Damaging political policies from the past

[Slow.Patrol]

What in your view were political policies that have caused long term damage to the country?

Margaret Thatcher selling off council houses and not using the money raised to build new ones (plus heavily discounting).

And Tony Blair increasing the number of young people going to university to improve the youth unemployment figures. Especially the Mickey Mouse degrees.

Tony Blair did a number of bad things, but I'm going with universities for starters.

[E63eeeeee...]

First past the post.

[fat80b]

Slow.Patrol said:

Tony Blair did a number of bad things, but I'm going with universities for starters.

That he did.

My personal favourite (which no one else ever seems to care about) was his constitutional reform and the devolution stuff.

The quango explosion and regional stuff all began as project TB and it’s going to impact us for a mighty long time.

If I had my way, we’d go back in time and undo the whole lot. (Get rid of the Scottish and Welsh parliament etc)

[fflump]

Brown’s government introduced the taper removal of personal allowance above £100k resulting in the 60% tax trap.

[bitchstewie]

Section 28.

[ChocolateFrog]

PFI/BSF. Think that was Blair too. Wouldn't be so bad if the companies were held to account when the substandard schools started falling down.

[Timothy Bucktu]

Blairs immigration policy set the UK on its downward spiral to where we are today.

[911Spanker]

Timothy Bucktu said:

Blairs immigration policy set the UK on its downward spiral to where we are today.

Yea. Those immigrants.

Without them, we would all be millionaires I tell 'ya.

Would be the land of honey and roses it would.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Slow.Patrol said:

What in your view were political policies that have caused long term damage to the country?

Margaret Thatcher selling off council houses and not using the money raised to build new ones (plus heavily discounting).

45 years ago I worked with a guy, similar age to me. By 21 I had saved and saved, trying to raise the deposit for a tiny flat in London. He and his girlfriend, who didn't work, had 3 kids already and had a 4 bed council house in Chigwell.

I eventually bought my flat. He bought his house a few years later with a 70% discount. Sold it years later for close to £2m. And this is Thatcher, who apparently wanted to reward people for doing the right thing.

[andy43]

ChocolateFrog said:

PFI/BSF. Think that was Blair too. Wouldn't be so bad if the companies were held to account when the substandard schools started falling down.

This most definitely. Speaking to a teacher I know whose school is pfi run it’s just lunacy. Buildings falling to bits and they’re not even allowed to run weekend teaching because they’d be billed extra for the extra wear and tear
On the flip side I remember my dad talking about investing in pfi as a licence to print money.

[Smollet]

Not making the poll tax law.

[Oilchange]

911Spanker said:

Timothy Bucktu said:

Blairs immigration policy set the UK on its downward spiral to where we are today.

Yea. Those immigrants.

Without them, we would all be millionaires I tell 'ya.

Would be the land of honey and roses it would.

Yeah, like they didn't open the floodgates to rub the Tories noses in it for idealogical reasons, nothing to do with that lol.
Which Labour admitted to after...

[ChocolateFrog]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Slow.Patrol said:

What in your view were political policies that have caused long term damage to the country?

Margaret Thatcher selling off council houses and not using the money raised to build new ones (plus heavily discounting).

45 years ago I worked with a guy, similar age to me. By 21 I had saved and saved, trying to raise the deposit for a tiny flat in London. He and his girlfriend, who didn't work, had 3 kids already and had a 4 bed council house in Chigwell.

I eventually bought my flat. He bought his house a few years later with a 70% discount. Sold it years later for close to £2m. And this is Thatcher, who apparently wanted to reward people for doing the right thing.

Council houses up north were something like £5-9k. Ok they're not worth millions now but I remember it being less than a quarter of their true value.

[vaud]

andy43 said:

ChocolateFrog said:

PFI/BSF. Think that was Blair too. Wouldn't be so bad if the companies were held to account when the substandard schools started falling down.

This most definitely. Speaking to a teacher I know whose school is pfi run it s just lunacy. Buildings falling to bits and they re not even allowed to run weekend teaching because they d be billed extra for the extra wear and tear
On the flip side I remember my dad talking about investing in pfi as a licence to print money.

PFI was a Major policy, and Blair increased its use.

[Fusion777]

Selling off gas, power, rail, water wasn’t the smartest move long term. Great for a sugar rush of private wealth accumulation and prosperity for some (even speaking as someone with shares in some of said industries), but not the best for the country.

Piecemeal investment in things like rail, nuclear power, even things like reservoirs show how we’ve fallen behind. It’s difficult for privatisation to work correctly when your industry has a natural monopoly. Other countries do it better.

Downsizing of the armed forces. Selling off/not replacing council house stock as mentioned.

Not so much a policy, but the chasing of quarterly/annual figures and only looking at the next electoral cycle is a bad habit of the UK. Many issues can only be properly tackled with long term thinking/investment.

[Carl_VivaEspana]

1. Free Movement Directive (2004/38/EC)
2. ECHR Article 8 under the 1998 Human Rights act
3. The Criminal Justice bill (1995)
3. IR35
4. 45% Income Tax Rate

Whilst I respect why the poll tax and section 28 were mistakes, the level of damage they would have made if kept would have been far lower to society overall.

How many of the above were enacted under a Labour government but were not repealed or reformed under the Tories is telling.

[Fusion777]

ChocolateFrog said:

PFI/BSF. Think that was Blair too. Wouldn't be so bad if the companies were held to account when the substandard schools started falling down.

PFI was introduced by Major.

[nikaiyo2]

Slow.Patrol said:

What in your view were political policies that have caused long term damage to the country?

Margaret Thatcher selling off council houses and not using the money raised to build new ones (plus heavily discounting).

Sorry, thatcher selling the council houses was not a bad policy. It made perfect sense when she introduced it. The council houses stock was often in terrible condition and needing massive investment. My nanna on my mums side lived in a former miners cottage, I can remember the outside toilet, coal fired heating, no hot water and I was born in 1979. Selling the council houses put double glazing in, put central heating in, put a toilet inside.


There was no issue with housing when it was introduced, the population was stable, Uk population increased by 3m in the 30 years from 1970… then Blair got in and the population grew by more than this in 10 years. Londons population went from 8m in 1951 to 6.5m in 1981. Before that her changes, no one wanted to live in London, they worried what was going to be done with the place.
The failure of right to buy was Blair not building housing for the migrants his government encouraged.

[jfdi]

The Beeching cuts. It's made for some good cycle routes though.

[Mr Penguin]

jfdi said:

The Beeching cuts. It's made for some good cycle routes though.

No, there was a lot of fat to cut.

The Beeching cuts came after decades of declining railway use and station closures, and most were built during the railway mania of the 1840s and had never been economically viable. One third of the lines carried just 1% of passengers and half of the lines generated just 2% of revenue.

The second part of his report which wanted to join the rail network to the bus system was never implemented and that was a shame, although it did give us a good episode of Yes, Minister.