Mitaman He has been left an unexploded bomb. It is going to get far worse over the next few months. Tories have set what is, in my opinion of being back, a very nasty shock for everyone. Seems like they have closed nearly every tip\ refuse place in West Yorkshire (this is premeditated).
Ummm. No. And yes. And probably so, but not for the reason you've stated. Hear me out...
Where to begin... Firstly, it's a Labour/Independent dominated council that has closed three of it's smaller recycling centres stating cost saving as a reason. So yeah, there's a squeeze on finances for local authorities. Not sure you can say it's to do with tax cuts as it's funded from council taxes set locally. But let's move on to the issue itself.
There is a very nasty shock coming - you are 100% correct, but to credit it to the Tories is, I think, crediting them with intelligence that they do not possess. The shock has been coming since it was first outlined in the 90s. The Tories knew it then. Then Labour knew it. Then the Tories again. It's a game of pass the parcel and the music has been playing for a long time and will stop some time in the next decade. Bad luck that Starmer (or whoever replaces him after his inevitable back stabbing) will be the one holding the big shitty parcel.
What we're talking about is social care and it's cost to local councils. Those fucking old people are not doing the decent thing and dropping dead. Instead they spend 15 years in a council funded care home spot before departing. This is taking up 75% plus of council budgets. There are more old people living longer than their pension provisions provide.
This is hitting Labour areas first and hardest. Labour has the cities and big conurbations where there is a larger percentage of oldies without huge pension pots and second houses to raid for their care costs. They also have the councils that are less likely to have cut services and staffing levels with the ruthlessness of a Tory outfit. The big labour councils are therefore in more fiscal shit than others. This has been a long time in the making and all governments have been kicking this can down the road since < checks notes > 1974 when Harold fucking Wilson removed social care from the NHS. You can probably let him off the hook back then, but anyone in power since the 1990s has known which direction the demographics/economics are going and plenty of people have been sounding the alarm over the last 3 decades.
So yeah. Labour is going to step into a shit pile but you'd think it would get more of a mention in their manifesto if they were planning on dealing with it.
For more info google some shit like "local council health and social care crisis uk".
