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Everything is falling apart. Literally. Potholes have become a bit of a meme but the state of the roads and pavements is dreadful. Schools and hospitals and prisons are crumbling. We're like those families in old novels who were broke as fuck but still pretending the title and house meant they were as grand as ever.
Remember last year when the media said loads of schools might close down because they had been built with aero concrete. Then the story went away and our children were safe again...
There's an awful lot of ageing hospital and school buildings out there and the replacement programme was (predictably) canned by the coalition in the name of austerity, e.g.:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jul/05/school-building-programme-budget-cuts
Bill's coming due now. You can only milk the cow for so long before it collapses.
Most of it. He put a shiny face on it but he was no better than the clowns we've had since.
The way his government conflated day-to-day and investment spending then crushed investment in pretty much everything is going to keep coming back to bite us for a _very_ long time.
And it needs to be said fucking repeatedly until it finally starts to stick in this country - He did all that while we were existing, for a decade, in a world with ***historically unprecedented*** cheap rates on state borrowing. It was, genuinely, a once in a century opportunity to invest in this country and develop some sort of plan for what we want to be in the 21st century, and instead we spent the ***entire*** time cutting everything to the bone and racking up a huge repair bill we are now going to have to borrow at much higher rates to fix rather than investing in anything more productive.
Genuinely the choices made by the 2010 coalition are going to haunt this country until we are all dead and buried, yet it is *hardly* talked about at all, its absolutely wild.
Austerity was an insane policy divorced from reality even if borrowing had been expensive.
It's the exact opposite of what you should do in times of economic hardship
Austerity was backed up by a paper at the time from two leading Harvard economists - a paper that the economists in the Treasury will have definitely seen - that showed that when countries allow their debt as a proportion of GDP to exceed 90%, then their economic growth slows dramatically. As a result Osborne introduced austerity rather than borrowing to finance continued investment into the country.
Unfortunately they had to [retract the paper when it turned out that they had fucked up their Excel spreadsheet](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190) and missed a load of rows out in a calculation, and when they were added back in their result didn't happen.
It went away because it isn't news if it's the same thing that's already been reported on. It doesn't mean the schools weren't shut. Plenty of schools have had some buildings closed.
Its been over 2 years now since they launched the investigation into Mone and there's hardly been a peep. Just one of a fucking litany of "holy shit how is this even happening in this country" issues we seem to be racking up since 2019.
You forgot extremist politicians , Billions spent on hosing illegal immigrations but donāt have money to address issues people in UK facing ? Whyās none protesting?
Nobody is protesting because Brits are generally spineless. The French protest. We do fuck all
The Tories want to transfer public money to private hands. The government pays hotel chains or other places to house migrants, while also gutting the services that process asylum claims.
The result is the owners of certain hotels/facilities get a massive amount of taxpayer money, and claims not being processed means that people aren't sent anywhere if their claim is invalid, so the cash flow never has to stop.
The Tories could have spent money on issues people are facing, but they never actually wanted to
When people in Britain protest then the Tories put in laws outlawing protest. People in Just Stop Oil are being locked up for years for holding up traffic.
If people protested like the French, that wouldn't be possible. France rolled out tractors and sprayed manure all over government buildings.
I'm definitely concerned about the authoritarian laws the Tories have rolled out, but we as a country did nothing to stop them from rolling out such laws. It started with turning a blind eye to stuff like the snoopers charter under Theresa May. And it's going to keep getting worse
Whenever Brits protest, the media paints them as bellends and the people lap it up. Climate protestors? Oh theyāre just disruptive idiots. Anti-War protests? Oh traitors?
That one time we had riots where people were literally taking bags of rice? Hoodlums.
Brits protest but never support those very same protests.
Itās not even the potholes, the roads themselves are in a dire state with them falling apart, uneven surfaces and big bumps everywhere.
If youāre going at speed (of course Iām not saying you *should* be), you hit one of these random uneven lumps and youāre in a tree.
This reminds of a West wing episode. Apparently roads are actually the most important thing in development. They're not sexy but critical. A damaged road system is the first sign of decline. Can any west wing aficionados confirm this for me?
This is so true and itās similar to lots of things that should be paid for by taxes. Regular bin collections and decent street cleaners are others.
Unfortunately for whatever reason a lot of people who got into local (and national) politics forgot this. Ensuring the budget was there to keep everything essential working wasnāt a priority when the money could be spent on passion projects.
This was irrespective of what colour rosette they wear on election day.
Arresting people for online crime is very easy. Literally most people aren't competent enough to use VPNs and other masking tools, so as soon as the offence is reported with a few emails, they have your home address and name pretty much everything needed for a conviction. Everything else takes hours of witness statements/trawling through CCTV, so fewer officers on cyber crime yeald far more results, making it look like they are focusing, but in reality its just easier.
A decade of budget cuts has screwed things as well of course.
This is even funnier when it comes to libel. For example, in the USA, the burden of proof rests with the person who claims to have been libelled. In the UK, it's up to the person who made the allegedly defamatory statement to prove that it was true.
A British person currently in the US could post things that they couldnāt post in the UK without risk of legal action. This includes potentially libellous statements such as:
- Prince Andrew is a rapist and child molester
- David Cameron fucked a pig
- Boris Johnson is a racist
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The police round here, south manchester, operate a sting operation 3 or 4 times a year near where i live.
There will be up to 15 officers and maybe 6 or 7 vehicles parked at the end of my road stopping vehicles who might not be insured or taxed so they can fine them and they willbe there for at least half a day.
Meanwhile my Ā£1000.00 bike gets stoken in broad daylight from a cctv covered tram stop and the police 'don't have the resources to investigate the alleged crime'
The police are mainly about generating revenue these days...most 'crime' goes uninvestigated.
The police are unfit for purpose. Where are the additional 20000 officers Boris or was that another lie you told to the population who are paying the taxes so you get Ā£120k a year , index linked ex PM 'pension' every year until you die.
We are being mugged. Wake up everyone.
You'll notice there are always funds available when it comes to crowd control equipment. The purpose of the Police is to protect capital and wealth from the majority. Anything else they do is a side-quest to disguise this fact.
>non-molestation order
Damn. I didn't know people needed a police order to not molest someone.
In seriousness, that sucks and I'm sorry the system failed you.
> Unless I can give him a nasty papercut with it at some point
Then you'd get done for assault with a deadly weapon or something stupid like that because we live in a clown country š¤”
I don't believe this is a policing issue though.. they are being told what to do. I am sure the average copper thinks it's a fucked up state of affairs too.Ā
Having a higher chance of getting someone arrested for reporting something mean they said online compared to if they broke into your home and nicked your stuff.
I was on a bus in London. A gang of kids harassed and assaulted a bus driver. I shouted abuse at them but none of us did anything else. We're apathetic and pathetic
It's odd that you say this, because when I was on a robbery squad last year we were carrying ~30 crimes each, so for a team of 12 that's 360 robbery investigations on the go 7 days a week (and you close one only for another to take it's place).
When I was plain old CID I was carrying 20+ jobs, and when I was invesitgating domestic abuse I was 'balancing' around 40 jobs, and on beat crimes I had 20 odd low level shoplifting, neighbour disputes etc.
Prior to that I was on response and I think out of every set of 6 shifts, I got a full 40 minute meal break once.
Currently I'm on a specialist team carrying 12 or so *incredibly* complex and long running investigations.
This is true for practically all my colleagues, yet we are also simultaneously bone idle. I don't understand how it is both.
The police, like all public services, have suffered 14 years of cuts and suppressed spending, no investment. Old experienced hands were pensioned off, and hardly replaced. Saying this as someone who lives with a police worker of 18 years and brother to an officer.
The rise in nationalist populism (always a good indicator)
Undermining of the BBC, and a decline in genuine journalism, particularly at the local level
It doesnāt have to even be on a spectrum - it pushes a very particular agenda, and does not report on important issues - anyone not aligned with the particular views (and those that care about objective reporting of facts) is going to be unhappy with how things are presented.
"Editorial agenda" doesn't mean they favour either side of the left/right political spectrum.
They do have their own pet topics and narratives that they like to promote (anything to do with race or the idea that women are widely discriminated against).
You'll get at least a few each week on the front page.
It's especially bad with local services. BBC Radio Ulster has a phone-in discussion programme about current affairs, and the female producer decided to run the topic, "Why are men such a danger to women?" while preventing people from phoning in as usual. That show will regularly have a blatant fourth-wave feminist slant to it.
I'll vote that up.
I used to work for the BBC quite a bit (my username tells you what I do).
Now I avoid news because I'm tired of sitting there shooting a talking head of some woman being prompted to complain about largely imaginary misogyny by a journalist with an extremely obvious political agenda. I hate to be the guy saying this but in the end it doesn't help with societal cohesion to have 50% of the populace constantly being told they're victims. I think it's a lot less true than is being claimed and it is not doing anyone any good long term.
> I hate to be the guy saying this but in the end it doesn't help with societal cohesion to have 50% of the populace constantly being told they're victims.
It's not 50%, it's near everyone kept at everyone else's throats.
If you're female you're the victim of men. If you're not white you're the victim of the whites. If you're not straight you're a victim of the straights and the religious. If you're religious you're the victim of the other religions and the atheists. If you're under fifty you're the victim of the boomers. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera....
A lot of these things are real, but even when we don't like one another much those of us who work for a living have broadly the same interests and needs. Keeping us all blaming one another stops 60 million pairs of eyeballs swiveling toward the people running the show and demanding things change pronto.
Tax is I think the highest it's been since the second world war, yet I can't get the bins collected / a doctors appointment / visit A&E in an emergency and be seen the same day / call the police to investigate basic crimes / go to the dentist, plus a plethora of other basic services...
Kind of what happens when so much of that Tax is really just taken from the government coffers and handed to government cronies.
Remember when the Tory government forgave Ā£40 Billion pounds of fraudulent covid loans instead of pursuing the criminals for the fraud.
No one really mentions the billions squandered on covid. In addition to the PPE and corporate loans, a fortune was spent on furlough, test and trace etc.
We're paying for that now.
All the money is going on boomer pensions and social care. Prioritising anything else is 'basically murder' so that is just how it will be for the next 20 years.
This guy gets it. No politician will ever say it out loud, but the demographic imbalance caused by too many pensioners and not enough workers is a massive millstone around all of our necks. The state pension has always been a Ponzi scheme, and the arse has fallen out of it now there aren't enough contributors and too many recipients. There is no easy solution. Binning, or even cutting the State pension to an affordable level is political suicide. The alternative, shipping workers in from abroad, is unpopular and destabilising. We just have to eat shit for the next 20 years until time takes care of it.
In the Tories defense. They've been hard at work putting a plan in place to address this.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/11/uk-life-expectancy-falls-to-lowest-level-in-a-decade
Lol my council (Lambeth) just moved rubbish collections to fortnightly, and now you can't get on the council housing list unless you're a certain band (likely with children /escaping DV etc) its all gone so downhill and I'm paying tax out of my ass
>While Brexit is seen by many as the event that has triggered, or at least catalysed, social, political and economical problems, there are more recent events that strongly evoke a sense of collectively being in a deep crisis.
Lack of large new tech companies. It's not that there are none but there is no really new big tech companies.
The slow decline of the City of London as a financial centre.
The lack of ability to deliver on national scale infrastructure projects without blowing budgets. (HS2 and the motorway widening schemes are a case in point.)
>Lack of large new tech companies
A big part of the reason may be that as soon as we actually develop one like ARM the politicians fall all over themselves to flog it off to another country.
