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Looking back over the last decade, were many mistakes made by our politicians?

(30 Posts)
NannyJan53 Sat 16-Nov-19 17:44:28

Well said varian absolutely spot on!

varian Sat 16-Nov-19 17:37:14

Very many mistakes were made, but by far the worst was Cameron's decision to hold a referendum in 2016, asking uniformed voters for a simple yes/no answer to an extremely complicated question on a matter which hardly anyone properly understood and, in spite of being aware of the leave bias in the media, failing to protect the status quo with a super-majority requirement as is always used to change a constitution.

MarthaBeck Sat 16-Nov-19 14:58:05

Urmstongran, do you come from Urmston near Manchester?

My sister qualified as a SRN at Davyhulme Hospital where Nye Bevan launched the founding of the NHS . She still talks about it.

Urmstongran Sat 16-Nov-19 13:52:13

In my opinion austerity measures were the biggest mistake, implemented in 2010. Totally unnecessary with far reaching consequences.

MarthaBeck Sat 16-Nov-19 12:57:11

In my view this is a question we need to consider and learn from for the future,

When the GE is over & historians write up all the facts about the last decade and also Brexit the damage will have already been done. Personally, I believe it will portray real horror stories of incompetence, errors & appalling deception. Rather, far too late then to stop UK being duped by extremists.

Looking back it’s easy to highlight the huge mistakes made by politicians during the last decade. Particularly, under funding of inflation for the NHS & Care services. Allowing homelessness, Child and OP poverty to get out of hand. I appreciate the need for some austerity measures. Though lack of urgency and getting priorities right such as tackling the acute depression in the North,Midland and other regions caused unnecessary hardship & poverty issues.

How, over that period we have allowed homelessness, the need for food banks and other social problems such as child care to escalate is appalling.

Far greater effort should have been made to stop Boardroom greed by taxing excess bonuses. Ensuring that overseas companies paid same taxes as UK businesses, stopped off shore tax havens. A complete review of our taxation was needed to ensure adequate funding, along with limiting the flow of funding for less essential such as Brexit.

The extra monies coming from those taxes and savings could and should have been used to tackle some of the real social needs, more for Care Services & inflation levels of funding for the NHS. It would have saved LA’s many headaches & also kept many who were in Care out of hospital, saving NHS more money. Though I doubt politicians will agree. Brexit unfortunately got in the way preventing many Minister from focusing effectively on our domestic infrastructure, their priorities were not properly focused.

That resulted in far too many urgent decisions being delayed, as we saw last week over the flooding. Unfortunately, the errors of the last decade do not make good reading. It will be interesting to see how the politicians hid their incredible ineptitude’s from the electorate in the coming weeks.

Could we have done better?