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Original poster

To be beginning to think there is some sort of bot presence here starting threads doing down the UK?

117 replies

MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 14:24

I am so fed up with it. Nearly every day there is a thread about how awful the UK is. Today it's about how filthy we are compared to other places. A couple of days ago it was about how shyte it is here. Moaning about the NHS, weather, transport, about how Ukrainian refugees feel sorry for us, about bloody everything.

There are lots of things I dislike about Britain in 2024. However, this is still a beautiful country where the vast majority of people live peacefully. The very worst thing about this country is that we don't realise how bloody lucky we are. It's not too hot like Southern Europe (sunning yourself on a beach in 38 degrees might be lovely; working in a kitchen every day much less so), not too cold like Russia or part of Canada. We don't get hurricanes like the Southern US has just dealt with. We don't get floods on the scale of Bangladesh. We don't get earthquakes like Japan or Haiti. We don't have volcanoes like Iceland or Italy. We don't have poisonous snakes and spiders like Australia or India. We don't have wild animals stopping us roaming freely like Africa. We don't have drug cartels running things on a huge scale like parts of South America. Neither do we live under despotic rule like North Korea. We don't live in daily fear or famine like the horn of Africa or of war like the Middle East. Our women are reasonably free and not forced to live diminished lives like in Afghanistan.

We live in a generally benign Western democracy and yes times have been hard and yes some of that has been self inflicted - eg via Brexit - and yes we have struggled with leadership too removed from working class priorities. Yes there are knife crime issues and gangs in some of our cities and towns and I wish there weren't. But on balance in a global scale this is fucking paradise compared to many people's lives.

Please can we have a thread bigging up the UK instead of this constant, neverending, tone deaf whingeing, that really is one of the worst things about the British (and possibly, the English most specifically).

OP posts:
Barbadossunset · 25/10/2024 21:19

@SleepToad
Personally I am reconsidering my position on the house of lords having been for many years an advocate, the fact that someone who writes musicals about cats gets to decide the future of the country seems wrong!

If you mean Andrew Lloyd-Webber, he has retired from the House of Lords.

SabreIsMyFave · 25/10/2024 21:09

EasternStandard · 25/10/2024 20:24

Where would you go and what jobs would you have?

Why didn’t you go earlier?

Show quote history

Yeah exactly. Funny how that poster conveniently makes the excuse that Brexit is stopping them from leaving the UK now. 🙄 Had plenty of years to go, but conveniently never managed to/never got round to it, and now HORROR OF HORRORS they are stuck living in the HIDEOUS UK!

Do me a favour @L1lyflower ! Wink If it had been that bad in the UK, you'd have upped sticks YEARS ago. And even now you could make it work if you really wanted to leave. A neighbour of mine - and her husband - sold up and moved to Spain in 2022. (When they hit 60 and both retired.) Another family I know - 2 adults, and 2 school age children left to live in France last summer (2023.)

Using Brexit is a lame excuse. You could go if you wanted to. You won't go though. You know when you're well off. It's just insulting and pretty disrespectful that you won't admit it.

What makes me LOL is that the UK bashers seem to assume that ANY other country will be better than the UK, and also that their 'favourite country/countries of choice' will want them. And they will be warmly welcomed by all the natives, and have a wonderful life in a country that is SOOOOOOOO much better than the 'shithole' that is the UK!!!

All the LOLz! Naïve much?!!

!

daisychain01 · 25/10/2024 21:05

Itiswhatitis80 · 25/10/2024 14:51

It is dirty though,councils don’t litter pick any more,everything is overgrown,we have volunteer litter pickers in our village but they shouldn’t have to do that.

Neither should the council! How about we start training our kids really early on in their life that throwing rubbish on the ground is a disgusting anti social thing to do so that when they grow up they don't throw litter. There's a thing.

