Exactly here and in the USA you seem to have a growing group of voters who just want to turn the clock back to some imaginary golden past. It's in no small part why people voted for Brexit and its a big factor in why those who will suffer most under the Tories voted for them despite all warnings to the contrary.
BTW I do feel the BBC should be added to the list of 'turkeys'. They bent over backwards to avoid putting Boris on the spot but I doubt its going to save them from 'reform'.
I don't think that any of this is true or correct. And I find it extremely interesting (to put it kindly) that so many posters in this thread - in fact almost all posters in this thread - have regurgitated the dogma about Labour being somehow the panacea for people on low income or benefits, being the saviours and protectors of the NHS, and being the only one of the two main parties that "cares".
As at least The Don pointed out, the world changes and some people gain from those changes and others lose out. There are extremely good reasons why we effectively don't have a coal industry any longer, and why industries such as ship-building and heavy manufacturing are a small fraction of what they were only a generation or so ago. Yet the Labour party of those times - and, I can be near-certain, the Labour party of last week (had the situation been the same) - was talking of "saving" those sorts of industries.
And at the same time, it's reductive nonsense to believe and espouse the view that Conservative policy in government is deliberately aimed at punishing poor/ill/disabled/unemployed people (and that, by contrast, Labour would somehow "save" such people), or that a Conservative government aims to starve the NHS of resources and then sell bits of it off to the highest bidder (and that again, by contrast, Labour would somehow raise the NHS up to magnificence*).
See, there isn't a Magical Money Tree. Instead, there is a Real Money Tree. And one philosophy of trying to make the Real Money Tree grow - and thereby to have more public funds to allow for increased funding of public services - is to focus on growing the economy. By doing that (according to this philosophy), more people go into work and with increased productivity comes increased wages; both of those things result in a sizeable increase in income tax/NI revenue. And if the economy grows, there's the prospect of increased export of goods and services, the prospect of a lesser need to import goods and service, and the prospect of inward investment into the UK; all of those things ultimately result in healthier public finances as well.
The administrations of 2010 onwards didn't impose austerity conditions (though "austerity" is a relative term - as is "poverty") in order to crap on vulnerable members of society. They did so in the hope (whether that hope was misguided or not) of conserving public finances and trying to stimulate the economy in other, monetarist, ways. And the hope was that gearing down the public finances would allow ultimately for strength in years to come (a (imperfect) analogy might be that if you're driving your car at 70mph in 5th gear and you suddenly have to slam on the brakes and slow down to 10mph, you're not going to try to build up speed again in the same 5th gear, but rather you'll select 2nd gear - and that will allow you to build up your speed again effectively and smoothly).
Now of course there's an excellent argument to be had about whether austerity is (or, more accuratly, was) an effective way of trying to rebuild the economy and public finances. Just as there's an excellent argument to be had over whether monetarism (in any of its many flavours and degrees) or fiscal strategies are the best way to govern a country. But simply to parrot this (hard left) Labour claptrap about Labour being able to save everything and the Evil Tories' only goal being to enrich themselves and their friends while deliberately defecating from a great height onto vulnerable groups in society and public institutions such as the NHS..... is to reduce the debate to simplistic and misleading rhetoric.
* In fact, well over half of the (very limited) privatisation of the NHS to date was conducted under a Labour administration (Blair). And that same Labour administration allowed itself to become seduced by the PFI fairies, because PFI allowed them to get shiny new hospitals (and schools, and other public buildings) built "for free" - that's to say with zero up-front government funding and therefore zero negative impact on the public balance sheet; but of course there's no such thing as a free lunch, and the rent-back and facilities maintenance cost are eye-wateringly high and - over the useful life of the facilities - substantially higher than if the govt had done things conventionally.
but for once I agree with you.
