To think our towns and cities are just so run down lately, and our standard of living has decreased significantly?

Thanks. My knowledge comes from a family member who was sent on back to work schemes after being out of work for a while. They were bright and did want to work, but found age and being out of work for a while raising kids went against them.

Poundland and other retailers who participated said they didn't use unpaid workers to replace recruiting employed staff, but I'm not so sure on that one.

The family member who told me about it said it was put to her on the premise there could be employment at the end of it, but that was rare given the retailer could just rely on another cohort coming through.

To be fair I'm glad to read that's stopped now.

I get the feeling that whilst wealthy places or those with lots of tourists are still fine, the rest aren't.

We live in one of the nicest parts, tiny, parts of South East London and it's as nicas and lovely in the 90s. However, elsewhere is still grim or getting grimmer.

Been to York and Oxford, and again both seem fine in the center. Last time I went to Manchester I was quite taken aback by how much worse it has got over the last few years. It's very depressing.

I do feel embarrassed when our European friends come over, fine our part is ok, central London is sort of fine but wouldn't want them to go to that many other places as it does get pretty grim, pretty quickly.

@CrispEater2000 I’m horrified it was ever ‘brought in’. - where’s the incentive to recruit if you can just get folks for free- and how can you actually be looking for paid work whilst working elsewhere? Don’t apologise, bloody hard to keep up and some of the press only emphasise stuff that fits their agenda.

Not nonsense but it does look like the scheme has been scrapped since my knowledge of it, see my previous post, I do apologise for not keeping up to date with policy on that one.

I think the real issue is widening inequality in our society. At the same time as our population has aged, the wealthiest have become incredibly wealthy. One of the reasons people are not having children is because they feel they can’t afford it. Perhaps the issue is not so much that there are more older people, but that more and more assets are concentrated in fewer hands, leaving most of us to scrap over the crumbs.

I don’t agree that the private sector is by definition better at running businesses. I don’t think the public sector was worse at running water companies than the private sector have turned out to be. I don’t recall there being poo in our rivers when I was a child. Some things should not be privatised, and I think basic state infrastructure is one of those things.

OK so it does look like the scheme was stopped and made voluntary after this legal claim. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/feb/12/graduate-poundland-government-work-schemes

So while the person received benefits, technically not working for "free", Poundland (and other companies) were receiving free staffing.

While I'm not against people doing something useful to continue to receive benefits, in the right circumstances, it should be for the benefit of local communities and not private companies.

Yes, letting billionaires and hugely profitable corporations off the hook is hollowing out national wealth and that of the middle classes.

Honestly I used up think it a bit 'turkeys voting for Christmas' someone like me being anticapitalist but now it's just starting to seem sensible. DH and I are still doing OK kind of despite the system but our kids' future is screwed unless things change massively.

I was in central London recently and thought how clean and smart it was compared to Bristol where we have littering, rubbish, potholes, unkept and scrufft green spaces / trees. Outside of the town - more littering and fly tipping is quite normal

More dog shit in London though..

i barely went out when we had to wear masks as I found them so uncomfortable to deal with as my glasses were always misting up. By the time I started venturing out more again the high st decline was in full swing.
Everything has felt harder work - things needed prebooking, everything is going cashless, you can’t browse shops in the way you could when I was a teen as there are hardly any shops to browse now so feels like a wasted effort to wander around town.

Completely agree. Masks were hideous for those with glasses, so I just didn’t go out/use the shops. And now they say it was pointless anyway. Great.

And all spontaneity vanished. I can’t just decide to go swimming - I have to prebook online and if I try to just walk up the cashiers look at me like I have two heads. I can’t just go to a restaurant and be assured of getting a table if one is free - often you have to pre book and half the time I then have to order using my phone.

I’m hard of hearing, so trying to understand cashiers behind Perspex is a nightmare, so I just feel unwelcome and unhappy. That’s if there’s a cashier at all - often I’m in a shop desperately trying to figure out the self service till (which I’m ok with in a supermarket but in a clothes shop I inevitably can’t find the security tags or just can’t get the damn things off anyway).

We are fortunate to still have decent shops/a good range, but it’s so stressful to deal with as an experience, I’d rather peacefully shop online and have it sent to me.

Unless it’s books. Those shops are still nice and have real tills with people at them. I’ll spend half a day in those.

The biggest jump has been since Covid lockdowns. There was a trickle towards things been less good before then but Covid really let the deluge free.

I think having those few years where people went out less pushed more people to shop online and the increase in rates the shops have had to pay means they aren’t affordable to keep open.