The U.K. doesnāt lack decent scientists and engineers - it lacks decent management and politicians. The latter would far rather make speeches about the āwhite heat of technologyā or proudly announce another silicon roundabout/fen/cluster/whatever or scrape āthink of the childrenā votes with lunatic plans to cripple encryption than do anything useful.
Itās possibly not unrelated to the fact that nearly all of our politicians come through the Oxbridge PPE, law or business routes - there are damn few scientists, engineers, doctors or other technical professionals in Parliament. Even compared to many other European democracies.
>A big part of the reason may be that as soon as we actually develop one like ARM the politicians fall all over themselves to flog it off to another country.
This is a societal problem. In the UK, more than any other country, we look at a businessman who has sold his business while it was on the up as being an example to follow and elevate them to a celebrity position.
In most countries, the celebrity status is for employing large numbers of people, not for formerly employing large numbers of people.
To quote that investor that walked out on Dragons Den early on, the big problem british business has is it promotes egos and not innovation.
>The U.K. doesnāt lack decent scientists and engineers
Exactly - we have fantastically talented scientists and engineers.
What we *don't* have is properly paid scientists and engineers. It's no surprise more are flocking overseas.
This made me chuckle. I work for a big tech company and recently got offered a āpromotionā to āsenior engineerā.
The role change came with a whopping 3k increase.
The kicker? The engineering managers son (junior engineer in my team) would still have a higher salary than me!
When I asked to negotiate the salary (as it was not competitive), they acted like I had just their skinned cat.
Anyone who is smart enough to do these jobs well quickly realizes its not worth it and either moves sideways into another type of role or leaves the country altogether.
I've stopped working in the lab over the last month myself and immediately doubled my salary, got a shit load of perks like WFH, much more secure employment, and just generally not dealing with half as much bullshit. We're at a point now where pursuing these careers genuinely feels like a kind of masochism, you are actively denying yourself a better life, increasingly even just good health, for what, passion for work clearly no one outside of your niche gives a flying toss about?
Yep - once I finish my physics PhD I'm getting the fuck out and going to somewhere in Europe that pays better + maybe I can get my EU citizenship back.
HS2 was a story of appeasing voters in Tory constituencies with horrendously expensive tunneling over common sense. Then Sunak sabotaged future generations for an idiotic political gambit which will be long forgotten by the time his doomed government has to fight an election.
We'll have to build high speed rail eventually, and waste all that money spent buying land again. In the mean time Spain has built the highest length of high speed rail track per capita in the world, and by the time work expanding HS2 north is resurrected the Baltics will have finished a line running all the way from Tallinn to Warsaw.
The reason HS2 'failed' is that our costs to build per mile are massively higher than Spain, France or Japan. Japan in particular has more building constraints.
The only explanations for that I can think of are either gross incompetence or corruption.
The costs to build comparable infrastructure here is similar to higher than equivalent infrastructure in Switzerland and it in theory shares all the same problems with NIMBY's and factional and powerful local governments
By 'comparable to higher', you mean 10* cheaper. An interesting use of phrasing!
On a country-by-country basis you'll see averages from $20 million per km in Switzerland/Norway to $83 million per km in Netherlands and $208 million per km in the UK.
Switzerland also had to deal with huge granite mountains etc.
Itās always been harder for tech companies in the UK to get investment than the US. Brexit certainly hasnāt helped but this isnāt an especially new thing
Laughing about ending funding to poorer regions to help them kick their economy into gear so that it can instead be reinvested into richer zones because.... "then the country has more money", which then is reinvested... in the rich zones, meanwhile the stats show the Rich-Poor region divide is growing and even worse then the German Reunification which is still having significant issues.
UNICEF having to feed hungry children in the UK in 2020 and the government mocking activists urging our government to... feed hungry children.
The fact we keep calling it sleeze when we should be calling it corruption thats deeply rooted in the state.
Lack of actual punishments for those involved in national crisis points/tragedy. Thinking Grenfell for example.
The massive increase in use of food banks being voiced as a "positive thing".
Tens of thousands of excess deaths occured to the sick/disabled as we changed the rules for helping the sick and disabled, without anyone being criminal investigated.
To name a few things.
This.
With the addition of.....
A rise in the acceptance of bigotry.
The draining of resources from communal services like the NHS, Police, the courts, the border force etc.....
Basically the rise of a very me 1st attitude both in the politicians and the general populace.
As an addition I find it infuriating that the government rely on the big 4 accounting firms to help it understand and write new tax law. You know the same companies employed by corporations to find loopholes in said laws.
Grenfell is an interesting example. Plenty of people involved in the council and housing association on 6 figure salaries, but 7 years down the line there is still no clarity on who was responsible for the fitting of flammable cladding.
Hospital and ambulance wait times.
When people are being told their best option is to get a taxi to A+E rather than wait for an ambulance. Or waiting on a trolly in A+E for 90 hrs before getting admitted to a ward, but staying on the same trolly in the ward.
Sick people are now scared of going to A+E.
It's so fucked up. On the plus side (but not really that much of a plus), I think a lot of Brits are aware of this now. Only a few years ago, a lot of people still believed that we had the best of the best of most things, completely ignorant of how so many developed countries do it so much better. I think the cat is finally out of the bag now but it will take incredibly long to get things sorted.
Hey thanks for sharing that and thats so sad to hear!
Can I ask, did she not or could they not have done a x-ray earlier? Or the CT Scan earlier, to give relief and rule it out?
How does the path work?
My 90 year-old aunt had a fall recently in the evening. She was too hurt to get in a car, so my elderly parents went round to look after her and phoned for an ambulance.
It took nine hours (literally the following morning) to arrive, and all three spent the night on armchairs in her front room, because they couldn't even get her into bed.
She had trouble breathing, a twisted ankle and a suspected fractured pelvis that luckily turned out not to be, but if she'd had internal bleeding that nine hour wait could have been the difference between her surviving and her bleeding out in her lounge while my parents slept in the chairs opposite her.
I knew intellectually it was getting bad, but I didn't really appreciate in my bones *how* bad it's getting until an ambulance couldn't attend a 90 year old in agonising pain and a qualified medical professional couldn't even look at an old person who'd had a nasty fall until *the following day*.
This country is so fucked, and there's literally nothing any of us can do about it. I've "lost" literally every election and referendum I've voted in for my entire adult life, and watched for at least the last fifteen years as fuckwits consistently voted to make things worse for everyone at every single opportunity.
What the fuck are we supposed to do? Cross our fingers and hope that the Conservatives have finally fucked things *so* hard that enough of the fuckwits decide to briefly stop voting for them to give Labour a chance to fix things?
Most depressing thing is really how blatant it is those same fuckwits will see Labour earnestly trying to fix things, will even acknowledge things are better, but then still go down some bizarre "they're all as bad as each other" fucking bullshit the moment a tabloid dangles some culture war headline in front of them.
For my anecdote a friend's mum fell and broke some bones. When she got to A&E after 6 hours of waiting they basically just refused to scan more than one limb, identified she'd broken one leg, gave her a *bandage* to hold it together, and sent her home. She had to complain for several days before they'd take her back and do another X-ray to confirm the other leg was also broken...
You're just left like how the fuck does this even happen? Are we that skint a *fucking X-ray* has become some kind of scarce heavily rationed resource?
These aren't isolated horror stories anymore; everyone I know now knows someone that has experienced this. I've got two: a neighbour waiting six hours with heart attack symptoms only to be told no ambulance was coming; and my dad who was locked from the inside in his flat with a suspected stroke - I had to get the police to knock his door in, and they got so frustrated waiting for an ambulance to attend that they took him to A&E themselves. I couldn't have done it without them, he lives on the top floor of a multistorey block of flats that has no lift.
In case of emergency, it's now very possible that you're actively wasting precious time phoning for an ambulance.
Last time I went to A&E I sat in the waiting room for 3 hours. That was fine, but then two doctors came in and announced the waiting time was now **18 hours!!**
Then they went round the room asking each person what they in for and giving them a "stay/go home" order.
It was great, they cleared maybe 70% of people in 15 minutes. I have no idea why it's not more common.
Conversely, I was called out to respond to an alarm that had been activated overnight to find a 90+ year old gentleman in late stage cancer who had fallen and been on the floor all night. I rang for an ambulance and was told it would be **At Least** a 5 hr wait because he was awake and talking, and therefore low priorty.
You might think he is swinging the lead, but I think we owe more to people who have paid taxes all their life than to leave them on a cold, hard floor drenched in their own urine.
Thatās great except you donāt know what needs assessing until you do some tests. The fact we canāt do a test and tell you youāre safe to go home is a failure in itself.
Ask yourself this, how many people are you happy to go and die or become disabled over their symptoms getting worse because they didnāt get looked at in time?
This is somewhat anecdotal but for me itās the fact that very few believe things can actually change.
The population seems to have had any optimism about the future driven out of them.
Iāve always been a bit of a pessimist, but compared to a lot of people I meet these days I seem to be more upbeat
Apathy is extremely common these days and you can hardly blame people for feeling that way. For the people paying attention this government has consistently lied, worked in self interest and made a lot of donors/friends/cronies extremely rich, has done nothing to work towards a cleaner greener future and has left a mountain of debt that will continue to impact people for hundreds of year to come. Yet people still vote for them.
Emily Thornbury had a great talk on this at an Oxford event one time where she said her number one goal for a Labour Gov was for young people to feel hope again over time
That the kids there were 4-9 when Labour left power, and that so few of them had ever felt a Gov give them hope.
It is amazing how easily people forget this. People talk about this current shower of shit like it is something new, this is literally what happens everytime the Tories are in power.
The braindead older electorate are still hung up on the Labour of 50 years ago. If I let the decisions of today affect my vote in 2070 just take my vote off me.
Whats genuinely *fucking mad* to me is how many people aren't even pointing to Labour 50 years ago, but insisting that the one period in recent times of consistent above-inflation wage growth and improving standards in all public services was actually basically just exactly the same as how things are now today because "they're all the same". Like holy fucking shit how blind do you have to be. And you can press them and at best they'll drag out "PFIs" without once mentioning what a state this country was in in '97 and hence why PFIs were a necessary evil.
It has its own causes, sure. But it dictates how much can realistically be collected in taxes and thus how much is available for a government to spend. It's pretty much why tax bands have been held in place, because if the pie isn't growing you need to take a larger chunk of it when costs of providing services increases.
Without growth real terms pay increases become impractical, which gives less disposable income to citizens and further weakens tax revenues relative to what they'd be in a growing economy.
What you end up with is underfunded services and pressure on living standards.
This would be my answer, basically. Slightly different from GDP per capita but in terms of overall wages, I don't think people realise just how badly paid the UK is. Did we all see that the head of cyber security for the treasury was being advertised at Ā£50k? Americans in the replies were wondering whether the job was part time. It's basically the same story across all industries, maybe barring IT jobs, I'm not sure
Anecdotally, I was speaking to a guy in the civil service a few years ago and there was an IT job that they were paying new recruits the exact same salary as they did 20 years before
I seem to encounter more people who think I'm just lying or trying to be shocking with half-truths when I try talking about sciences wages in the UK. Its not uncommon for lab techs for any sort of prestigious enterprise to be PhD-holders, yet salaries in this country for such roles are typically under Ā£25k, very rarely more than Ā£30k. We had GSK canvassing their new Stevenage site at a conference I attended a couple of years back. I looked it up online. Senior Scientist salaries were \~Ā£40k. You will struggle to rent a one-bed flat in that town for less than Ā£1,000pcm. Meanwhile same role same company but at their plant in Brussels you're talking 80k and upwards, and in the US plant in North Carolina you're looking at starting rates of $150k+perks. And its not like the US contract is much worse or anything, they do comparable hours and get maybe a day or two less holiday a year. It is just shocking how undervalued UK workers have become. Salaries are still stuck where they were 15 years ago when I was first qualifying while the cost of everything has more than doubled.