Bangwam1 · 25/10/2024 20:59

Judging by the sky outside my window I dont think we bitch enough 😊

HotPipe · 25/10/2024 20:56

L1lyflower · 25/10/2024 20:25

There are plenty of English speaking uni course across Europe. Thanks to Brexit they’d be classed as foreign students now so it’s out of the question.

Edited
Show quote history

I am sure they will have a brilliant time at the UK university they are now enrolled in. Maybe you can look into a visa to emigrate. No point staying here if you are depressed.

lucysnowe2 · 25/10/2024 20:52

Totally agree OP. I don't know if it's bots, but I do wonder sometimes if people are living in a completely different UK than me! I do live in a lovely part of the country tbf so for a while I thought I was just not seeing the bad bits until someone mentioned a town I know really well and described it as filthy and run down. It's not! It's always really busy and regularly cleaned. Nor do I ever see much rubbish or graffiti anywhere, and we holiday in the UK a lot. Ymmv

SequoiaTree · 25/10/2024 20:28

I haven't seen them, although I hide threads that are irritating. The less interaction people have with them the better. Don't want to encourage them!

L1lyflower · 25/10/2024 20:26

EasternStandard · 25/10/2024 20:24

Where would you go and what jobs would you have?

Why didn’t you go earlier?

Show quote history

Wasn’t the right time. Loads of places we could have gone. IT

L1lyflower · 25/10/2024 20:25

LynneTheseAreSexPeople · 25/10/2024 20:21

Which lovely EU country do you want to live in? Can your kids speak the language to get into the free higher education?

Show quote history

There are plenty of English speaking uni course across Europe. Thanks to Brexit they’d be classed as foreign students now so it’s out of the question.

EasternStandard · 25/10/2024 20:24

L1lyflower · 25/10/2024 19:24

We’d be off like a shot and living in one of the many lovely European countries we could have moved to pre Brexit. Our kids would probably be accessing free uni education in Europe too but that was taken away thanks to Brexit so we’re all trapped here. Yet another reason to hate the UK.

Show quote history

Where would you go and what jobs would you have?

Why didn’t you go earlier?

LynneTheseAreSexPeople · 25/10/2024 20:21

L1lyflower · 25/10/2024 19:24

We’d be off like a shot and living in one of the many lovely European countries we could have moved to pre Brexit. Our kids would probably be accessing free uni education in Europe too but that was taken away thanks to Brexit so we’re all trapped here. Yet another reason to hate the UK.

Show quote history

Which lovely EU country do you want to live in? Can your kids speak the language to get into the free higher education?

L1lyflower · 25/10/2024 19:24

SherbetSweeties · 25/10/2024 18:54

Your not unreasonable its funny how many people "hate" this country but are happy to live here and use the benefits we provide.

We’d be off like a shot and living in one of the many lovely European countries we could have moved to pre Brexit. Our kids would probably be accessing free uni education in Europe too but that was taken away thanks to Brexit so we’re all trapped here. Yet another reason to hate the UK.

PrincessAnne4Eva · 25/10/2024 18:55

@MrsBixbysMinkCoat I understand. It's very frustrating. Sometimes when people quote me and start having a go (or even misread my posts and pick apart something I didn't even say) I feel like I have to defend myself, but I try to just scroll past them without even reading once I clock their usernames.

SherbetSweeties · 25/10/2024 18:54

Your not unreasonable its funny how many people "hate" this country but are happy to live here and use the benefits we provide.

Original poster
MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 18:52

@PrincessAnne4Eva
It's the "Aha! Found a flaw! She's just thick" tone to the "Ignorant." "read some geography" posters. I can not abide the superciliousness.

OP posts:
PrincessAnne4Eva · 25/10/2024 18:34

MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 18:30

Typical bloody Mumsnet that in requesting a thread bigging up the UK I end up having to repeatedly defend my credentials - based on one throwaway line in my opening post - to a bunch of people who think attempting to pick holes in someone, whilst not bothering to read the full thread, is more important than actually discussing the issue raised.

