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So the Conservative local council of Thurrock rack up a debt of over £1.5bn, by miss using public money, poor investments, incompetence and poor management.... and the locals go and vote the Tories back in. Talk about Turkeys voting for Christmas...
Have you ever been to Thurrock? Five minutes there explains a lot.
We've all encountered people who 'don't do politics' who don't really engage with current affairs but reflexively vote Tory because they don't like paying tax or 'the forrens' and have absorbed the message that the Tories will cut taxes and migration.
Sadly in some areas, that's enough to keep them in power in perpetuity.
I read the thread title and assumed they had kicked the Tories out, that would be a wow. Should be "Thurrock Council... same old same old"
Tories incompetent with public funds shocker?
I was stunned by the news Labour had "regained" Stoke on Trent. How the **** could Labour ever lose Stoke on Trent?
Thurrock has long been a byword for a certain type of voter and indeed person. This comes as no surprise. Should planet earth ever need an enema, we at least know where the hose needs shoving.
Yep - there is a reason that (ex) public house with the nice stuffed toys on the bar and the very apt name was situated where it was.
I was stunned by the news Labour had “regained” Stoke on Trent. How the **** could Labour ever lose Stoke on Trent?
The trouble was in places like Stoke is that while '97-'12 you could see a GP or dentist, hospital waiting lists fell, schools improved etc. Immigration was putting downward pressure on lower skilled wages that made up a greater proportion of local employment than the national average.
Against that backdrop a message of lower immigration and taxes seems far more appealing.
And they weren't wrong, we're slowly seeing upwards pressure on wages at the bottom end as employers struggle to fill vacancies at the minimum wage.
Long term countries like Poland will be lifted up by EU membership which benefits "everyone" with a bigger market to sell goods to, more investment, etc etc. But in the intervening 20-30 years it was places like Stoke that ended up paying the price. It wasn't middle class jobs that immediately outsourced/offshored to eastern Europe leaving a gap in the UK, similarly immigration wasn't taking middle class jobs, but did keep the things we bought cheap as supermarket/warehouse/factory/construction wages were depressed.