AIBU to ask what is happening in Middlesbrough at the moment?

Japan is a different culture entirely and has high levels of social etiquette with meaning enfolded into everything, you can’t just import one desirable trait here without looking g at the context.

@SomeoneIsWrongOnTheInternet
I never said it could be imported and neither can the culture that exists in Japan and Korea of not mugging people or dropping litter or shoplifting.
Do you think there is anything that could be done to stop the serious drug problem in UK?

Thatcher was reacting to global economic forces and the shambles of the 70s. Mines would have closed regardless of her - as they did throughout the 70s. The steel industry would still be gone whether she was PM or not. It is not economic to make steel in the UK.

Thatcher had a massive impact that is still ongoing and there’s nothing wrong with remembering the origins and causes, you can’t adddress them fully without it.

The post I was responding to was massively simplistic and yes, childish.

What's needed is to make prison much harder. Forced labour. Only speak when you are spoken to. Only allowed to talk to other prisoners during one hour's recreation in the evening. Everything done at the double.

Industry and mining was in decline long before Thatcher. More mines were closed before her than during her tenure.

People are crying out for decent tradesmen, there's a shortage of skilled/qualified engineers, motor mechanics, lorry drivers, etc. We may not have the mass low skill manual work in mines and factories of pre 1970s, but there's still a need for people who can make and do things. Trouble is that when they scrapped the grammar/sec mod system, they thought that everyone was suitable for an academic education, then we had the ridiculous scrapping of Poly's and adult education with the aim of 50% going to Uni - again, obsession with academic education.

The problem is so huge it needs such investment to undo.

Yes we need more doing trades and that needs to start at 12/13/14yo before we lose children because they feel like they aren’t worth it due ti not being academic (meaning exams aren’t where they shine)

Then we need to sort out uni. Spending years and get into 10’s of £1000’s pound debt to get a job. Jobs don’t pay enough because of paying back student loans, cost of housing etc. so it puts people off from even getting started.

Then there’s the low pay but just over the replacement threshold of jobs requiring a degree. The ones that come to mind that are essential for society are nurses, doctors and teachers.

We need someone brave who will rip up the rule book and start all over again.

@itsgettingweird

We need someone brave who will rip up the rule book and start all over again.

I've said this so many times on so many different thread topics. Constantly tinkering around the edges is just moving deckchairs on the Titanic and gets the country nowhere. Whether it's the economy, unemployment, education, NHS, police, councils, or whatever - nothing works anymore and throwing more money without radical reform won't solve anything.

Where will the money come from?

The first stop is law. Effective law. Policing and law is under-invested - like everything else in this rundown country. It has been very deliberately done. And prisons. No more crying that there is no money in a country with so much of it.

The second and bigger problem is to present an alternative way of life. A real, genuinely real alternative. For people on the bottom who have nothing, so many people in power live in a very different world. Everything has to be genuinely accessible to those who have nothing, who now own nothing more than the clothes on their back thanks to Landlording. And this is problematic, tying into questions of how we are going to live in future in an age of globalism, of computers, of over production. I can’t give you a simple quick answer on Mumsnet in 3 short words!

You can look at simpler starting methods, which again involve investment - training needs to be free again, wages need to pay again, we need to rebuild an economy where ordinary working people can buy goods produced locally. Trades too, as others say.

But wider economic change is a challenge in the technological age. We may need lower populations with more living on the land as we did in the 1930s and accept that ‘economics of scale’ are often directly harmful to societies. I’d like to see a reversal of the whole principles of globalisation and more emphasis once again on local production and local resilience. People have written entire libraries on this topic so I’m not going to be able to provide a road map here, but it would now take some unpicking after 30 years of shifts the other way. Accept national boundaries developed for a reason and the one world system is doomed to failure for various reasons both economic and cultural.

Cultural change is more problematic still than economic. We also need to stop the influx of American-led shit culture, violent movies films and music which glorify gangsta culture. Accept that that is a problem. Somehow reduce the impact of the internet - fortunately it does seem to be its own downfall in a lot of ways.

Unpick the ridiculous system that has led to all the wealth of the world tied up in a very few men and leaves the rest of us trading debt. As I said no more crying that there is no money. There’s loads. It’s the distribution that is the problem.

Rebuild the economy, unpick culture and completely change the global trading system. Oh and reinvigorate local democracy. Simple, no?? Pick somewhere and start sweeping. Britain always says nothing can be done because problems are too large.

They only get larger when they’re left. As we see.