And in fact we finally left East Africa after our car was stopped at a police checkpoint, all the children in the car were rounded up at the side of the road and held at gunpoint, whilst the police, who told me mother they had not been paid, stole the food shopping in the back of the car. My mother was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD. And I don't think that happens that often in the UK either....

Edited

It's mostly a few posters, not the majority. Why not just ignore them and carry on with the discussion that was going on? Lots of people have contributed things of value to this interesting discussion.

SabreIsMyFave · 25/10/2024 18:33

I am so glad that you have posted this @MrsBixbysMinkCoat I am 100% sick and tired of this too. I have to bite my tongue and not post on these Anti-British threads - as it will come out as a massive tirade. I genuinely find it so insulting and sickening when people bash the UK, and it's almost always people who were born here, and have a bloody good life here, and have benefitted massively from being part of this amazing country.

As you say - and you have articulated it and written it brilliantly - the UK, is hands down, one of the best places in the world to live. You get soooo many posters on here (and on Twitter sometimes too) berating and bashing the UK and moaning about what a 'shithole' it is, and how they hate it. And I just think 'well leave then! Go and live in Afghanistan or Dubai, see how that works out for ya! Or even America! See how much better your life is there!'

Upshot is, if you HATE this wonderful country so much, then pack your bags and leave. Go on, I'll help you!

It's almost always the same type of person too! The liberal left who bash any Government that's in power, who hate the Royal Family, and who call anyone who voted for Brexit, a 'thick racist.'

I know there are mixed opinions about Brexit, and quite honestly, even though I was never anti-Brexit, I half wish it had never happened some days! It doesn't help that as soon as we left the EU, the Covid pandemic occurred, so it gave us a distorted and inaccurate result of the result of Brexit. No-one will ever know the true effect of Brexit because the Covid pandemic skewed the results.

Anyway OP, 84% of people agree with you! (At this point in time.) So don't feel too blue. A few are bound to challenge your views. But as you can see, many MANY posters agree with you! Smile

.

SabreIsMyFave · 25/10/2024 18:33

MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 18:30

Typical bloody Mumsnet that in requesting a thread bigging up the UK I end up having to repeatedly defend my credentials - based on one throwaway line in my opening post - to a bunch of people who think attempting to pick holes in someone, whilst not bothering to read the full thread, is more important than actually discussing the issue raised.

And in fact we finally left East Africa after our car was stopped at a police checkpoint, all the children in the car were rounded up at the side of the road and held at gunpoint, whilst the police, who told me mother they had not been paid, stole the food shopping in the back of the car. My mother was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD. And I don't think that happens that often in the UK either....

Edited

Flowers 😘

Original poster
MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 18:30

Typical bloody Mumsnet that in requesting a thread bigging up the UK I end up having to repeatedly defend my credentials - based on one throwaway line in my opening post - to a bunch of people who think attempting to pick holes in someone, whilst not bothering to read the full thread, is more important than actually discussing the issue raised.

And in fact we finally left East Africa after our car was stopped at a police checkpoint, all the children in the car were rounded up at the side of the road and held at gunpoint, whilst the police, who told me mother they had not been paid, stole the food shopping in the back of the car. My mother was subsequently diagnosed with PTSD. And I don't think that happens that often in the UK either....

OP posts:
Original poster
MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 18:19

You were born and bred somewhere in Africa and have never seen a wild animal? Sure.
When I was a child in East Africa as I already explained in this thread if you had bothered to read it, we were not allowed outside of our garden on foot. This is because there were troublesome baboon troops roaming locally and they were very bold, possibly a bit like urban foxes in the UK. But bigger sharper canines. We also had to be very aware of snakes and scorpions and were not allowed to get out of the car when out in the countryside until my parent had done a "snake sweep". We also had to check every shoe for scorpions before we put them on, and when camping we had to use UV lights around the campsite of an evening to check for scorpions. We were not allowed to swim in any rivers or lakes except very fast flowing water, in case we got leeches or, more likely, bilharzia (which we actually did get). We had to walk with shoes on always to avoid chiggers in the toes.