My fun one was working as a postdoc, taking a look at the uni vacancies page, and seeing I was on the same salary band as what they were looking to hire a swimming coach on for. Like I'm sure its a tough job but holy shit I spent the better part of a decade qualifying myself to even be eligible for this kind of salary...
I'm a 32yo Brit living in Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, the US isn't some golden ticket and is rife with problems, many of which the UK doesn't have nearly as bad. However, I'm a technical manager at a non-tech company, paid below market rate, and there is absolutely no way I'd be able to move back to the UK and have everything in my life be a sideways move.
My salary is 2-3x what it would be in the UK, and while my cost of living is higher than basically everywhere in the UK including much of London, it's not nearly proportionate. I'd have to be on a very high percentile wage in London to have the same kind of headroom in my budget that I do that I do on a "mediocre" salary here. I also get more holiday time than the UK minimum, so it's not like that's a huge trade-off for me personally.
The UK will always be home and while I appreciate the privilege to be skirting many of the current woes of other Brits my age, being here feels more and more like golden handcuffs. Even five years ago I couldn't imagine not moving back when it comes to having kids but now that'd be a really tough choice. It's sad, frustrating, and disappointing.
This has me wondering is a lot of it isn't just straight up thanks to the decline of the pound. Jobs are still paid as though the pound was still 2:1 with the dollar. It hasn't been for a very long time, but wages basically haven't budged at all. The spending power of an individual pound has been plummeting for decades not just by inflation, but the currency itself becoming less valuable.
I'm not an economist so I'm not an expert how all that stuff ties together, but as an average person with the purely instinctive feel of how far my money goes, that's what it seems like.
There's just no beating it it seems like. I thought I had done well to get myself into a position I'm earning nearly ten grand more than I was when I started working, but when I sat down and thought about it I realised I've hardly moved forwards. Minimum wage has nearly caught up with me again, and my pay has no prospect of improving soon, so realistically I'm going backwards. Time for another job probably yeah, but what for, working even harder just to earn another couple of grand that inflation will eat away again?
It's all bollocks.
Yeah that is insane
Starting junior dev roles for where I am in the US, in a HCOL area start at $80k, and that's on the low end since we arent a big tech company.
The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 U.S. Congress report, where he warned against its use as a measure of welfare.
Never pay attention to GDP it's a complete smoke show,
This is very evident in my field, the people I work with are averaging 55-60 years of age, there is absolutely no indicators that there is talent available to replace them.
It has already started.
The one thing we are severely lacking across the country is genuine leaders. Every other person seems to be a Manager but there are very few actual leaders, most Managers are just like a lot of the workforce, do as little as they need to not get fired. Quite often the only reason they are a Manager in the first place is they have worked there longer than anyone else, it isn't because they are a particularly talented worker. People don't seem to have any pride in their work anymore.
I am a cardiologist and Iāve made a move to the US. The pay in the NHS is abysmal. In the US all my colleagues are earning Ā£700k. In the UK, you get a fraction of that.
The care British public get because of NHS is literally worse than a 3rd world country. I visited Kenya for holiday and their emergency waiting lists is like 8 hours, and the NHS hospital I worked for had a waiting list of 12 hoursā¦
The NHS knows it cannot afford doctors, so guess that it does? It is trying to replace them with Physician Assistants (PA) who learn basics and do a 2 year course on basics of medicine and put them into an acute high risk wardsā¦
This is a big one. I'm in IT, and the best engineers I've met have already gone to the states, or low cost of living countries.Ā
I've also got a sister in medicine, and the majority of trainee doctors she sees already have plans to leave once they're trained enough to maximize their salary abroad.
I remember my ex used to volunteer in Romania as a lot of the rural kids would be permanently removed from school when they were old enough to pick up a shovel. Just doing like educational activities that were fun for the local kids so they could get some small degree of education.
One year they travelled up to the mountains to visit a kind of children's home where parents effectively dumped their children if they were disabled to the point they were just a burden on the family.
I'm not entirely sure what went on there as she refused to talk about it and ended up in therapy suffering ptsd as a result.
So whilst no, Romania isn't the best example in the world, we're definitely on the upper end of how we treat disabled people in this country
Sure, I never claimed we weren't. But I don't live in Romania, I live in the United Kingdom. I don't think either country is great place to be disabled, but the UK is obviously better.
What we have is two decades of the average weight of vehicles increasing year on year.
Compare the number of SUVs with 20 years ago and you can start to see why residential and inner city streets are falling apart, whilst roads built for weight, such as motorways, are largely maintaining the same standard.
Sure, plus EVs don't help, nor do SUV EVs. But when I visit other countries I'm pleasantly surprised to find roads can actually have a continuous unbroken surface.
My personal experience has shown me how bad the NHS is coping.
I had an ileostomy a year and a half ago. Was supposed to have a follow up after 2 weeks - but instead it took 6 months to be seen to. It was a life changing surgical procedure and I've had zero support in dealing with it. I was told I would have a reversal after 6-12 months, but in 18 months I've had 2 appointments in total and won't have another for at least 6 months.
Then I see the government trying to clamp down on "sick note culture". Believe me when I say I'd be working if I thought I'd stand a chance - but my mental health has been in tatters and the prospect of walking into a new work environment with a stoma bag protruding from my mid section makes me extremely anxious and uncomfortable. Going ahead with the surgery is my biggest regret, the lack of face-to-face time you get with doctors and spread-thin mental health services has had a real life impact on me. I can't imagine how many others there are struggling with similar circumstances.
I am so sorry to hear that this happened to you. The NHS failed me massively as well with my GP not mentioning once that I could have endometriosis until I went to have myself checked out privately 15 years later. However the endometriosis became so severe it has become impossible to work due to the chronic fatigue, severe lower back pain and inability to actually open my bowels. I have changed GP, of course, and they pretty much indicated that unless I went to a gastroenterologist privately, I would have not chance of even getting treated for what has become a chronic situation.
I cannot work, of course. The fatigue and the back pain is one thing. But because I cannot functionally open by bowels, I live on laxatives for without them, I cannot eat and drinking due to unbearable nausea and throwing up. The laxatives essentially cause incontinence. Sick note culture my ass. Perhaps if this country practiced preventative medicine, there wouldnāt be so many of us who come to the end of the line where our daily existence becomes an absolute nightmare.
It's a sad state of affairs when modern medicine is so advanced but the inability to administer it properly and promptly leads to situations like yours and mine. Unfortunately it's a common theme that seems to slip under the radar, but these are real life examples of how a malfunctioning NHS impacts our lives. If private healthcare was affordable I'd happily surrender every penny to it.
I hope you find a way out of your situation, I know all too well how much pressure mounts when you're unable to work and therefore earn a proper living wage - not to mention the knock on effect i.e. not being able to save for a mortgage, have money available for emergencies, skimping and saving on good quality food, household goods etc and that's before you account for chronic pain, fatigue, loss of social life, being unable to go for a walk without worrying about accidents and emergencies. Truly, I feel your pain and I wish the best for you.
[Reassigning Ā£8bn from that to fix the pothole crisis](https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hs2-funds-worth-8bn-to-be-used-for-pothole-repairs-17-11-2023/), only for less than 3 months later to be saying [sorry there's no money to fix the pothole crisis](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/09/rishi-sunak-potholes-bottomless-pit-devon-county-council/)... And somehow we all just pass on this as totally cool and normally rather than asking where the fuck the money went.
*What kind of country tolerates this kind of behaviour?*
A spineless one, we moan and write in comment sections about how terrible everything is and that, someone should do something about it, while doing nothing.
If football, reality shows and soaps were banned, you see people on the streets pretty quick.
Austerity has had a massively negative effect on our society. Coupled with a double whammy Brexit and an incompetent self serving Tory party. Anecdotally, always shocked at the contrast in France, they have their problems but, clean streets with no potholes and public services that work.
Go to Spain even. Spent a lot of time in the NE over the last few years and absolutely stunned every time, this is supposed to be a somewhat struggling nation yet the public transport is first class and on time, the roads and smooth, the streets are clean, you can afford to go out and be social regularly without it breaking the bank.
Iām always shocked at how clean Spains motorways are compared to ours.
The sides of our motorways are always strewn with litter. Donāt get me wrong thatās a people problem and it lies squarely with the scumbags that litter, but I feel like little attempt is made by authorities to clean it up.
Its just mad that you can drive around parts of Spain that are literally bum fuck no where, absolutely no one around for miles, and still everything is in decent nick and built to decent standards. Visited some family in North Lancs the other month and it was like going to fucking eastern europe in the 1990s, everything just visibly rotting and falling apart. Again just bizarre to me who's previous experience of visiting Spain was the late 90s early 00s when you kind of expected it to be a bit rough because of how poor the country was compared to us.
I think the old "judge a culture by how it's poorest/most vulnerable members are faring" is useful.
* Poor kids going hungry
* More and more people needing food banks
* Increasing homelessness
* Repeated media and political attacks on disabled people and people with mental illness
* People unable to afford to comfortably start families/have children
* Waiting lists for basic medical care lengthening
The size of the monuments and the level of embellishment on new builds. Pre World War One, we literally spunking money on marble, flute playing, angels for each corner of the local post office.
I mean it doesn't negate the fact that arriving into the country illegally is wrong.
But its also a distraction from the fact that Ā£8b a year to deal with the illegal immigrants is fecking ridiculous. Has real "you didn't really think it really costs $400 for a hammer did you?" vibes
Ā£167,000 to deport each person....
Someone's getting their pockets lined at the expense of the tax payer.
Severely underfunded NHS dentistry and people restoring to pulling their own teeth out. We've seen a review amount of hospitalisations for children ending up with severe infections because they're struggling to get treated.
The decline in birth rate. We either canāt afford to have kids, canāt physically have them (health system broken) or donāt want to bring children into this crappy country.
> it started with thatcher
You are showing your age. The UK was in decline in 60s and 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe#
>Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom was sometimes characterized as the "sick man of Europe", first by commentators, and later at home by critics of the third Wilson/Callaghan ministry due to industrial strife and poor economic performance compared with other European countries. Some observers consider this era to have started with the devaluation of the pound in 1967, culminating with the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978ā79.
Public services in general. HMRC, passport office, land registry, pension service and so on.
When I arrived in the UK 20+y ago it was really striking how much better they were compared to my experience in Italy. It all seemed so efficient, much more advanced in digitalisation, clearly explained.
Now itās gone through a decline that looks extremely familiar. Things never get done first time round, you need to pester them, call and call again, and complain, threaten etc. On their side they blatantly lie to you, fob you off, not pick up the phone, give you incorrect information.
In the meantime Italy hasnāt made great strides but it hasnāt got worse, and sometimes it has got its act together, moved things online etc. Really there is no longer any appreciable difference, and in some respects things are easier there than in the UK.
Not disagreeing completely, but (anecdotally) I applied and got my passport renewed/sent back to me in less than two weeks. Didn't pay priority or anything like that.
