Uk totally messed up - is anything good?

The didn't start with Covid and Ukraine though...it started with Cameron/Osborne and their failed Austerity policy. They deliberately cut public services to the bone for ideological reasons and don't give a toss because none of the use them. You think anyone in Government needs an NHS dentist? Or public transport?

is their anything that’s better? Michelle Mone's property portfolio.

The Conservatives have spent the last ten years deliberately and systematically running this country into the ground, decimating public services and increasing the gap between rich and poor.

I am struggling to comprehend your “we lent it to ourselves” theory. So you don’t agree that QE is inflationary? Maybe we should just keep on printing more and more money. History will tell you that it doesn’t work but hey-ho.

Yep.

The queues for that new dentist surgery in Bristol said it all. One guy interviewed described it as Soviet Britain.

Britain is declining into a third world country. I’ve got a friend from China. They have bullet trains everywhere. Meanwhile we don’t even have trains anymore in the north of England. Stephenson’s Rocket here we come.

I've just driven to work along roads that are actually breaking up, massive holes in them, seen next to no buses, past biarded upshops, listening to the radio while they talk about fsm children growing up in households where the combined income is less than 7k, and about the desperation of people queuing in the streets to access basic dental care.

Utterly shocking.

I think this thread is starting to show some of the reasons why this was allowed to happen...

-Passivity. Any other country would have seen mass strikes and protest and forced a general election at this stage. Instead we have allowed criminal politicians to drag us into poverty while making themselves and their mates richer and this was done with the help of a large part of the right wing media.

-Reluctance to accept the blindingly obvious: that the combination of Brexit and a series of inept and corrupt Tory governments have almost destroyed everything in this country.

At this point to refuse to accept the impact of Brexit or to repeat the tired, old line that no other party could do better is absolute stupidity.

We have the wrong incentives for the population. Time to overhaul the benefits system, invest in people and bring professionals with better payment and conditions. The NHS was a good idea after wars but times have changed. It is unsustainable with people living longer and mass immigration. Time to unite and stop thinking that the government must give us more and more. Plus, that believe or idealistic view that we have a debt with other countries and need to take huge numbers when we do not have the house in order. However, I find that the people who make the point about how broke the country are often the same ones that want more people to move here with lower skills and deny the fact that we are getting lots of criminals in the process. How much are we paying for police in the Pro- Palestine marches? Millions for police forces when our streets are full of criminals. It is not our war and we cannot really influence or stop it.

The U.K. is still one of the best places to live in the world, although I accept things have been better there in relatively recent times.

We (and most of western europe) are entering the later stages of managed decline.

It will get worse as the government steals more of our stuff to pay the ever increasing interest on the ever increasing debt. Currently £112bn or 9.7% of all government spending goes on interest repayments. Last year the goverment borrowed £119bn extra.

No political party is going to address the issue as any attempted fix would be deeply unpopular so they will just ignore the problem and carry on borrowing until we go bust.

I blame BoJo. First Brexit lies. Second, he picked up Rishi as the youngest chancellor in the British history because BoJo knew he could get naive and overexcited Rishi to overspend on Covid. When everything started going wrong BoJo decided he needs a little distraction abroad. The Russians only attempted the regime change because the Americans were pushing for Ukraine to join Nato. (I wonder how the Americans would have reacted if the Russians tried to set up their bases on the Mexican territory). Biden knew he overstepped the mark and was proceeding very cautiously. However BoJo couldn't get the Churchill image out of his head. Now we are all paying for his ambitions while he is collecting millions of pounds a year giving little dinner talks

We'll have to agree to disagree OP. I don't share your views on economic theory.

@Meadowfinch has it. It’s not just Brexit. It’s all the things mentioned in the above post. Things always ebb and flow. Right now is particularly difficult for many people, we can only see what comes next.

I think most people realise that covid has to be paid for (in every country). UK plc can't stop production for 2 years and then expect the treasury to be over-flowing. We always knew this was going to be an austere period.

Most people realise that having a war mongering idiot in Russia impacts food & gas prices (in all countries) making life more costly again.

Brexit was the result of a national vote, No matter what you or I think of the outcome, we are a democracy and I have to accept that.

We will have an election and the electorate will give their verdict on the management of the last 5 years. Gradually things will get better as we come out of the cycle.

You have to keep looking forwards and upwards. Getting stressed about it hampers my ability to cope.

I think most people know but weirdly just accept it.