AIBU to feel life in the UK has worsened since Covid?

People on over 100K are not moaning about the tax they pay because they are bad with money, it’s because their tax rate effectively goes to 60% due to loss of personal allowance. Additionally any child care help which they are funding through their high taxes gets cut, along with losing all child benefit etc. has nothing to do with being bad with money, has to do with working hard and having to give away half your salary to fund others lifestyles who often don’t work or are having their child care funded when actually being over 100k you just lose it. You seem to live a very sheltered life without considering the bigger picture

Been gradually getting worse, in many ways, for longer than that. A generation or so ago, parents didn't both need to work FT when the kids were small. Social media/smartphones have increased hate and bullying. From a very diverse area/family, and lived different places, and never saw hate or tension before.

Wow.

There we are then.

Brexit and COVID both happened in 2020, yet you're dismissing Brexit as a casual factor in UK economics? Huh.

Home working is good for my mental health not having to factor in a commute and being able to do laundry on lunchbreak is so helpful! And I catch far fewer colds in winter avoiding public transport and save on commuting cost too

YANBU. I think my biggest woryy is young people and no jobs and the ticking timebomb of an ageing population. My ds graduates year and I'm hugely worried for him. Young people massive student debts and poor chances of getting work.
I'm sick of shoplifters, kids on bikes raoming around with masks and balaclavas on. I fear we are drifting into a lawless society.

Again people have children to pay for, your posts are really ignorant. People had a better quality of life 8 years ago and are now struggling, those with children who are now young adults are struggling trying to support them. I’d be really well off if my wage was just for me

Brexit has caused a massive issue with the economy. I say that as someone who has a degree in international economics. The only people that did well out of Brexit were people playing the markets.

The people who earn double what you earn and moaning probably have to keep multiply children which is why they’re not as well off as you think they should be

The wars and covid should have impacted every country in the world equally.

Of course there are indeed negative consequences worldwide, but if you think it's especially bad in the UK then the one thing the UK did to itself that no other country did was indeed Brexit...

So either Brexit is partly to blame, or your post is about the state of the world, not specifically the UK...

If people don’t have children there will be nobody to pay your state pension in years to come, no nurses or doctors to care for you when you’re old, etc etc. obviously it’s fine to choose not to have children, but everyone depends on the next generation existing, including those who don’t have children, such as yourself.

That’s the case across the whole world, with very few exceptions (such as Lisbon and New York, both of which are going through a post-Covid mini golden age, IMO).

Basically, all the shit that people on MN endlessly moan about is absolutely not unique to the UK. Far from it.

And the worst culprit was that shining beacon of integrity and truth, the prime minister. He certainly didn’t care about the greater good. The only thing he cared about was Boris Johnson.

No cancelled trains at all. Some delays but none more than 15 minutes.
No elbowing. No louts. No tinny music - I saw posters telling people to use earphones and that's all I saw, never any noise from them.

I imagine if you're the sort of person who calls complete strangers liars you tend to look for the negative side of life.

I don’t believe you. You will also have had many many many many many cancelled trains, rude elbowing louts, been unable to find staff to ask questions of, and had to listen to blaring crap music on tinny phone speakers. I travel around Britain all the time for work, and in london à huge amount. It’s taken a nose dive. Fact.

It’s not about being bad with money.

it’s about begrudging paying over 50% of my wages in tax and NI every month.

Why don’t you try handing over 50% of your earnings to the government and see how that makes you feel?

I’m not on £100k plus but the cliff edge including no tax free childcare would put me working over that. It’s is very poor policy stopping people working more.

I think things are much worse in the past five years, yes. I loathe that shoplifters have made it that you can’t get out of some supermarkets without a receipt and a turnstile, and there a big signs everywhere about shoplifting. I also loathe that there are barely any staff in supermarkets, it’s all self service. The human elenment to life feels massively compromised. Cyclists now cycle through red lights and on the pavement, being a pedestrian is less e joyanle and safe, an elderly lady killed on a crossing near me, she wasn’t fast enough, a car just mowed her down and didn’t stop. It’s horrible, even the park is full of Entitled groups playing their music loudly so that it’s not a peaceful retreat. Quality of life has plummeted.

I agree with a lot of what you've said. One thing I've noticed since Covid is a distinct decline in the services that you phone. You are lucky if you get to speak to an actual person nowadays. You just get directed to their website and FAQ (which NEVER has the answer to your question) or their chat service,which is run by robots who never understand what you are asking. A couple of days ago I asked a chatbot on Uber Eats 'How do I change the delivery address on my app?'. It came back 'Sorry,I don't understand the question'. FFS. How much plainer can I make it?! Bring back human beings!

So you don’t mind your water bills (a basic necessity) going up (exploited) to pay dividends to already very wealthy people (who aren’t even working to earn that money) and making you poorer?

You can't blame Labour really. They're trying to fix the mess after 14 years of a Conservative government, Covid and Brexit, all of which led to declines in physical and mental health, a huge growth in the wealth gap, decline in education provision and the growth of racism and misogyny.