Change of name for Labour.

Yep John Smith was the best prime minister we never had

Would you be in favour of PR

Yes.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Well I am very much enjoying the belated realisation by the media that Rachel Reeves was not an Economist at HBOS as per her CV but actually a lesser role in some sort of customer complaints department where she was “useless” according to several colleagues. Explains a lot.

Is that not a sackable offence to lie on one’s CV?

Ooh this is all getting very political ha ha. I thought it was about Labour's name.

Budget day tomorrow - hold on to our hats ..........

TakeThat7

Lino as above brilliant IMean they are supposed to be sympathetic to the not so brights and working class minimum wagers

Well aren't you a charmer.

The original post you quoted is talking post-Thatcher Grunty? Comparing legacy builds from her tenure is misleading. Also, when David Cameron became PM in May 2010 the houses completed that year would already have been planned and funded by LAs under the previous government, which distorts your assumption.

I think many of us have criticised the selling off of council houses, compounded by the fact that the Conservative governments that followed Thatcher made no attempt to replace them.

Source: Full Fact UPDATE: This article has been updated with more information on housing association builds and the timeframe in question.

While Labour has promised that it would double the rate of housebuilding by 2020 (equivalent to some 240,000 homes per year), one of its London Assembly members has argued that the party should "apologise" for its record on affordable housing.

Tom Copley, Labour's housing spokesman in the capital, said that Margaret Thatcher's government had built more council flats and houses in a single year than New Labour's managed in its entire period in office.

This is correct. The official data shows that the Blair and Brown governments built 7,870 council houses (local authority tenure) over the course of 13 years. (If we don't include 2010 - the year when David Cameron became PM - this number drops to 6,510.) Mr Copley has contrasted this figure with the record of Mrs Thatcher's government, which never built fewer than 17,710 homes in a year.

Between 1997 and 2010, of the 2.61 million homes constructed, only 0.3% were local authority tenure. Mrs Thatcher's government supervised the building of a similar number of houses (2.63 million), but 18.9% were LA or 'council' properties.

To look at it another way, New Labour built an average of 562 council houses per year. And Mrs Thatcher's Conservatives? 41,343. That said, it's also true that the number of council houses under construction declined steadily during Mrs Thatcher's era.

It seems to me that whatever they do people are determined to look at it negatively.
Indeed.

Lino as above brilliant IMean they are supposed to be sympathetic to the not so brights and working class minimum wagers
I'm not sure I follow this. Can you explain, please?

TakeThat7

Labour are going to make it more difficult to buy counçil houses The Tory party under Margarate thatcher brought it in Have Labour ever done anything for working class people or even working people whatever the difference is

I think many of us have criticised the selling off of council houses, compounded by the fact that the Conservative governments that followed Thatcher made no attempt to replace them. And yet now ( as with the very people that used to query why they were given a WFP when they didn’t need it and pointed out that they gave the money to charity) that Labour are making it more difficult to buy council houses, they’re being demonised for it. It seems to me that whatever they do people are determined to look at it negatively..

Lino as above brilliant IMean they are supposed to be sympathetic to the not so brights and working class minimum wagers

Labour are going to make it more difficult to buy counçil houses The Tory party under Margarate thatcher brought it in Have Labour ever done anything for working class people or even working people whatever the difference is

Farzanah how true !

Ilovecheese

Let Thames water go bankrupt, then take it over. Impose enormous fines, and I mean enormous, on any other company that does not do what it is supposed to do, drive them to bankruptcy, and take over.
The infrastructure needs to be overhauled anyway, or do we continue to put up with the appalling service we are getting at the moment. The private companies are never going to spend the money to fulfil their duties to the public, the Govt will just have to.

It is already effectively bankrupt and most of the investors have written their investment value down to £0. That would be the easy part.

The problem is that TW has a £16 billion debt mountain, but has paid out £7.2 billion in dividends since privitisation.

