To feel so sad about what happened to our town?

No they haven't, well not sorting the problem, it was about £400m last year, much of which went on legal fees fighting whether the 'city can move on the homeless who declined a shelter.

Homelessness isn't solved by putting people in a shelter, its a long term term problem where some focus has to be on prevention, which takes money, education and early years intervention.

I agree money isn't the only solution but without it, social issues just get worse, just as a lack of it on an individual basis is a problem too.

Unfortunately, the right wing always sits back and does nothing until the public demand action, at which point its often too late and large amounts of money are wasted on "firefighting" e.g see how the Tories throw money at the NHS each autumn to deal with "winter pressures" :( how about long term regular funding instead?

The USA is often given as an example for what lower taxes can do... yes great, tent cities for the poor, no national health service

The problem in both the US and UK is thinking money will solve this. San Francisco has literally spent billions trying to humanely solve their homeless problem but it only gets worse. MN solution is always that social services needs more funding … but America shows that a lot of this is a bottomless pit people still shovel money into and expecting a certain result..

@Soggywelly you were answering my comment.
Its fine I will move on. I forgive you for not understanding either my comment or how social media works.

@Missamyp You seem to be suggesting the only way to improve somewhere is to to drive out the old residents and attract new people?
In fairness gentrification has been used all over and of course people who live there complain about it.

And? I was adding my thoughts to the OP's post. I'm really not interested in debating you, you'll have to find someone else.

The problem is some residents en masse reject any type of modernity. DP lives in an old mill town in the north.
It attracted some investment.
Yet already the locals are moaning about outsiders spending money and proclaiming everything is too expensive either the goods as in fashion or services, the bars and restaurants. Some have been open to a great hurrah, and now 4-5 years later the town is regressing back to carling, kebabs and unruly anti-social behaviour.
I do believe Rishi cancelling the HS2 northern leg was a poor decision. The government should be not only completing all the high-speed rail but also the electrification of the northern lines and the planned road expansions.
Get people moving quickly instead of being trapped in a quagmire of poor logistics and under-investment.

The car noise problem is a policing issue, a car has to be below a defined decibel level that is easy to tell via a noise meter but nobody can be bothered to check

@Soggywelly except you were not talking about your own experience. You were talking about what more generally happened with mothers working and babies.

I don't think I do, I grew up around extended family. My grandmas stayed at home, my mum stayed at home, my aunties stayed at home (at least in their children's younger years) just because my lived experience is different to yours, that doesn't make it rose tinted.

I think you have rose tinted spectacles on. Older girls often looked after babies while mothers worked. There was childcare in Victorian times, but it could be very basic. Mothers toiling in fields would sometimes leave babies on the edge of fields while they worked.

Pregnant outside marriage? They took your baby away and locked you up for life.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5018190-heart-breaking-photo-of-dolly-who-was-incarcerated-for-being-pregnant?page=1

Agree with financial crisis and covid but rather than the Arab crisis I would put the twins towers as the big event that changed us.
It launched the west into an invisible cultural war that is still ongoing, it marked the beginning of the terrorism that has resulted in tighter restrictions and surveillance in our western countries, which IMO has had a lasting emotional impact on our societies.

@Allthegoodnamesarechosen excellent post, I agree that those are the three recent key events.

‘Yes those things were written down several hundred tears after the "fact", translated numerous times etc. Just because something has been embedded in history, which is written largely by the Victor's, doesn't make it absolute truth. ‘

The earliest Gospel is reliably dated to 65 -75 CE ( by north Christian scholars). Given that the events related happened around 28 - 31 CE , this is hardly ‘ several hundred tears (sic) later’. Pliny the Younger , who witnessed the eruption of Vesuvius so is easily datable by non Christian (‘ the Victor’s ‘ ) sources, had to deal with an organised Church in one of the Provinces he was appointed to govern. That was well short of a hundred years after the Crucifixion .

Not ‘absolute truth’ ( What is Truth? , as Pilate said) , but well researched evidence, as opposed to the Amon Ra school of ‘history’.

I agree that women have always "worked" but in a far more natural setting that had meaning for the family and community. Baby's aren't excluded in this, they are carried as all tribes have done and continue to do.

"Life in all its fullness is Mother Nature obeyed.”

The idea that religion can hold things together is interesting but only goes so far. The values we've replaced it with, mostly consumerism, aren't compatible with any religion. Which is why for example immigrants from Islamic countries struggle to integrate as their home countries typically depend on women staying at home, which for the majority of households is no longer possible in the UK. It is a valid pokt that people need role models other than business people and people who make their money from their appearance eg influencers.

