Is it too late to turn the uk around?

That's exactly the small minded, pessimistic thinking that is holding this country back. It's like we're afraid of big infrastructure projects.

Meant to say huge in the post above!!!

Definitely a major concern!! We have a lot of Victorian infrastructure still in use. Another hugh concern is how AI uses a massive amount of water.

Then you probably need to get off SM.
Because in the real world, the vast majority of people aren't planning on leaving the UK.
We have concerns. Cost of living is high. Affordable housing is in short supply. Schools and the NHS leave much to be desired. It's tough times.
However, for most of us, our lives, homes, families and jobs are here. Very few of us have the sort of skill set that would be snapped up 'somewhere better' fewer of us still know any language other than our own.
So in the main, here we will stay, plodding on, complaining from our armchairs about what should change. Just as we've always done.

Our aging leaky pipes are something which are more of a significant problem tbh.

We do have an abundance of rain, but we are not saving enough of it as we haven’t built any new reservoirs in over three decades, but the UK population has increased and our water consumption has increased significantly.

I am around the same age as you, but I think you remember things with your rose tinted glasses. I hadn’t been abroad before I was 12 and it certainly wasn’t common to have 2 -3 holidays a year unless your family was very affluent of course.
I also view especially the 90s with a sort of nostalgia, but I also think it was because I was actually young and not in my 50s like I am now and had a great time.

You want Scotland in the South and Cornwall in the North? Yes, it's many millennia too late.

Are you serious. Comparing disability to not taking making the effort to learn the language of the country you choose to move to.

this is why people are turned off by woke. Because wokery leads to ridiculousness like this.

It's insane to propose desalination plants when we have and will continue to have (although at different times) an abundance of this free shit called 'rain' due to living in this thing called 'an island'

If we were a continental nation maybe a different approach would be appropriate however since the mechanics of the water cycle and geographical features are not going to change even with climate change, I'm inclined to say reservoirs are difficult to beat as a solution for the UK.

No, BSL interpretation is required due to a disability, being deaf isn’t something you can do anything about. Not being able to speak the language of the nation you live in is a choice, not a disability.

Oh I didn't realise deaf people could learn to hear

🙄

The UK does this but uses very little. It’s incredibly expensive, uses vast amounts of energy and has a huge environmental impact.

Do you feel the same about sign language?

I agree with everything you say, @StarDolphins. I was born in the 70's, child of the 80's and a teen in the 90's. It was a great time to be alive. It makes me sad that my own teen isn't growing up in a world like mine was. I'm approaching 50 now, and though I can pay my bills, I certainly have to be careful with money, whereas I remember my dad (who earned considerably less, even taking into account inflation) being comfortable enough to afford 2 or 3 holidays abroad each year at my age. Life just isn't what I thought it would be. Many of us are living just to work, too exhausted or poor to enjoy what little time we have at home.

But why do we need to pay for interpreting services? , especially for people who live here. As a previous poster said it’s not usually the case in most European countries. We spend around £75 million a year, that’s a huge amount that could be used elsewhere. If we don’t provide these free services then there is more of an incentive for people who do settle here to learn our language. I can’t imagine living in France if I wasn’t able to speak basic French.

We don’t desperately need more immigrants, that’s nonsense, what we need is a government that manages the economy well, focuses on growth and investment, and create a society where young people are able to settle down and have children. The birth rate is decreasing at a frightening speed, young people are struggling with stagnant wages, unemployment, huge student debt, shortages of affordable rented accommodation and unaffordable house prices. I’m in my early 60’s and my generation and my parents generation had it good. Affordable property, free university education, good pensions, rising house prices, families could manage on a single wage. That’s all gone now. I just heard on the radio that many graduates are still not earning the living wage five years after graduating. I have no idea how we can rebalance all this, but bringing more people here from abroad (unless they are highly skilled and educated) isn’t the answer.

Definitely!!! Like George Orwell’s 1984!!

James Bond's Quantum of Solace had great foresight!

But fiction is so often built on reality.

I agree with your post!! Without water, which every living things needs to survive, we will all die.

It’s not going back to where it was, but it can be much better than it is.

Need some radical economic policies that will get growth. We need a government who have a vision and see a big picture and who don’t focus group everything and end up watered down.

Make it easy to hire and fire but make benefits high on a sliding scale based on what you have paid in NI. Control the triple lock, slash out of work benefits for ling term unemployed. Reform planning, review natural england to stop bat tunnels etc.

How many times has Reform been mentioned now when it's a Labour government in power? That's the problem though, instead of looking at the here and now, it's always looking back to the Tories or what would happen under Reform. 3 more years OP to turn the country back round? No chance. More of the same if Burnham wins Makefield.

It’s not hard to put in some RO desalination plants along the shoreline. We don’t need to have reservoirs of fresh water when we are surrounded by ocean.

It all comes down to the Economy, and our ability to create and sustain economic growth, as an Independent nation .. and that, as the past 10 years has shown us, is spectacularly hard.

Poverty sits at the route of lots of Division, Reform focus on the division, not the cause of the division, as they were the one campaigning for Brexit, and making (unfounded) claims as to what life would be like afterwards.

We lost our biggest trading partner overnight, and (as was warned at the time) it will take generations to sort this out.

We also have a predominately right-wing media, who enjoy stoking division, firstly because they want a government that protect the personal wealth of the super-rich, and bad news sells papers. Lies are amplified by uncontrolled Social Media, and peoples unwillingness to spend more than a nano-second researching any issues, means that lies become truths.

Since leaving Europe our economic resilience has dropped. For example, we had Economic Growth in early 2026 (hurray), then it all went to pot in the Middle East (thanks Donald) so we take a hit.

Until the Economy gets under control, and we have sustained growth, that we can use within Education, healthcare etc, we are a bit stuck

We need to get rid of the Triple Lock on Pensions, it’s crippling us, and we have a Demographic that can’t support it.

We have not had pretty much any big infrastructure building in well over thirty years.

The Blair/Brown government tried to get around borrowing by fudging it with PFI. PFI loaded the deck against the country for twentyfive years by providing what we needed at extortionate prices which crippled us for those 25 years. It was talked about at the time but no one wanted to listen. I read some of these proposal documents as part of my job and they were shocking.

We are now starting to come out the back of that and because we didn't invest and spend wisely on these big projects we face an infrastructure crisis over the coming years.

People saying the Blair years were the best fail to understand how they were set up on the back of these appalling decisions. They benefitted in the short term but the lack of accountability back then is now coming back to haunt us. As was predicted.