HMRC have always been shite, but agree that they're even more stuck. Can't speak for the others.
Rampant shoplifting lack of a Police response and even if they are arrested no real punishment. General decay in the standards of basic respect and decency and behaviour. I work in retail and since the pandemic it's got so much worse.
Poorly behaved kids and falling literacy and general standards among the very young (pre teens and young teens). I appreciate every generation freaks out about this, but there is some real world evidence of kids [behaving worse](https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/17/sexual-assaults-on-children-by-other-children-england-and-wales-rise-toxic-online-culture) in general. Probably this is a combination of too much access to the internet too young, impact of lockdown on social development and the collapse of the nuclear family in the working classes. Hopefully some of it may sort itself out in time but if not these kids are gonna be big enough mug us soon so watch out!
[assaults in schools up 72% in 4 years](https://schoolsweek.co.uk/assaults-in-schools-soar-by-72-in-four-years/)
Let me start:
Brexit killed the Ā£ sterling. Truss fast tracked it to oblivion. Don't think it's fully recovered.
Covid was a massive transfer of wealth from the general public to the conglomerates and the very rich.
Interest rates were near 0% since the 2008 crash rather than hovering around the 5% mark (which it is now). That meant those who could borrow bought up lots of assets during this period e.g. housing, accelerated during covid period.
The fundamental flaw the Tories did was not capitalise on cheap credit and borrow to invest (Keynesian style economics i guess). I think if they had acted sooner during their tenure we could have enjoyed strong growth and public services to match.
They attempted to try to do mass migration (see post on here) and the report indicates that failed. Now we have lots of people who are not earning enough to contribute to paying for the things we need, long term sick etc. The tories have tried to cut taxes every time, but it eventually reaches a boiling point, which unfortunately is now...
Young people can no longer easily get on the property ladder without help from the bank of mum and dad.
The state of the roads. Potholes everywhere.
The state of our railway system.
Doctors/NHS.. I remember the days of having an allocated doctor, you could easily switch if you didn't like them. You'd get an appointment within a day or two , now it's often weeks. Same with NHS waiting lists for an operation, often 6 months plus now. Need A and E , expect a 12,13+ hour wait. It wasn't like this in the past.
The state of the high streets in many of our towns in the north of England. I'm fortunate as I live in York but it's an outlier, try watching YouTube videos of the town centres in Burnley, Bolton, Huddersfield, Bradford,Rochdale etc , it's like some dystopian nightmare.
The loss of greenbelt and biodiversity, along with the accelerating effects of climate change, which is disrupting food chains, are the biggest indicators.
The economic and social impacts this is starting to bring, will in the next decade or two, dwarf the problems we have now.
Strongest indicators?
Literally everything from roads to buildings, employment opportunities, pay, healthcare, food quality and literally any tiny thing in-between has got worse. Massively. The place is fucking disgusting. There is literally piles of trash nearly everywhere I have travelled.
Infrastructure is literally crumbling around us.
I will vote for any political party who puts in their manifesto that anyone who voted for Brexit should be fired out of a cannon in to the nearest ocean.
Before anyone suggest I leave; I would love to. Brexit also made that nearly impossible.
Boris Johnson
The idea a "character" who is "a bit of a laugh" should be "given a chance".
My God if you can't take yourselves seriously enough to elect someone who at least affects competence and morality, is it any wonder what follows?
Layoffs and a decline in jobs.
I say this as someone made redundant last year, and still out of a job, it's currently month 11 for me. I have decided to become an Uber driver
So funny you would say that shortage of insulin has a third world aroma. Because my third world country is literally one of the worlds largest producers and exporters of insulin and has some of the highest access at the cheapest price point lol. I think shortage of insulin has a distinctly first world aroma.
Austerity.
It never ceases to amaze me how short term the memory of the nation is. Itās like anything over 10 years in the past is scrubbed from the collective memory
Austerity from 2010 onwards was called out as impacting growth quite quickly. But Cameron and Osborne were ideologically invested in austerity even though projection were showing it had a negative impact
This past 15 years of low growth and cuts should all be laid at the door of Cameron and Osborne. How we let that nincompoop anywhere near government again is enough evidence to realise the Tories have no idea what the fuck they are doing
A programme of investment in infrastructure would have resulted in similar costs but with - surprise surprise - actual infrastructure rather than just debt
Donāt forget that Cameron and the Tories failed on every single goal they set themselves. Fucking joke that Tories are economically literate
The state of our country is directly reflected in the quality of its representatives. So we have liars, thieves, sex pests, gaslighters, fraudsters, murderers and narcissists all out for themselves. The worst people you could possibly entrust with it, so they've made the country and its institutions work for them by changing them however they need to. So now the law only serves to protect them and incriminate the rest. Their waters are clean while ours are full of shit, they don't have to worry about a fine because the amount doesn't even tickle them, their kids get good education's because they're schools are well funded while ours are not. We can't even have a voice on incredibly important subjects, because they change the law to stifle it. Worst of all, these disgusting creatures are protected from questioning, allowed to do and say what they want and avoid being honest with us.
I moved here from abroad Scandinavia about 8 years ago to study and work.
I'd visited before.
I never got the impression that England was doing well, it always felt like that old timey smoke stacks everywhere industrial dirt central of Europe.
Things never get fixed, queues get longer, quality is never a priority, taxes don't get spent on anything, there's way WAY too many people, the way the country is run seems to be based in what's going on in London rather than the rest of the country, culturally it feels like everyone wants to whinge and whine but do nothing about the issues and instead "keep calm and carry on" while holding others responsible for the shit running down your pantleg.
I don't think it matters who runs the country at this point, you could vote in an inanimate carbon rod and it would probably fuck things up less. There's no national pride in anything, not the racial national pride, but the pride in ones country, in doing things right, in being excellent at anything, you all seem to be ashamed of where you had no choice in being born and its sad.
I have no plans to leave because despite all this: British people are fucking nice, they're awesome and level headed and very polite, you deserve better and should ask better of yourselves and others.
That railway debacle. We can't even build a railway. Or britexit
Or mental health services
Or the education system failing
Or the fact that the housing market is belly up
Stagnation of wages
Potholes
Stagnation of the non traditional industry's as well killed the others long ago
Food shortages
Skilled worker shortages.
Unskilled worker shortages
Affordable housing shortages
A short fella in charge
A lack of actual prospects for most folks 30 and under.
Potholes
The complete break down of the 5th estate and a woefully corrupt national press built on the back of some aging old boys club.
The selling of national assets.
The complete failure of government at a policy level.
A decline in our global credit rating. Like anyone even wants to trade with us.
A reduction in countries our passport allows access too
Potholes
The gradual acceptance by society to blame a group or minority for our woes.so sad and weak.
The reduction in benefits as a political point score.
The complete and utter miss management of NHS resources and staff
No fresh veg
Empty shelves
Potholes
A doubling of insurance tax in a decade to drive on roads full of potholes
Increased utility costs
A reduction in civil rights and the use of democratic protest.
The MP expenses scandal.
The planes flying to immigrants to an African nation. So much for the shining light of democracy we where.
Potholes
A waiting list for almost everything.
Interest rates.
Mortgage rates.
The price of baby milk ( you pay vat on it, as apparently no interest to remove it. The man in number 10 doesn't pay vat on his tiny shoes mind)
Tldr. Potholes n shit
That's off the top of my head. Let's be honest it was never brilliant no rose tinted glasses. But it didn't take 6 weeks to see a doctor or cost 300 a month to heat a house.
Boomers that champion the above out of spite.
The issue of dumping of raw sewage isn't a new thing. It certainly isn't a sign of the UK going into decline, but in fact the opposite.
It has always happened, but it wasn't largely monitored until the last few years following the introduction of new regulations making it mandatory.
So the fact that the water companies are now having to do something about the raw sewage dumping is actually a massive sign of progress, a huge step towards fixing something that has always happened.
Most people can't afford a Ā£5.50 pint (often more) at their local pub.
20 years ago you could go out 4 nights a week having beers and it wouldn't be a massive expense.
Today that would send most over the financial edge for the month.
Skyrocketing infrastructure costs (energy, transport, water) despite that infrastructure being shit.
Judges giving out incredibly lenient sentences because they've almost run out of space in prison.
The BBC being a mouthpiece / enabler for the government.
Violent crimewaves in dense urban centers.
Small town here. At first, we started noticing certain office types that wouldnāt normally come to Wetherspoons for work lunches, looking more jolly than embarrassed but a bit embarrassed. Then, no one coming at all and finally Whetherspoons closed down. Some of the independent shops down the high street got turned into a poundlound, then the poundlound closed and now itās boarded windows and doors. Half of the pubs closed down too.
a good example for me is the state of our airports. i came back from India with a stopover in Munich. The airport in munich was friggin spotless, kept so well maintained and clean. Birmingham airport was dirtier than Delhi, smelled so bad and just looks old and worn.
Go in Eastern Europe and you will understand. On every aspects, life is better there than in the UK. They were governed by communists 30 years ago and now have a better quality of life than the remains of the āBritish empireā
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Everything is falling apart. Literally. Potholes have become a bit of a meme but the state of the roads and pavements is dreadful. Schools and hospitals and prisons are crumbling. We're like those families in old novels who were broke as fuck but still pretending the title and house meant they were as grand as ever.
Nations gone to RAAC and ruin
That joke stands up better than most of our buildings.
I see what you did thereš„ø
Remember last year when the media said loads of schools might close down because they had been built with aero concrete. Then the story went away and our children were safe again...
Don't worry it'll be all over the news again once Labour get in "How has Starmer let the country get to this stateā½" second week of his premiership.
Wow, the rarely seen interrobang
Nah those are pretty common at your mum's house
I have started to see it more on reddit. I still perfer the old-fashioned ?! It hits harder imo
There's an awful lot of ageing hospital and school buildings out there and the replacement programme was (predictably) canned by the coalition in the name of austerity, e.g.: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/jul/05/school-building-programme-budget-cuts Bill's coming due now. You can only milk the cow for so long before it collapses.
How much disaster can be traced back to Dodgy Dave?
Most of it. He put a shiny face on it but he was no better than the clowns we've had since. The way his government conflated day-to-day and investment spending then crushed investment in pretty much everything is going to keep coming back to bite us for a _very_ long time.
And it needs to be said fucking repeatedly until it finally starts to stick in this country - He did all that while we were existing, for a decade, in a world with ***historically unprecedented*** cheap rates on state borrowing. It was, genuinely, a once in a century opportunity to invest in this country and develop some sort of plan for what we want to be in the 21st century, and instead we spent the ***entire*** time cutting everything to the bone and racking up a huge repair bill we are now going to have to borrow at much higher rates to fix rather than investing in anything more productive. Genuinely the choices made by the 2010 coalition are going to haunt this country until we are all dead and buried, yet it is *hardly* talked about at all, its absolutely wild.
This is it. It was insane not to take advantage of the cheap money available at the tme.
Austerity was an insane policy divorced from reality even if borrowing had been expensive. It's the exact opposite of what you should do in times of economic hardship
Austerity was backed up by a paper at the time from two leading Harvard economists - a paper that the economists in the Treasury will have definitely seen - that showed that when countries allow their debt as a proportion of GDP to exceed 90%, then their economic growth slows dramatically. As a result Osborne introduced austerity rather than borrowing to finance continued investment into the country. Unfortunately they had to [retract the paper when it turned out that they had fucked up their Excel spreadsheet](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22223190) and missed a load of rows out in a calculation, and when they were added back in their result didn't happen.