I think the OP was correct in feeling that the end of the last century felt ‘hopeful’ , in much of Europe and in North and South American. I remember for example travelling and working in Italy in the late Nineties and feeling that the Italians thought they had turned a corner: public life was less corrupt, there was more social openness, prosperity.

The Wall had come down, Russia was opening to the West and leaving the more oppressive aspects of Communism, loosening their hold on East Europe. There was a lot of talk about the Brics economies and their potential contribution to global prosperity.

So….something has changed . If Western civilisation survives in any recognisable form ( which is dubious IMHO) it’s possible that scribes working in unheated cells may identify three major ‘events’ .

The global financial crisis 2008, where the concept of trading nonexistent assets fell off the cliff; have the developed economies ever recovered?

The MiddleEastern crisis 2015 which saw unprecedented inflows of displaced persons (mainly young men) who were welcomed by the host nations, based on an unfounded hope that they would become ‘like’ the native population. That’s a door which cannot be shut, it would seem.

The Covid lockdowns, an unprecedented enforced social change with dire consequences. ‘He who would save his life, will lose it’.

All this set against the cult of the individual, and the destruction of ‘ rules and regulations’ which kept our worst instincts in check. The ‘super rich’ exemplify this, they have no ties to any nation, society, creed or country, they go where they are best served. This is unlike previous elites who had some interest in maintaining their localities because they would be impacted by too much disruption. Voilà!

To what extent? does it compensate for low wages, a dire health service, no dentists and roads that wreck your car?

So what if someone on a low ends up with £900 a year from a workplace pension.

Pension schemes invest across a very wide range of stocks, bonds & gilts, property, commodities...

Once again, these profits & low tax rates benefit the most wealthy disproportionately e.g Sunaks US based investment funds give him a very healthy income of millions per year and a tax rate of 20%, quite how that benefits the average man in the street i do not know?

Sunak of course isn't the only one taking adv of very low tax rates and in many cases 0% rates (those with large ISA holdings)

btw workplace pensions are not compulsory, any employee can opt out... the compulsion is that the employer must put an employee in the scheme but after that...

Sorry, Vietnam, a country world-renowned for its democracy, wealth equality, feedoms and women's rights.

Women "not working" is actually a pretty unusual scenario if you look back into history. Women have traditionally worked, but more "locally", and had a much stronger local network of family. Go back to the farms and villages and the women would do a lot of work, i.e. picking crops, dairy work, etc. More recently, they'd typically work in the mills/factories within sight of their 2up-2down terraced housing. Difference was that there was the community of extended family, neighbours, etc., who'd "look after" the young children and elderly relatives when they were working. That's what we've lost.

Nowadays, mothers who work tend to dump their kids at a nursery and then often travel large distances to work, so are remote. Likewise the elderly are put into homes, again, often distant from their friends/family. The kids are also often separated from their neighbours' children etc.

Personally, I think we need a massive drive back to "localism" and rebuild communities. Incentivise people to live closer to their families, work closer to home, etc., and part of that is to reverse the centralisation of the better jobs away from London and a handful of other big cities which for the past few decades have sucked the life out of the regions. The sheer number of students who move away to Uni and then never return to their home town because of lack of jobs/projects is insane!

Mothers shouldn't have to dump their kids at a nursery at 7.30 and then suffer a 60-90 minute commute to a job in the nearest city! That's no use for anyone, neither the child, the parent!

Also as someone who reluctantly left the UK because I could see the rot, there is a brain drain of British citizens and yet a crazy amount of mass immigration. Both of these together are going to have noticeable impacts. Things are really changing quickly now.

Most pension schemes invest their funds in "large company" stocks and shares, so in effect, the ordinary man in the street DOES benefit from the profits/growth etc of large companies! (Well at least most of those who have private pensions which is an ever increasing number with the recent compulsory workplace pension schemes).

Yes those things were written down several hundred tears after the "fact", translated numerous times etc. Just because something has been embedded in history, which is written largely by the Victor's, doesn't make it absolute truth. These things are one of my interests too.

A good start would be to reverse how business rates are cheaper per square metre for a warehouse (i.e. Amazon) than for the High Street (M&S). There are different tiers of charges or multiplier. It's not just based wholly on rentable value. Fair enough in the old days to charge a premium for popular shopping street locations, but it's clear that's no longer suitable. On the basis of floor space, the Amazon warehouse should pay at least the same as M&S or Tesco, in fact probably should pay more. The days of "low quality poor location" warehouses paying lower business rates than prime High Street locations are over due to online shopping. Unfortunately, politicians are too scared to do it as it would annoy the "big firms" like AO, Amazon, and all the others who are internet only or who have moved over to internet. Either increase business rates or replace it with some kind of online sales tax.