I highly recommend this podcast of a Radio 4 'Briefing Room' programme on the water industry. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001yxl5 . I heard it when driving somewhere and had to pull in and calm down it made me so angry to find out just how egregiously most of the water companies have shafted the consumer and stuffed their pockets with cash.

Thames Water isn’t going to go bankrupt Ilovechheese, it’s been bailed out. In the short and medium term the government has a lot of pressing priorities, and compromises have to be made, water is going to be one of them.

Amongst many ex Labour Party members the current government are known as LINO.
Labour In Name Only.

Let Thames water go bankrupt, then take it over. Impose enormous fines, and I mean enormous, on any other company that does not do what it is supposed to do, drive them to bankruptcy, and take over.
The infrastructure needs to be overhauled anyway, or do we continue to put up with the appalling service we are getting at the moment. The private companies are never going to spend the money to fulfil their duties to the public, the Govt will just have to.

The government does not want to renationalise water because they cannot afford it.

Frsirst, they cannot take them back without compensating the current owners. OK Thames Water has a heavt debt and most of the current owners have written it off, but that does not aply to all water companies and then they have to find the huge sums of money needed to solve their problems and invest in their infrastructure.

FriedGreenTomatoes2

This, from Full Fact Doodledog:
It is true, however, to say 80% of those registered to vote didn’t vote for Labour.

The rest is just semantics.
4 out of 5 of us eligible to vote either didn’t bother or didn’t vote Labour. I think that’s clear enough for most of us to understand!

It seems I was wrong to assume that you understood how democracy works in the UK after all FriedGreenTomatoes2, as by your reckoning no government has been legitimate for many decades?

FriedGreenTomatoes2

This, from Full Fact Doodledog:
It is true, however, to say 80% of those registered to vote didn’t vote for Labour.

The rest is just semantics.
4 out of 5 of us eligible to vote either didn’t bother or didn’t vote Labour. I think that’s clear enough for most of us to understand!

But more than 4 out of 5 didn't vote for anyone else

More people voted Labour than for any other party, as well as the fact that they won more seats. Is that not clear enough to understand?

Casdon

FriedGreenTomatoes2

Starmer didn’t win this election. The Tories lost it (deserved with their ‘One Nation’ and ‘broad church’ nonsense) and he was next in line. For him to keep going on about his “massive mandate” is sickening.

Glad I voted Reform.

Labour did win the election, more people voted for them than any other party in 411 seats out of 650. Nobody needs to remind anybody of how the British democratic system works, do they?
Would you be in favour of PR, which is the alternative?

Absolutely in favour of PR, as are the vast majority of Labour members, evidenced at the LP Conference.

This, from Full Fact Doodledog:
It is true, however, to say 80% of those registered to vote didn’t vote for Labour.

The rest is just semantics.
4 out of 5 of us eligible to vote either didn’t bother or didn’t vote Labour. I think that’s clear enough for most of us to understand!

FriedGreenTomatoes2

18% of the voting public? I think not Anniebach no matter how it’s spun.

Well we are stuck with Starmer, Rayner, Reeves, Lammy, Miliband and Cooper now until 2029. Think how much damage they can do by then. The last lot were incompetent, but these are actual saboteurs.

Where do you get 18% from? Fullfact say they got 33.7%, compared to 24% for the Tories and 14% for Reform. Even with PR Labour would have won, no matter how it's spun.

Taking back water into our own control is popular with the public ,but they don't want to do that.
Not sure raising bus fairs is much of a vote winner either.

Sarnia

Blair started the rot with his new Labour and this is what we have today. Poor mans' Tories should be their new title.

As I said else where Tony Blair got the Labour party into power and in power for 13 years. Jeremey Corbyn led Labour to a caatstrophic defeat.

A political party, if it to achieve government needs to have policies that appeal to the electorate, the vast majority of whom belong to no party at all.

If you want to stick to your policies regardless of whether they are liked resign yourself to having annual conferences in the local Starbucks, and putting up half a dozen candidates at elections, all of whom lose their deposits.

Labour -the I'm alright , Jack party .