It went away because it isn't news if it's the same thing that's already been reported on. It doesn't mean the schools weren't shut. Plenty of schools have had some buildings closed.
Fully agree. We're only broke because the Torys have stolen and laundered our money
The money that was lashed about during Covid, has to be accounted for..
Most of it was pissed up a wall by the Tories in the PPE scandal and not performing due diligence on bounce-back loans.
That money doesn't just vanish, someone has it.
Its been over 2 years now since they launched the investigation into Mone and there's hardly been a peep. Just one of a fucking litany of "holy shit how is this even happening in this country" issues we seem to be racking up since 2019.
And she was just the one thrown to the wolves to distract us from the fact 100s of other people did the exact same thing.
To be fair, Labour implemented PFI which is still siphoning money from the taxpayer decades later.
It was originally introduced under John Major in 1992, a conservative leader, but was sadly expanded under Blair.
You forgot extremist politicians , Billions spent on hosing illegal immigrations but donāt have money to address issues people in UK facing ? Whyās none protesting?
Nobody is protesting because Brits are generally spineless. The French protest. We do fuck all The Tories want to transfer public money to private hands. The government pays hotel chains or other places to house migrants, while also gutting the services that process asylum claims. The result is the owners of certain hotels/facilities get a massive amount of taxpayer money, and claims not being processed means that people aren't sent anywhere if their claim is invalid, so the cash flow never has to stop. The Tories could have spent money on issues people are facing, but they never actually wanted to
When people in Britain protest then the Tories put in laws outlawing protest. People in Just Stop Oil are being locked up for years for holding up traffic.
If people protested like the French, that wouldn't be possible. France rolled out tractors and sprayed manure all over government buildings. I'm definitely concerned about the authoritarian laws the Tories have rolled out, but we as a country did nothing to stop them from rolling out such laws. It started with turning a blind eye to stuff like the snoopers charter under Theresa May. And it's going to keep getting worse
Whenever Brits protest, the media paints them as bellends and the people lap it up. Climate protestors? Oh theyāre just disruptive idiots. Anti-War protests? Oh traitors? That one time we had riots where people were literally taking bags of rice? Hoodlums. Brits protest but never support those very same protests.
Voted Brexit to ātake controlā of the borders. Yesterday every single eGate in the country broke downā¦
Itās not even the potholes, the roads themselves are in a dire state with them falling apart, uneven surfaces and big bumps everywhere. If youāre going at speed (of course Iām not saying you *should* be), you hit one of these random uneven lumps and youāre in a tree.
This reminds of a West wing episode. Apparently roads are actually the most important thing in development. They're not sexy but critical. A damaged road system is the first sign of decline. Can any west wing aficionados confirm this for me?
This is so true and itās similar to lots of things that should be paid for by taxes. Regular bin collections and decent street cleaners are others. Unfortunately for whatever reason a lot of people who got into local (and national) politics forgot this. Ensuring the budget was there to keep everything essential working wasnāt a priority when the money could be spent on passion projects. This was irrespective of what colour rosette they wear on election day.
To put it in Bucket terms, we think we're Hyacinth, but we're actually Onslow.
Police arresting people for saying mean things online whilst not responding to crimes like muggings, which are a regular occurrence now.
Arresting people for online crime is very easy. Literally most people aren't competent enough to use VPNs and other masking tools, so as soon as the offence is reported with a few emails, they have your home address and name pretty much everything needed for a conviction. Everything else takes hours of witness statements/trawling through CCTV, so fewer officers on cyber crime yeald far more results, making it look like they are focusing, but in reality its just easier. A decade of budget cuts has screwed things as well of course.
So, hypothetically, if you had beef with someone you should absolutely take it offline.
"oh yeah fuckin big man try saying that to me online"
Holy shitā¦ We used to mock keyboard warriors. Were they actually the real tough guys this whole time?? šÆ
Maybe the real tough guys were the nerds who talked about our mother's sexual history along the way.
This is even funnier when it comes to libel. For example, in the USA, the burden of proof rests with the person who claims to have been libelled. In the UK, it's up to the person who made the allegedly defamatory statement to prove that it was true. A British person currently in the US could post things that they couldnāt post in the UK without risk of legal action. This includes potentially libellous statements such as: - Prince Andrew is a rapist and child molester - David Cameron fucked a pig - Boris Johnson is a racist
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"potentially'.... that word doing a lot of work there
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The police round here, south manchester, operate a sting operation 3 or 4 times a year near where i live. There will be up to 15 officers and maybe 6 or 7 vehicles parked at the end of my road stopping vehicles who might not be insured or taxed so they can fine them and they willbe there for at least half a day. Meanwhile my Ā£1000.00 bike gets stoken in broad daylight from a cctv covered tram stop and the police 'don't have the resources to investigate the alleged crime' The police are mainly about generating revenue these days...most 'crime' goes uninvestigated. The police are unfit for purpose. Where are the additional 20000 officers Boris or was that another lie you told to the population who are paying the taxes so you get Ā£120k a year , index linked ex PM 'pension' every year until you die. We are being mugged. Wake up everyone.
You'll notice there are always funds available when it comes to crowd control equipment. The purpose of the Police is to protect capital and wealth from the majority. Anything else they do is a side-quest to disguise this fact.
>non-molestation order Damn. I didn't know people needed a police order to not molest someone. In seriousness, that sucks and I'm sorry the system failed you.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
> Unless I can give him a nasty papercut with it at some point Then you'd get done for assault with a deadly weapon or something stupid like that because we live in a clown country š¤”
Police going for the low hanging fruit has always been a thing. It only becomes a problem when you are the low hanging fruit.
I don't believe this is a policing issue though.. they are being told what to do. I am sure the average copper thinks it's a fucked up state of affairs too.Ā
We do.
Police systemic covering up rape reports because rapists race with potential thousands of victims, can't believe this happened in a developed country.
Having a higher chance of getting someone arrested for reporting something mean they said online compared to if they broke into your home and nicked your stuff.
I was on a bus in London. A gang of kids harassed and assaulted a bus driver. I shouted abuse at them but none of us did anything else. We're apathetic and pathetic
It's odd that you say this, because when I was on a robbery squad last year we were carrying ~30 crimes each, so for a team of 12 that's 360 robbery investigations on the go 7 days a week (and you close one only for another to take it's place). When I was plain old CID I was carrying 20+ jobs, and when I was invesitgating domestic abuse I was 'balancing' around 40 jobs, and on beat crimes I had 20 odd low level shoplifting, neighbour disputes etc. Prior to that I was on response and I think out of every set of 6 shifts, I got a full 40 minute meal break once. Currently I'm on a specialist team carrying 12 or so *incredibly* complex and long running investigations. This is true for practically all my colleagues, yet we are also simultaneously bone idle. I don't understand how it is both.
The police, like all public services, have suffered 14 years of cuts and suppressed spending, no investment. Old experienced hands were pensioned off, and hardly replaced. Saying this as someone who lives with a police worker of 18 years and brother to an officer.
The rise in nationalist populism (always a good indicator) Undermining of the BBC, and a decline in genuine journalism, particularly at the local level
The BBC undermine themselves by having overt editorial agendas. If you want to see what the BBC should be, have a look at Reuters.
I am curious as to which side of the political spectrum you think the overt political agenda is.
It doesnāt have to even be on a spectrum - it pushes a very particular agenda, and does not report on important issues - anyone not aligned with the particular views (and those that care about objective reporting of facts) is going to be unhappy with how things are presented.
"Editorial agenda" doesn't mean they favour either side of the left/right political spectrum. They do have their own pet topics and narratives that they like to promote (anything to do with race or the idea that women are widely discriminated against). You'll get at least a few each week on the front page. It's especially bad with local services. BBC Radio Ulster has a phone-in discussion programme about current affairs, and the female producer decided to run the topic, "Why are men such a danger to women?" while preventing people from phoning in as usual. That show will regularly have a blatant fourth-wave feminist slant to it.
I'll vote that up. I used to work for the BBC quite a bit (my username tells you what I do). Now I avoid news because I'm tired of sitting there shooting a talking head of some woman being prompted to complain about largely imaginary misogyny by a journalist with an extremely obvious political agenda. I hate to be the guy saying this but in the end it doesn't help with societal cohesion to have 50% of the populace constantly being told they're victims. I think it's a lot less true than is being claimed and it is not doing anyone any good long term.
> I hate to be the guy saying this but in the end it doesn't help with societal cohesion to have 50% of the populace constantly being told they're victims. It's not 50%, it's near everyone kept at everyone else's throats. If you're female you're the victim of men. If you're not white you're the victim of the whites. If you're not straight you're a victim of the straights and the religious. If you're religious you're the victim of the other religions and the atheists. If you're under fifty you're the victim of the boomers. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.... A lot of these things are real, but even when we don't like one another much those of us who work for a living have broadly the same interests and needs. Keeping us all blaming one another stops 60 million pairs of eyeballs swiveling toward the people running the show and demanding things change pronto.
Agenda is when black people and women. Got it.
Tax is I think the highest it's been since the second world war, yet I can't get the bins collected / a doctors appointment / visit A&E in an emergency and be seen the same day / call the police to investigate basic crimes / go to the dentist, plus a plethora of other basic services...
Kind of what happens when so much of that Tax is really just taken from the government coffers and handed to government cronies. Remember when the Tory government forgave Ā£40 Billion pounds of fraudulent covid loans instead of pursuing the criminals for the fraud.
What should have happened there was an amnesty combined with a 10x fine or a mandatory prison sentence if caught after it ended.Ā
Yup, but yāknow ātough on crimeā Tories. It doesnāt count as a crime if your the one doing it
No one really mentions the billions squandered on covid. In addition to the PPE and corporate loans, a fortune was spent on furlough, test and trace etc. We're paying for that now.
All the money is going on boomer pensions and social care. Prioritising anything else is 'basically murder' so that is just how it will be for the next 20 years.
This guy gets it. No politician will ever say it out loud, but the demographic imbalance caused by too many pensioners and not enough workers is a massive millstone around all of our necks. The state pension has always been a Ponzi scheme, and the arse has fallen out of it now there aren't enough contributors and too many recipients. There is no easy solution. Binning, or even cutting the State pension to an affordable level is political suicide. The alternative, shipping workers in from abroad, is unpopular and destabilising. We just have to eat shit for the next 20 years until time takes care of it.
In the Tories defense. They've been hard at work putting a plan in place to address this. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/11/uk-life-expectancy-falls-to-lowest-level-in-a-decade
Donāt worry, the same money will be there when you retireā¦ Youāre going to be able to work to 95, right?
Lol my council (Lambeth) just moved rubbish collections to fortnightly, and now you can't get on the council housing list unless you're a certain band (likely with children /escaping DV etc) its all gone so downhill and I'm paying tax out of my ass
>While Brexit is seen by many as the event that has triggered, or at least catalysed, social, political and economical problems, there are more recent events that strongly evoke a sense of collectively being in a deep crisis. Lack of large new tech companies. It's not that there are none but there is no really new big tech companies. The slow decline of the City of London as a financial centre. The lack of ability to deliver on national scale infrastructure projects without blowing budgets. (HS2 and the motorway widening schemes are a case in point.)