@SomeoneIsWrongOnTheInternet
Thank you for answering my question at length. You make a lot of good points and I agree about violent movies films and music which glorify gangsta culture, and reducing the impact of the internet.
Though how this can be done without a dictatorship - right or left - I don’t know.

Where will the money come from?

I won't vote Green whilst they have this unholy alliance with Islamists, plus an open door migrant policy. They are the only party suggesting anything close to what PP have suggested. Plus I think they will tax the old out of their homes and take their state pension away, replacing it with UBI, which would mean we have worked for nothing.

As I said there is plenty of money in this country. Neoliberalism has enabled it all to accrue in a few places. The number of billionaires has gone through the roof.

There’s only one answer - tax the rich. Get the Royal Family to pay their taxes, and take it from the aristos. Contrary to one recent report which all started as marketing from a wealth management agency, that kind of wealth does not pick up and leave, you can’t pack up hundreds of acres.

Alternatively we need to rethink the globalised financial system entirely and refound it on resources. Either way the right wing and super rich won’t like it. They’ve had everything their own way for 50 odd years and their grip will be hard to unpick as they have used it to buy power. But that is where the money is, it has been systematically removed from the public coffers for 50 odd years, and now we need it back. It exists. Take it back in the way it was taken from us in the first place. Nationalise services, give housing back into the control of local government, and the money will recirculate to the public purse instead of the billionaires.

I believe they will just go after the better off and not the rich. A levelling down.

It’s true, there’s a problem with Greens and Labour both (I’ve tried joining both in the past). Politicians are not representative of real public interest in this country. I keep in touch with the Equality Trust, but the lack of good statesmen is a problem.

Sadly I agree. Too many politicians seem to be in the pockets of the real rich who have too much power/influence.

There’s only one answer - tax the rich. Get the Royal Family to pay their taxes, and take it from the aristos.

@SomeoneIsWrongOnTheInternet
Why just them? What about other rich people like the Beckhams or Gary Lineker?
Also, there’s nothing to stop the ‘aristos’ from selling up and moving abroad. As you say, you can’t pack up hundreds of acres but you can sell them. I should think for quite a few it would be a relief.

What I don't get is why so many of these groups are such nasty little cunts. I mean they burned a child in her home?
Even the younger ones, I've soon footage of them swaggering down a street smashing windows and cars. An ordinary, working-class street as well.

I come from a country that is ranked Least Developed, there is serious, absolute poverty there and I have NEVER witnessed that kind of antisocial behaviour - if a group of teens walzed around destroying people's meagre possessions, they'd get beaten in the street by the men.

Whereas here, schools, medical care, homes and food are all provided and they just act like total psychopaths?

They’ve discounted a connection with the house fire.

Two people still arrested for it though. I can understand, sort of, gang related killings, but with a child in the house?!

Agreed.

Nothing will ever be enough.

Just as the low living standards (to the point of population starvation) were the proof that communism structurally doesn't work... I'm rather afraid that this is the unravelling of the democratic socialism we've had for the past 70 years.

I can see actually see a route to the type of future written about in dystopian novels like Neal Stephenson's, where nation states cease to be a unifying power, and instead specific interest groups create their own collectives - managing taxes, security etc.

It's a far less efficient structure than high-trust nation states, but if national cohesion fails to the point that a high-trust social contract is no longer viable, then it's a natural progression.

If you look at South Africa that's a good example of where it's already happening - there are special interest groups that are building their own towns, universities etc now.
One rung below, there is a massive private security industry, private healthcare etc. Basically, as more and more of the state fails, it's propped up by the vastly more efficient private businesses.

The state's role is now predominantly to provide very basic, failing services to people too poor to pay for anything privately, give these people tiny amounts of welfare payments, hinder private business with bizarre racial quotas, tax what they can, and loot most of the tax takings. They're also currently trying to hijack the private health provision.

I think that's how it starts: with people grouping together around a common identity and providing for themselves the services the state no longer provides.

I suppose the question is: at what point does the interest group become (militarily?) powerful enough to stop the state from taking significant amounts despite providing no benefit to the group?

The interesting one in this context is security: at what point does a group decide that paying for their own protection against these kind of low-lifes is more effective than continuing to pay them off in ever-increasing benefits and misappropriated 'investment'?

I know that gated communities are very common in South Africa.

Probably a lot more quickly in countries where the population tends to be armed, at a guess!

Good point!

Perhaps we should take note of the current suggestion to disarm farmers in the UK (despite the recognised need for farmers to have guns for pest-control)

www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/5e652a5b110098ca