Budget

[Huguenot]

To be fair, a lot of the additional money was to pay for the damage caused by a lack of maintenance during the Tory years.

The Tories saved cash by running the health service and education into the ground.

Like any similar scenario, in the long term the bill for the lack of maintenance far exceeded the costs if they'd maintained the systems well. The tragic thing is that some of the damage was irreversible.

My old man had to sell his school's sports pitches in the early nineties to keep his school heating bills paid and stop the roof from leaking.

[Marmora Man]

Agree there was under investment by the Tories but much of that shortfall was made up by Labour's PPP / PFI projects that didn't feature as government borrowing and shouldn't therefore impact on the government spending figures for last 10 years. There is / was a revenue cost but for most projects that was contained within their existing revenue budgets. So, to that extent, Tory under investment cannot explain a significant part of the Labour over spend.

PPP / PFI costs exist in a strange limbo where they don't appear as Government borrowing nor appear on the private sector's balance sheets.

[Huguenot]

Good point.

[AllforNun]

"My old man had to sell his school's sports pitches in the early nineties to keep his school heating bills paid and stop the roof from leaking."

thats terrible, how on earth can his son be so badly educated ?.......... cant do the wink thing!