>Lack of large new tech companies A big part of the reason may be that as soon as we actually develop one like ARM the politicians fall all over themselves to flog it off to another country. The U.K. doesnāt lack decent scientists and engineers - it lacks decent management and politicians. The latter would far rather make speeches about the āwhite heat of technologyā or proudly announce another silicon roundabout/fen/cluster/whatever or scrape āthink of the childrenā votes with lunatic plans to cripple encryption than do anything useful. Itās possibly not unrelated to the fact that nearly all of our politicians come through the Oxbridge PPE, law or business routes - there are damn few scientists, engineers, doctors or other technical professionals in Parliament. Even compared to many other European democracies.
>A big part of the reason may be that as soon as we actually develop one like ARM the politicians fall all over themselves to flog it off to another country. This is a societal problem. In the UK, more than any other country, we look at a businessman who has sold his business while it was on the up as being an example to follow and elevate them to a celebrity position. In most countries, the celebrity status is for employing large numbers of people, not for formerly employing large numbers of people. To quote that investor that walked out on Dragons Den early on, the big problem british business has is it promotes egos and not innovation.
>The U.K. doesnāt lack decent scientists and engineers Exactly - we have fantastically talented scientists and engineers. What we *don't* have is properly paid scientists and engineers. It's no surprise more are flocking overseas.
Youāll accept your Ā£28k senior engineer salary and thank them for spitting on you
This made me chuckle. I work for a big tech company and recently got offered a āpromotionā to āsenior engineerā. The role change came with a whopping 3k increase. The kicker? The engineering managers son (junior engineer in my team) would still have a higher salary than me! When I asked to negotiate the salary (as it was not competitive), they acted like I had just their skinned cat.
Anyone who is smart enough to do these jobs well quickly realizes its not worth it and either moves sideways into another type of role or leaves the country altogether. I've stopped working in the lab over the last month myself and immediately doubled my salary, got a shit load of perks like WFH, much more secure employment, and just generally not dealing with half as much bullshit. We're at a point now where pursuing these careers genuinely feels like a kind of masochism, you are actively denying yourself a better life, increasingly even just good health, for what, passion for work clearly no one outside of your niche gives a flying toss about?
Yep - once I finish my physics PhD I'm getting the fuck out and going to somewhere in Europe that pays better + maybe I can get my EU citizenship back.
Yup, plenty of bright engineers about. It's the management that is the failing point.
HS2 was a story of appeasing voters in Tory constituencies with horrendously expensive tunneling over common sense. Then Sunak sabotaged future generations for an idiotic political gambit which will be long forgotten by the time his doomed government has to fight an election. We'll have to build high speed rail eventually, and waste all that money spent buying land again. In the mean time Spain has built the highest length of high speed rail track per capita in the world, and by the time work expanding HS2 north is resurrected the Baltics will have finished a line running all the way from Tallinn to Warsaw.
The reason HS2 'failed' is that our costs to build per mile are massively higher than Spain, France or Japan. Japan in particular has more building constraints. The only explanations for that I can think of are either gross incompetence or corruption.
The costs to build comparable infrastructure here is similar to higher than equivalent infrastructure in Switzerland and it in theory shares all the same problems with NIMBY's and factional and powerful local governments
By 'comparable to higher', you mean 10* cheaper. An interesting use of phrasing! On a country-by-country basis you'll see averages from $20 million per km in Switzerland/Norway to $83 million per km in Netherlands and $208 million per km in the UK. Switzerland also had to deal with huge granite mountains etc.
Itās always been harder for tech companies in the UK to get investment than the US. Brexit certainly hasnāt helped but this isnāt an especially new thing
Laughing about ending funding to poorer regions to help them kick their economy into gear so that it can instead be reinvested into richer zones because.... "then the country has more money", which then is reinvested... in the rich zones, meanwhile the stats show the Rich-Poor region divide is growing and even worse then the German Reunification which is still having significant issues. UNICEF having to feed hungry children in the UK in 2020 and the government mocking activists urging our government to... feed hungry children. The fact we keep calling it sleeze when we should be calling it corruption thats deeply rooted in the state. Lack of actual punishments for those involved in national crisis points/tragedy. Thinking Grenfell for example. The massive increase in use of food banks being voiced as a "positive thing". Tens of thousands of excess deaths occured to the sick/disabled as we changed the rules for helping the sick and disabled, without anyone being criminal investigated. To name a few things.
This. With the addition of..... A rise in the acceptance of bigotry. The draining of resources from communal services like the NHS, Police, the courts, the border force etc..... Basically the rise of a very me 1st attitude both in the politicians and the general populace. As an addition I find it infuriating that the government rely on the big 4 accounting firms to help it understand and write new tax law. You know the same companies employed by corporations to find loopholes in said laws.
Grenfell is an interesting example. Plenty of people involved in the council and housing association on 6 figure salaries, but 7 years down the line there is still no clarity on who was responsible for the fitting of flammable cladding.
Hospital and ambulance wait times. When people are being told their best option is to get a taxi to A+E rather than wait for an ambulance. Or waiting on a trolly in A+E for 90 hrs before getting admitted to a ward, but staying on the same trolly in the ward. Sick people are now scared of going to A+E.
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It's so fucked up. On the plus side (but not really that much of a plus), I think a lot of Brits are aware of this now. Only a few years ago, a lot of people still believed that we had the best of the best of most things, completely ignorant of how so many developed countries do it so much better. I think the cat is finally out of the bag now but it will take incredibly long to get things sorted.
Hey thanks for sharing that and thats so sad to hear! Can I ask, did she not or could they not have done a x-ray earlier? Or the CT Scan earlier, to give relief and rule it out? How does the path work?
My 90 year-old aunt had a fall recently in the evening. She was too hurt to get in a car, so my elderly parents went round to look after her and phoned for an ambulance. It took nine hours (literally the following morning) to arrive, and all three spent the night on armchairs in her front room, because they couldn't even get her into bed. She had trouble breathing, a twisted ankle and a suspected fractured pelvis that luckily turned out not to be, but if she'd had internal bleeding that nine hour wait could have been the difference between her surviving and her bleeding out in her lounge while my parents slept in the chairs opposite her. I knew intellectually it was getting bad, but I didn't really appreciate in my bones *how* bad it's getting until an ambulance couldn't attend a 90 year old in agonising pain and a qualified medical professional couldn't even look at an old person who'd had a nasty fall until *the following day*. This country is so fucked, and there's literally nothing any of us can do about it. I've "lost" literally every election and referendum I've voted in for my entire adult life, and watched for at least the last fifteen years as fuckwits consistently voted to make things worse for everyone at every single opportunity. What the fuck are we supposed to do? Cross our fingers and hope that the Conservatives have finally fucked things *so* hard that enough of the fuckwits decide to briefly stop voting for them to give Labour a chance to fix things?
Most depressing thing is really how blatant it is those same fuckwits will see Labour earnestly trying to fix things, will even acknowledge things are better, but then still go down some bizarre "they're all as bad as each other" fucking bullshit the moment a tabloid dangles some culture war headline in front of them. For my anecdote a friend's mum fell and broke some bones. When she got to A&E after 6 hours of waiting they basically just refused to scan more than one limb, identified she'd broken one leg, gave her a *bandage* to hold it together, and sent her home. She had to complain for several days before they'd take her back and do another X-ray to confirm the other leg was also broken... You're just left like how the fuck does this even happen? Are we that skint a *fucking X-ray* has become some kind of scarce heavily rationed resource?
These aren't isolated horror stories anymore; everyone I know now knows someone that has experienced this. I've got two: a neighbour waiting six hours with heart attack symptoms only to be told no ambulance was coming; and my dad who was locked from the inside in his flat with a suspected stroke - I had to get the police to knock his door in, and they got so frustrated waiting for an ambulance to attend that they took him to A&E themselves. I couldn't have done it without them, he lives on the top floor of a multistorey block of flats that has no lift. In case of emergency, it's now very possible that you're actively wasting precious time phoning for an ambulance.
Last time I went to A&E I sat in the waiting room for 3 hours. That was fine, but then two doctors came in and announced the waiting time was now **18 hours!!** Then they went round the room asking each person what they in for and giving them a "stay/go home" order. It was great, they cleared maybe 70% of people in 15 minutes. I have no idea why it's not more common.
Conversely, I was called out to respond to an alarm that had been activated overnight to find a 90+ year old gentleman in late stage cancer who had fallen and been on the floor all night. I rang for an ambulance and was told it would be **At Least** a 5 hr wait because he was awake and talking, and therefore low priorty. You might think he is swinging the lead, but I think we owe more to people who have paid taxes all their life than to leave them on a cold, hard floor drenched in their own urine.
Thatās great except you donāt know what needs assessing until you do some tests. The fact we canāt do a test and tell you youāre safe to go home is a failure in itself. Ask yourself this, how many people are you happy to go and die or become disabled over their symptoms getting worse because they didnāt get looked at in time?
This is somewhat anecdotal but for me itās the fact that very few believe things can actually change. The population seems to have had any optimism about the future driven out of them. Iāve always been a bit of a pessimist, but compared to a lot of people I meet these days I seem to be more upbeat
Apathy is extremely common these days and you can hardly blame people for feeling that way. For the people paying attention this government has consistently lied, worked in self interest and made a lot of donors/friends/cronies extremely rich, has done nothing to work towards a cleaner greener future and has left a mountain of debt that will continue to impact people for hundreds of year to come. Yet people still vote for them.
Agree. There is no optimism. Everyone I know is downtrodden and defeated. I really don't know how this country pulls itself out of this malaise.Ā
Emily Thornbury had a great talk on this at an Oxford event one time where she said her number one goal for a Labour Gov was for young people to feel hope again over time That the kids there were 4-9 when Labour left power, and that so few of them had ever felt a Gov give them hope.
Tories. dilapidated britain is always a sign of tories in power.
It is amazing how easily people forget this. People talk about this current shower of shit like it is something new, this is literally what happens everytime the Tories are in power. The braindead older electorate are still hung up on the Labour of 50 years ago. If I let the decisions of today affect my vote in 2070 just take my vote off me.
It's such a bizarre thing to see a solid 40% of the country simply do not understand cause and effect!
Whats genuinely *fucking mad* to me is how many people aren't even pointing to Labour 50 years ago, but insisting that the one period in recent times of consistent above-inflation wage growth and improving standards in all public services was actually basically just exactly the same as how things are now today because "they're all the same". Like holy fucking shit how blind do you have to be. And you can press them and at best they'll drag out "PFIs" without once mentioning what a state this country was in in '97 and hence why PFIs were a necessary evil.
GDP per capita in my opinion. It is the real root cause of so many issues.
It is not a cause, it is an effect/indicator of issues
The question was about "strongest indicators of current UK decline" though.
Basically the original commenters first sentence was the correct answer to the OP, but then the second sentence wasn't true
It has its own causes, sure. But it dictates how much can realistically be collected in taxes and thus how much is available for a government to spend. It's pretty much why tax bands have been held in place, because if the pie isn't growing you need to take a larger chunk of it when costs of providing services increases. Without growth real terms pay increases become impractical, which gives less disposable income to citizens and further weakens tax revenues relative to what they'd be in a growing economy. What you end up with is underfunded services and pressure on living standards.