Now you might argue that bilharzia snails and chiggers don't count as animals but they curtailed our freedom to just run around mindlessly.

We didn't have lions in our back yard or anything and I never claimed that was the case. Though we did get lions around our tent one night while camping...

Also where did I say Africa is only known for animals? To be honest I mentioned the animals because there was a strange juxtaposition in my childhood of theoretical freedom in an amazing landscape but actuality was, I had much more freedom to hop on a bike or go round to a friend's house on foot when I used to visit my grandmother in the UK. So I guess that is what sprang to mind. There is far more to the country I grew up in than animals - but I never said there wasn't.

OP posts:
Rorymyers · 25/10/2024 18:04

MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 14:24

I am so fed up with it. Nearly every day there is a thread about how awful the UK is. Today it's about how filthy we are compared to other places. A couple of days ago it was about how shyte it is here. Moaning about the NHS, weather, transport, about how Ukrainian refugees feel sorry for us, about bloody everything.

There are lots of things I dislike about Britain in 2024. However, this is still a beautiful country where the vast majority of people live peacefully. The very worst thing about this country is that we don't realise how bloody lucky we are. It's not too hot like Southern Europe (sunning yourself on a beach in 38 degrees might be lovely; working in a kitchen every day much less so), not too cold like Russia or part of Canada. We don't get hurricanes like the Southern US has just dealt with. We don't get floods on the scale of Bangladesh. We don't get earthquakes like Japan or Haiti. We don't have volcanoes like Iceland or Italy. We don't have poisonous snakes and spiders like Australia or India. We don't have wild animals stopping us roaming freely like Africa. We don't have drug cartels running things on a huge scale like parts of South America. Neither do we live under despotic rule like North Korea. We don't live in daily fear or famine like the horn of Africa or of war like the Middle East. Our women are reasonably free and not forced to live diminished lives like in Afghanistan.

We live in a generally benign Western democracy and yes times have been hard and yes some of that has been self inflicted - eg via Brexit - and yes we have struggled with leadership too removed from working class priorities. Yes there are knife crime issues and gangs in some of our cities and towns and I wish there weren't. But on balance in a global scale this is fucking paradise compared to many people's lives.

Please can we have a thread bigging up the UK instead of this constant, neverending, tone deaf whingeing, that really is one of the worst things about the British (and possibly, the English most specifically).

' We don't have wild animals stopping us roaming freely like Africa'

wild animals? Lol. Please be specific and name the specific countries you refer to because Africa is a whole continent OP and I've never seen a wild animal in my entire life and I was born and bred. It's 2024 surely this narrative that Africa is known for only animals is shallow and so 1920s. 😃

Original poster
MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 18:00

Rorymyers · 25/10/2024 17:53

Are you aware that Africa Is an entire continent with 54 countries?Read some geography will you?

Show quote history

Are YOU aware that mentioning the continent of Africa is allowed? Just like mentioning Asia or South America (another continent I mentioned in my OP) is allowed?

Are YOU aware that elsewhere in this thread I talk about how in fact I grew up in East Africa (which is also not a country, but I am not being more specific) and am in fact half African?

Feel a bit silly now?

OP posts:
Rorymyers · 25/10/2024 17:53

MrsBixbysMinkCoat · 25/10/2024 15:01

I can only assume you've never been to India or Africa?

Show quote history

Are you aware that Africa Is an entire continent with 54 countries?Read some geography will you?

EasternStandard · 25/10/2024 17:51

StaunchMomma · 25/10/2024 17:09

I've definitely seen a ramping in the last few months. The Starmer hate has been particularly OTT. It feels like managed smearing, rather than opinion giving.

Show quote history

I think you just didn’t notice the intensity of the same for the last gov, to the point anyone not joining in got lambasted

SweetcornSoup · 25/10/2024 17:47

I love our coastline, forests, lakes, weather (mild), and our relative freedom to live our lives the way we want to.