I barely went out when we had to wear masks as I found them so uncomfortable to deal with as my glasses were always misting up. By the time I started venturing out more again the high st decline was in full swing.

Everything has felt harder work - things needed prebooking, everything is going cashless, you can’t browse shops in the way you could when I was a teen as there are hardly any shops to browse now so feels like a wasted effort to wander around town.

I think the biggest problem was cost of living coming right on the back of Covid restrictions ending. Brexit was done at a really bad time as it was done at the end of Covid where the whole world had changed at once. We had too many changes in one go and still finding our way through.

But it has such lovely things and so much potential. Last time I went there was a café in the Glass pavilion by the Opera house. Beautiful structure, but the café was a very desultory canteen-type one. In that setting, they could go full Georgian and do lovely afternoon teas and things. Surely it would be a money spinner?

@TempestTost I don’t want cheap food - so maybe ‘not all’ - I want good quality food and am not wealthy but I meal plan well and don’t buy snacks or junk as no kids at home anymore

@taxguru don’t you remember Johnson going on about ‘curry chefs’ - clearly doesn’t realise curry is a recipe - absolutely any nationality can make it - will blow his mind to realise I can make some fantastic curry’s and pasta dishes!!

@CrispEater2000 I missed that one- where did you get that nonsense from?

No they don’t ! There’s nothing s no such scheme that forces people to work for free

I agree. Even working in a kebab shop entitles an immigrant to come and work here. Fair enough for immigration for skilled/professional roles where we have shortages, such as doctors and nurses, but we really don't need to import people to work in kebab shops!

https://x.com/StevenEdginton/status/1899817030234091891

We could never have afforded the necessary new trains over the past 2/3 decades without privatisation. Our train stock was antiquated and non compliant with disabillity laws and non compliant with waste laws and non compliant with H&S laws, so basically the entire stock of coaches needed to be replaced. The only way to afford that was private sector finance as nearly everything on the railways today is leased. Every single coach costs tens of millions. The taxpayer could never have funded that.

I don't shop online because it's cheap. I shop online because it's quick and convenient, because there's far more choice, because I don't enjoy shopping and don't have time to do it, and because it's an hour and a half's drive to a city with a big range of shops.

Fully legal immigration IS the problem.

A very small minority of legal immigration is for shortage occupations. Unless you think we have a shortage of takeaway shop managers and IT body shop developers. It's a complete joke to get in, you can walk in and everyone outside the UK targets it knowing it's so easy to get in and there are no caps.

Ask me how I know! Signed, an immigrant.

PS: from next year the massive spike of people who came in after the relaxation of the rules post-Brexit (thanks Boris) will all be eligible for ILR and therefore benefits, so even they won't have to bother being care workers any more. Perhaps they will spend their newfound free time on volunteering for the village litter picking club though so that'll solve OP's issue :)

The difficult thing is that I think most of us are very implicated in it all. We all shop online for the cheapest deals. We all want cheap food. Many of us spend quite a lot on cheap consumables with no lasting value. That doesn't just represent our money, people somewhere are using their time and energy to make that crap, or get rid of that crap, instead of doing something useful.

It's exactly that. People making a huge profit providing public services. And councils still need staff and lawyers to manage all the contracts so not much money is actually saved.

Plus a huge explosion in people needing very expensive support.
So the SEN education cost is up hugely, supported living and social care up hugely, so councils have to hack all over costs to the bone. So maintenance of highways, playgrounds etc is cut (but that leads to more claims so is a false economy), public services like libraries and bus services are cut.

Massive devastating cuts but the bill keeps rising because there are lots of businesses out there creaming profits from providing "public services"

Yes the private sector did a fantastic job of running the railways didn’t it. And it’s still doing a fantastic job of the water industry. Our rivers have never been cleaner and less polluted.

Being boring and going back to when we lived in Copenhagen - we used to come back to UK every 5 weeks for work stuff and the contrast hit us every time. You simply didn’t see the amount of feral families and I don’t think I ever saw litter in the way it is here. Most kids were in very nice and very cheap day care from about 10 months and both parents worked but less hours - we used to say the UK felt like the Wild West in comparison-

It doesn’t seem to be allowed to state that in many places that plenty of us live we have a predominantly white population - but still have the same issues- this is because whilst immigration may have issues with regard to social things like housing, education etc - the overall couldn’t give a shit attitude is across all colours and creeds

The American Candy shops are fronts for drug money-laundering. That's well known and they get shut down regularly.