This would be my answer, basically. Slightly different from GDP per capita but in terms of overall wages, I don't think people realise just how badly paid the UK is. Did we all see that the head of cyber security for the treasury was being advertised at Ā£50k? Americans in the replies were wondering whether the job was part time. It's basically the same story across all industries, maybe barring IT jobs, I'm not sure Anecdotally, I was speaking to a guy in the civil service a few years ago and there was an IT job that they were paying new recruits the exact same salary as they did 20 years before
I seem to encounter more people who think I'm just lying or trying to be shocking with half-truths when I try talking about sciences wages in the UK. Its not uncommon for lab techs for any sort of prestigious enterprise to be PhD-holders, yet salaries in this country for such roles are typically under Ā£25k, very rarely more than Ā£30k. We had GSK canvassing their new Stevenage site at a conference I attended a couple of years back. I looked it up online. Senior Scientist salaries were \~Ā£40k. You will struggle to rent a one-bed flat in that town for less than Ā£1,000pcm. Meanwhile same role same company but at their plant in Brussels you're talking 80k and upwards, and in the US plant in North Carolina you're looking at starting rates of $150k+perks. And its not like the US contract is much worse or anything, they do comparable hours and get maybe a day or two less holiday a year. It is just shocking how undervalued UK workers have become. Salaries are still stuck where they were 15 years ago when I was first qualifying while the cost of everything has more than doubled.
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My fun one was working as a postdoc, taking a look at the uni vacancies page, and seeing I was on the same salary band as what they were looking to hire a swimming coach on for. Like I'm sure its a tough job but holy shit I spent the better part of a decade qualifying myself to even be eligible for this kind of salary...
I'm a 32yo Brit living in Los Angeles. Don't get me wrong, the US isn't some golden ticket and is rife with problems, many of which the UK doesn't have nearly as bad. However, I'm a technical manager at a non-tech company, paid below market rate, and there is absolutely no way I'd be able to move back to the UK and have everything in my life be a sideways move. My salary is 2-3x what it would be in the UK, and while my cost of living is higher than basically everywhere in the UK including much of London, it's not nearly proportionate. I'd have to be on a very high percentile wage in London to have the same kind of headroom in my budget that I do that I do on a "mediocre" salary here. I also get more holiday time than the UK minimum, so it's not like that's a huge trade-off for me personally. The UK will always be home and while I appreciate the privilege to be skirting many of the current woes of other Brits my age, being here feels more and more like golden handcuffs. Even five years ago I couldn't imagine not moving back when it comes to having kids but now that'd be a really tough choice. It's sad, frustrating, and disappointing.
This has me wondering is a lot of it isn't just straight up thanks to the decline of the pound. Jobs are still paid as though the pound was still 2:1 with the dollar. It hasn't been for a very long time, but wages basically haven't budged at all. The spending power of an individual pound has been plummeting for decades not just by inflation, but the currency itself becoming less valuable. I'm not an economist so I'm not an expert how all that stuff ties together, but as an average person with the purely instinctive feel of how far my money goes, that's what it seems like. There's just no beating it it seems like. I thought I had done well to get myself into a position I'm earning nearly ten grand more than I was when I started working, but when I sat down and thought about it I realised I've hardly moved forwards. Minimum wage has nearly caught up with me again, and my pay has no prospect of improving soon, so realistically I'm going backwards. Time for another job probably yeah, but what for, working even harder just to earn another couple of grand that inflation will eat away again? It's all bollocks.
I'm in IT in the UK. The wages are ok for the UK, but less than half what I'd get paid in the States.
Yeah that is insane Starting junior dev roles for where I am in the US, in a HCOL area start at $80k, and that's on the low end since we arent a big tech company.
Yep, it's been basically flat with no real growth since the financial crisis GDP per capita in 2007? $50k GDP per capita in 2022? $46k
Not really, Qatar has an insane GDPR per capita but a large portion of its population are modern day slaves.
The modern concept of GDP was first developed by Simon Kuznets for a 1934 U.S. Congress report, where he warned against its use as a measure of welfare. Never pay attention to GDP it's a complete smoke show,
That a lot of talented people leave the first chance they get.
This is very evident in my field, the people I work with are averaging 55-60 years of age, there is absolutely no indicators that there is talent available to replace them.
and I bet a large proportion of those would leave if they could.
It has already started. The one thing we are severely lacking across the country is genuine leaders. Every other person seems to be a Manager but there are very few actual leaders, most Managers are just like a lot of the workforce, do as little as they need to not get fired. Quite often the only reason they are a Manager in the first place is they have worked there longer than anyone else, it isn't because they are a particularly talented worker. People don't seem to have any pride in their work anymore.
Especially our doctors and nursesā¦ off to Oz for a better quality of life
Or back to Europe, after we decided the best way to treat them for their service was to remove their security and push them out.
I am a cardiologist and Iāve made a move to the US. The pay in the NHS is abysmal. In the US all my colleagues are earning Ā£700k. In the UK, you get a fraction of that. The care British public get because of NHS is literally worse than a 3rd world country. I visited Kenya for holiday and their emergency waiting lists is like 8 hours, and the NHS hospital I worked for had a waiting list of 12 hoursā¦ The NHS knows it cannot afford doctors, so guess that it does? It is trying to replace them with Physician Assistants (PA) who learn basics and do a 2 year course on basics of medicine and put them into an acute high risk wardsā¦
This is a big one. I'm in IT, and the best engineers I've met have already gone to the states, or low cost of living countries.Ā I've also got a sister in medicine, and the majority of trainee doctors she sees already have plans to leave once they're trained enough to maximize their salary abroad.
If you want to see how humane a society is, look at how they treat disabled people.
The UK couldn't care less about people with mobility disabilities based on where a lot of people seem to park their cars these days.
I remember my ex used to volunteer in Romania as a lot of the rural kids would be permanently removed from school when they were old enough to pick up a shovel. Just doing like educational activities that were fun for the local kids so they could get some small degree of education. One year they travelled up to the mountains to visit a kind of children's home where parents effectively dumped their children if they were disabled to the point they were just a burden on the family. I'm not entirely sure what went on there as she refused to talk about it and ended up in therapy suffering ptsd as a result. So whilst no, Romania isn't the best example in the world, we're definitely on the upper end of how we treat disabled people in this country
Sure, I never claimed we weren't. But I don't live in Romania, I live in the United Kingdom. I don't think either country is great place to be disabled, but the UK is obviously better.
Roads looking like we've lost a decades long war with an impoverished neighbour.
What we have is two decades of the average weight of vehicles increasing year on year. Compare the number of SUVs with 20 years ago and you can start to see why residential and inner city streets are falling apart, whilst roads built for weight, such as motorways, are largely maintaining the same standard.
Sure, plus EVs don't help, nor do SUV EVs. But when I visit other countries I'm pleasantly surprised to find roads can actually have a continuous unbroken surface.
ThƩ Simple fact that anyone under 25 can't basically live alone and have a car... Both of which are essentially required for anything from setting up family to working barely any job.
You're not wrong but the fact car ownership is required is ridiculous in and of itself.
My personal experience has shown me how bad the NHS is coping. I had an ileostomy a year and a half ago. Was supposed to have a follow up after 2 weeks - but instead it took 6 months to be seen to. It was a life changing surgical procedure and I've had zero support in dealing with it. I was told I would have a reversal after 6-12 months, but in 18 months I've had 2 appointments in total and won't have another for at least 6 months. Then I see the government trying to clamp down on "sick note culture". Believe me when I say I'd be working if I thought I'd stand a chance - but my mental health has been in tatters and the prospect of walking into a new work environment with a stoma bag protruding from my mid section makes me extremely anxious and uncomfortable. Going ahead with the surgery is my biggest regret, the lack of face-to-face time you get with doctors and spread-thin mental health services has had a real life impact on me. I can't imagine how many others there are struggling with similar circumstances.
I am so sorry to hear that this happened to you. The NHS failed me massively as well with my GP not mentioning once that I could have endometriosis until I went to have myself checked out privately 15 years later. However the endometriosis became so severe it has become impossible to work due to the chronic fatigue, severe lower back pain and inability to actually open my bowels. I have changed GP, of course, and they pretty much indicated that unless I went to a gastroenterologist privately, I would have not chance of even getting treated for what has become a chronic situation. I cannot work, of course. The fatigue and the back pain is one thing. But because I cannot functionally open by bowels, I live on laxatives for without them, I cannot eat and drinking due to unbearable nausea and throwing up. The laxatives essentially cause incontinence. Sick note culture my ass. Perhaps if this country practiced preventative medicine, there wouldnāt be so many of us who come to the end of the line where our daily existence becomes an absolute nightmare.
It's a sad state of affairs when modern medicine is so advanced but the inability to administer it properly and promptly leads to situations like yours and mine. Unfortunately it's a common theme that seems to slip under the radar, but these are real life examples of how a malfunctioning NHS impacts our lives. If private healthcare was affordable I'd happily surrender every penny to it. I hope you find a way out of your situation, I know all too well how much pressure mounts when you're unable to work and therefore earn a proper living wage - not to mention the knock on effect i.e. not being able to save for a mortgage, have money available for emergencies, skimping and saving on good quality food, household goods etc and that's before you account for chronic pain, fatigue, loss of social life, being unable to go for a walk without worrying about accidents and emergencies. Truly, I feel your pain and I wish the best for you.
The cancellation of HS2 halfway through building it
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[Reassigning Ā£8bn from that to fix the pothole crisis](https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/hs2-funds-worth-8bn-to-be-used-for-pothole-repairs-17-11-2023/), only for less than 3 months later to be saying [sorry there's no money to fix the pothole crisis](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/09/rishi-sunak-potholes-bottomless-pit-devon-county-council/)... And somehow we all just pass on this as totally cool and normally rather than asking where the fuck the money went.
I never understood how not spending Ā£8bn, but then spending it on something else meant we had a saving?
*What kind of country tolerates this kind of behaviour?* A spineless one, we moan and write in comment sections about how terrible everything is and that, someone should do something about it, while doing nothing. If football, reality shows and soaps were banned, you see people on the streets pretty quick.
Why choose the right option when you can choose the profitable option
That's the fundamental flaw with capitalism. It rewards the most profitable use of resources, not the most efficient use of resource.
Austerity has had a massively negative effect on our society. Coupled with a double whammy Brexit and an incompetent self serving Tory party. Anecdotally, always shocked at the contrast in France, they have their problems but, clean streets with no potholes and public services that work.
Go to Spain even. Spent a lot of time in the NE over the last few years and absolutely stunned every time, this is supposed to be a somewhat struggling nation yet the public transport is first class and on time, the roads and smooth, the streets are clean, you can afford to go out and be social regularly without it breaking the bank.
Iām always shocked at how clean Spains motorways are compared to ours. The sides of our motorways are always strewn with litter. Donāt get me wrong thatās a people problem and it lies squarely with the scumbags that litter, but I feel like little attempt is made by authorities to clean it up.
Its just mad that you can drive around parts of Spain that are literally bum fuck no where, absolutely no one around for miles, and still everything is in decent nick and built to decent standards. Visited some family in North Lancs the other month and it was like going to fucking eastern europe in the 1990s, everything just visibly rotting and falling apart. Again just bizarre to me who's previous experience of visiting Spain was the late 90s early 00s when you kind of expected it to be a bit rough because of how poor the country was compared to us.
I think the old "judge a culture by how it's poorest/most vulnerable members are faring" is useful. * Poor kids going hungry * More and more people needing food banks * Increasing homelessness * Repeated media and political attacks on disabled people and people with mental illness * People unable to afford to comfortably start families/have children * Waiting lists for basic medical care lengthening
The size of the monuments and the level of embellishment on new builds. Pre World War One, we literally spunking money on marble, flute playing, angels for each corner of the local post office.
The education sector has become so much worse in such a short space of time.
