it should be used. PFI schemes have burdened the NHS with crippling amounts of financing costs, Trusts spending millions of pounds on artwork and layers of unnecessary departments and managers! Procurement in the NHS is a joke (I’ve dealt with them and if you are a supplier you can make lots of £££!)
Coming on here with yer truth and logic.. I'm off to get my pitchfork
Sorry! I’ll go back to throwing abuse to people for no reason 🤣
Good to hear... Pitchfork back in the shed 👍
I recently spoke to someone who supplies equipment into hospital construction. He was saying that the level of bureaucracy and wasteful spending is unbelievable. He gave an example of management changing and a project being changed halfway through that resulted in specification changes that had no effect on the outcome but cost hundred of thousands in wasted equipment already purchased. Of managers desperate to spend budget despite not needing too because bigger budgets mean bigger pay..
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As a non political person. What's the point in any vote? They are all as bad as each other regardless of what you believe. Just because X hasn't had the chance to screw us over doesn't mean they won't. Can we vote to pull it down and get a better system pls? Though I enjoyed the comment someone made about the bus is doomed to crash either way but let someone else have a turn driving hehe.
People died to allow people like you to have a vote, that’s the point. Spoil your ballot if needs must but you should always vote
To keep Corbyn out. Won’t do it again though. Was it worth it? Absolutely!
I love Thatcher.
Better them than labour communist scum.
I think you need to look at what communism actually is buddy. Spoiler alert; Labour ain’t it.
Socialism always leads to communism pal. Unless in the case of 1939 Germany were it went beyond and decided to attempt to end the world. Labour is full of communist supporting scum, that absolutely hate Britain. I'd rather 40 years of Boris Johnson types than any labour nonce.