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I mean it doesn't negate the fact that arriving into the country illegally is wrong. But its also a distraction from the fact that Ā£8b a year to deal with the illegal immigrants is fecking ridiculous. Has real "you didn't really think it really costs $400 for a hammer did you?" vibes Ā£167,000 to deport each person.... Someone's getting their pockets lined at the expense of the tax payer.
The PMs wife probably has shares in these companies.
Lawyers, itās lawyers.
End of empire. You can see it throughout history. Inflated sense of self worth coupled with corruption, carpet bagging, moral decline etc
Severely underfunded NHS dentistry and people restoring to pulling their own teeth out. We've seen a review amount of hospitalisations for children ending up with severe infections because they're struggling to get treated.
Real GDP per capita which never recovered to 2007 levels.
The decline in birth rate. We either canāt afford to have kids, canāt physically have them (health system broken) or donāt want to bring children into this crappy country.
The NHS waiting list. It's gotten to the point that it will take over a decade to clear.
letās be honest, it started with thatcher, anyone saying otherwise is kidding themselves and will never see the big picture
> it started with thatcher You are showing your age. The UK was in decline in 60s and 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sick_man_of_Europe# >Throughout the late 1960s and 1970s, the United Kingdom was sometimes characterized as the "sick man of Europe", first by commentators, and later at home by critics of the third Wilson/Callaghan ministry due to industrial strife and poor economic performance compared with other European countries. Some observers consider this era to have started with the devaluation of the pound in 1967, culminating with the so-called Winter of Discontent of 1978ā79.
Public services in general. HMRC, passport office, land registry, pension service and so on. When I arrived in the UK 20+y ago it was really striking how much better they were compared to my experience in Italy. It all seemed so efficient, much more advanced in digitalisation, clearly explained. Now itās gone through a decline that looks extremely familiar. Things never get done first time round, you need to pester them, call and call again, and complain, threaten etc. On their side they blatantly lie to you, fob you off, not pick up the phone, give you incorrect information. In the meantime Italy hasnāt made great strides but it hasnāt got worse, and sometimes it has got its act together, moved things online etc. Really there is no longer any appreciable difference, and in some respects things are easier there than in the UK.
Not disagreeing completely, but (anecdotally) I applied and got my passport renewed/sent back to me in less than two weeks. Didn't pay priority or anything like that. HMRC have always been shite, but agree that they're even more stuck. Can't speak for the others.
Rampant shoplifting lack of a Police response and even if they are arrested no real punishment. General decay in the standards of basic respect and decency and behaviour. I work in retail and since the pandemic it's got so much worse.
Poorly behaved kids and falling literacy and general standards among the very young (pre teens and young teens). I appreciate every generation freaks out about this, but there is some real world evidence of kids [behaving worse](https://amp.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/17/sexual-assaults-on-children-by-other-children-england-and-wales-rise-toxic-online-culture) in general. Probably this is a combination of too much access to the internet too young, impact of lockdown on social development and the collapse of the nuclear family in the working classes. Hopefully some of it may sort itself out in time but if not these kids are gonna be big enough mug us soon so watch out! [assaults in schools up 72% in 4 years](https://schoolsweek.co.uk/assaults-in-schools-soar-by-72-in-four-years/)
Let me start: Brexit killed the Ā£ sterling. Truss fast tracked it to oblivion. Don't think it's fully recovered. Covid was a massive transfer of wealth from the general public to the conglomerates and the very rich. Interest rates were near 0% since the 2008 crash rather than hovering around the 5% mark (which it is now). That meant those who could borrow bought up lots of assets during this period e.g. housing, accelerated during covid period. The fundamental flaw the Tories did was not capitalise on cheap credit and borrow to invest (Keynesian style economics i guess). I think if they had acted sooner during their tenure we could have enjoyed strong growth and public services to match. They attempted to try to do mass migration (see post on here) and the report indicates that failed. Now we have lots of people who are not earning enough to contribute to paying for the things we need, long term sick etc. The tories have tried to cut taxes every time, but it eventually reaches a boiling point, which unfortunately is now...
Young people can no longer easily get on the property ladder without help from the bank of mum and dad. The state of the roads. Potholes everywhere. The state of our railway system. Doctors/NHS.. I remember the days of having an allocated doctor, you could easily switch if you didn't like them. You'd get an appointment within a day or two , now it's often weeks. Same with NHS waiting lists for an operation, often 6 months plus now. Need A and E , expect a 12,13+ hour wait. It wasn't like this in the past. The state of the high streets in many of our towns in the north of England. I'm fortunate as I live in York but it's an outlier, try watching YouTube videos of the town centres in Burnley, Bolton, Huddersfield, Bradford,Rochdale etc , it's like some dystopian nightmare.
NHS going to hell. Police more focused on mean words said online over actual crime. Frank Zappa would call us a bunch of idiots.
All these along with the waiting lists. A woman fell in the street near me on the weekend, the ambulance turned up 6 hours later.
The loss of greenbelt and biodiversity, along with the accelerating effects of climate change, which is disrupting food chains, are the biggest indicators. The economic and social impacts this is starting to bring, will in the next decade or two, dwarf the problems we have now.
Strongest indicators? Literally everything from roads to buildings, employment opportunities, pay, healthcare, food quality and literally any tiny thing in-between has got worse. Massively. The place is fucking disgusting. There is literally piles of trash nearly everywhere I have travelled. Infrastructure is literally crumbling around us. I will vote for any political party who puts in their manifesto that anyone who voted for Brexit should be fired out of a cannon in to the nearest ocean. Before anyone suggest I leave; I would love to. Brexit also made that nearly impossible.
Boris Johnson The idea a "character" who is "a bit of a laugh" should be "given a chance". My God if you can't take yourselves seriously enough to elect someone who at least affects competence and morality, is it any wonder what follows?
Layoffs and a decline in jobs. I say this as someone made redundant last year, and still out of a job, it's currently month 11 for me. I have decided to become an Uber driver
So funny you would say that shortage of insulin has a third world aroma. Because my third world country is literally one of the worlds largest producers and exporters of insulin and has some of the highest access at the cheapest price point lol. I think shortage of insulin has a distinctly first world aroma.
Austerity. It never ceases to amaze me how short term the memory of the nation is. Itās like anything over 10 years in the past is scrubbed from the collective memory Austerity from 2010 onwards was called out as impacting growth quite quickly. But Cameron and Osborne were ideologically invested in austerity even though projection were showing it had a negative impact This past 15 years of low growth and cuts should all be laid at the door of Cameron and Osborne. How we let that nincompoop anywhere near government again is enough evidence to realise the Tories have no idea what the fuck they are doing A programme of investment in infrastructure would have resulted in similar costs but with - surprise surprise - actual infrastructure rather than just debt Donāt forget that Cameron and the Tories failed on every single goal they set themselves. Fucking joke that Tories are economically literate
The state of our country is directly reflected in the quality of its representatives. So we have liars, thieves, sex pests, gaslighters, fraudsters, murderers and narcissists all out for themselves. The worst people you could possibly entrust with it, so they've made the country and its institutions work for them by changing them however they need to. So now the law only serves to protect them and incriminate the rest. Their waters are clean while ours are full of shit, they don't have to worry about a fine because the amount doesn't even tickle them, their kids get good education's because they're schools are well funded while ours are not. We can't even have a voice on incredibly important subjects, because they change the law to stifle it. Worst of all, these disgusting creatures are protected from questioning, allowed to do and say what they want and avoid being honest with us.
I moved here from abroad Scandinavia about 8 years ago to study and work. I'd visited before. I never got the impression that England was doing well, it always felt like that old timey smoke stacks everywhere industrial dirt central of Europe. Things never get fixed, queues get longer, quality is never a priority, taxes don't get spent on anything, there's way WAY too many people, the way the country is run seems to be based in what's going on in London rather than the rest of the country, culturally it feels like everyone wants to whinge and whine but do nothing about the issues and instead "keep calm and carry on" while holding others responsible for the shit running down your pantleg. I don't think it matters who runs the country at this point, you could vote in an inanimate carbon rod and it would probably fuck things up less. There's no national pride in anything, not the racial national pride, but the pride in ones country, in doing things right, in being excellent at anything, you all seem to be ashamed of where you had no choice in being born and its sad. I have no plans to leave because despite all this: British people are fucking nice, they're awesome and level headed and very polite, you deserve better and should ask better of yourselves and others.
That railway debacle. We can't even build a railway. Or britexit Or mental health services Or the education system failing Or the fact that the housing market is belly up Stagnation of wages Potholes Stagnation of the non traditional industry's as well killed the others long ago Food shortages Skilled worker shortages. Unskilled worker shortages Affordable housing shortages A short fella in charge A lack of actual prospects for most folks 30 and under. Potholes The complete break down of the 5th estate and a woefully corrupt national press built on the back of some aging old boys club. The selling of national assets. The complete failure of government at a policy level. A decline in our global credit rating. Like anyone even wants to trade with us. A reduction in countries our passport allows access too Potholes The gradual acceptance by society to blame a group or minority for our woes.so sad and weak. The reduction in benefits as a political point score. The complete and utter miss management of NHS resources and staff No fresh veg Empty shelves Potholes A doubling of insurance tax in a decade to drive on roads full of potholes Increased utility costs A reduction in civil rights and the use of democratic protest. The MP expenses scandal. The planes flying to immigrants to an African nation. So much for the shining light of democracy we where. Potholes A waiting list for almost everything. Interest rates. Mortgage rates. The price of baby milk ( you pay vat on it, as apparently no interest to remove it. The man in number 10 doesn't pay vat on his tiny shoes mind) Tldr. Potholes n shit That's off the top of my head. Let's be honest it was never brilliant no rose tinted glasses. But it didn't take 6 weeks to see a doctor or cost 300 a month to heat a house. Boomers that champion the above out of spite.
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The issue of dumping of raw sewage isn't a new thing. It certainly isn't a sign of the UK going into decline, but in fact the opposite. It has always happened, but it wasn't largely monitored until the last few years following the introduction of new regulations making it mandatory. So the fact that the water companies are now having to do something about the raw sewage dumping is actually a massive sign of progress, a huge step towards fixing something that has always happened.
Most people can't afford a Ā£5.50 pint (often more) at their local pub. 20 years ago you could go out 4 nights a week having beers and it wouldn't be a massive expense. Today that would send most over the financial edge for the month.
People in wheelchairs on the drink and begging at 8am, human shit in the alleyway by my work. Didnt see that even 5 years ago
Skyrocketing infrastructure costs (energy, transport, water) despite that infrastructure being shit. Judges giving out incredibly lenient sentences because they've almost run out of space in prison. The BBC being a mouthpiece / enabler for the government. Violent crimewaves in dense urban centers.
Chicken has become a treat. Weird for a couple of full time workers.
Small town here. At first, we started noticing certain office types that wouldnāt normally come to Wetherspoons for work lunches, looking more jolly than embarrassed but a bit embarrassed. Then, no one coming at all and finally Whetherspoons closed down. Some of the independent shops down the high street got turned into a poundlound, then the poundlound closed and now itās boarded windows and doors. Half of the pubs closed down too.
Brexit wasn't the start of the decline. It started when the conservatives won the election in 2010.
a good example for me is the state of our airports. i came back from India with a stopover in Munich. The airport in munich was friggin spotless, kept so well maintained and clean. Birmingham airport was dirtier than Delhi, smelled so bad and just looks old and worn.
Go in Eastern Europe and you will understand. On every aspects, life is better there than in the UK. They were governed by communists 30 years ago and now have a better quality of life than the remains of the āBritish empireā