Does the UK suck?

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So I have been watching Channel 4 New Life in the Sun.

And it has really been an eye opener.

It made me think...does the UK actually suck? And we are too institutionalised/subject to propaganda to realise?

Here are the reasons the UK sucks:

1. Weather sucks and the country looks dark and grey all the time


2. Roads are narrow, unpleasant to use, and crowded everywhere


3. Houses are small and full of mould everywhere you look. There is nothing romantic about the Cotswolds: it's ancient peasant housing that should be knocked down


4. People look pale and miserable


5. NHS only useful when you reach 65+


6. Rate of tax is astronomically high (I am two years into a graduate job pays marginal tax is 60%)


7. There is crime and general decrepitude everywhere you look


8. Idiots in charge of the country with no critical thinking ability


9. National caste system as a derivative of Norman invaders


10. Opportunities for young people suck because they can't earn enough to buy houses to offers stable family life


11. Low-level drug dealing in every city/town/village if you know what to look out for


12. Private school now astronomically expensive


13. Every business transaction is in some way a scam in the UK. Low-level scamming each other is the basis of the British economy


14. Legacy of colonialism, sexism, institutional racism, caste system derived from royals. It's basically just awful.

What do you think?

Most daily mail readers are but they are kind of the opposite of the OP. They are the 'Britain is the greatest country in the world' but we need to sort out the riff raff' type.

Countries like Korea and Japan have pretty low crime rates. So its not just the justice system. Lots of factors cause crime; but I would say an individualistic society (and where many fall between the holes of our social safety net) like ours does increase crime because a lot of families do not support their weaker members and hence they turn to crime, including family in the extended sense of the word i.e. aunts cousins uncles. This also means that British people have more compassion for the underprivileged as we know that for many poor people, they have no support from wider family from age 18 and are at the mercy of the state which has limited resources. I am trying to help my mentally ill friend who is v self- destructive and she has been living at the homes of various friends as her father is not very helpful. In my home country, i wouldn't have spent as much mental energy as I have as i would assume her family would help her.

I think one of the things I don’t like in the UK (or England as I haven’t lived in other UK countries) is its general sloppiness and don’t care about the detail mindset, in that it’s dirty, buses and trains can be filthy, it’s yobbish and there’s little pride in the ‘kerb’ appeal of the country as a whole. I lived for a while in a country that is very clean and efficient with very little yob or vandal factor (buses stops clean, not damaged or graffitied etc). I’d would move back there but it’s totally unrealistic given family ties and finances. It wasn’t perfect (nowhere is) but it was close.

I think it depends where you live in UK - some places are depressing but most have something to offer - there are housing issues and they are getting worse - there are polltical issues some building up and we do seem to be in an era with dire options and I don't think everything is well in the main stream media - however despte that I think on the whole the UK is pretty good part of the world to live.

I do get a bit fed up of all the running down of the UK - I think it's equally as unhelpful as the it's the best on the world stuff (which is really odd thing US has) - it doesn't help focus on the issues there are or are coming up - it's just depressing and causes people to feel helpless rather than empowered to demand change or action.

Pretty much spot on OP and that's why I'm in no hurry to return!

Do you think your posh-ness has exceeded UK limits op?

I ask because the expense of private schools and peasant housing in the Cotswolds are at the luxury end of first world problems.

Lovely pictures @BarbaraofSeville

Another reason to love the UK - something like 80% of all the bluebells in the world grow right here.

Nothing more magical in the world than woodland carpeted with bluebells.

Goodness OP, you’re awfully grand. I wish I needed to worry about paying 60% tax on my meagre earnings 😳 Or feel panic because private education is so expensive. Surely your high income must protect you from some of the things us plebs are forced to endure? If you don’t like your big house in the Cotswolds why not move to somewhere you like better?

I don’t understand your scam comments either. Who are you scamming and why?

Perhaps you'd be better off living elsewhere if it's so shit in this country. I mean, why would you want to stay. Just make sure you kiss your kids every morning if you move to the US and watch out for those co-pay bills !.

That's the polite version.

Fab pics @BarbaraofSeville
My friend emigrated to Texas and is desperate to move back to the uk. She asks me to send her similar pictures as where she lives is so dry and hot that she misses being out in the fresh air.
Similar to my friend who moved to Dubai. She loves it when it rains here.

The standard of written and spoken English in this country, despite an education system which forces children to stay at school until they are 16 or 18, is certainly approaching a state of shit, if posts on Mumsnet are anything to go by.

Having just comeback from 19 months in Copenhagen, Britain does suck in many ways, not all by a long way, but at the moment it is sucking for many people who aren't in the top 10% of earners far more than it should due to a corrupt government who are constantly campaigning/bribing their voter base, are totally devoid of ideas and certainly not actually governing for all. I do partly agree with the OPs point on low level scamming far too much dodgy business going on . Looking at it from an objective point of view post Brexit- I wouldn't invest here as opposed to other places , especially as post Brexit exporting of any kind is now a total pain in the arse- it's a backward thinking place at the moment trying to hang on to its appeal to a particular small minded voter base(imperial measurements etc- what next, pounds, shillings and pence! ) On the plus side, it has some nice scenery, people can take the piss out themselves and humour and culture are good and in relation to other places apart from housing (which is ludicrous prices both buying and renting anywhere many people would actually pick as a nice place to live) , it isn't that expensive and tax is relatively low (although if you add in National insurance and council tax as a tax too, you don't get much for it )!!! Denmarks tax is 46% but no NI, no council tax and childcare is a third of the UKs.

I do get annoyed at the comments about floods, famine, gun crime, excessive heat etc- and how UK is lucky in that respect -as they usually are comparing with US, Australia, South Africa etc. Maybe compare with Germany, Eire, Austria Netherlands, France, Sweden , Spain and Denmark etc -- there is no denying standards in most of these places are higher as are peoples expectations - I think if many of us could take our friends and family (the ones we like) plus similar work or better - then far more would actually leave the UK

From where I live, people in UK seem very lucky. Probably no country in the world is perfect and politicians are mostly rotten and prices are rising everywhere but many countries have no benefit system to prevent the worst consequnces. And however strange it sounds I envy you your weather. I hate heatwaves and droughts that are becoming more common in the south of Europe and I hate resultant forest fires even more. Your country looks green and fresh even in August and, on the other hand, your cities do not top world and Europe pollution lists in winter (pollution is obviously our own fault, but still...)

Exactly but for some reason, we voted to stop ourselves, our children and our children's children moving easily to anywhere in Europe or even going there to study.

Aside, Just found out some specialist glue i need is sold out in the UK, plenty in Europe but as its over £135, can't find anyone who will ship.... talk about going back to the 1970s :( and all because some tw@t saw it as a means to power)

@Alexandra2001 I 100% agree-- we have come back not because the Uk is better because lifestyle wise it isn't- but because it was getting really expensive to see family and friends and was taking all the cash that would normally be for holidays-.that made it feel a bit isolating -my H also needed to come back to UK every 4 weeks for 4 days at a time workwise - in last 2 years flight prices have doubled and frequency halved- something we hadn't factored in!!!

Agree. They need to live somewhere else to appreciate what they have in the UK.
Gun crime in where I live and work is insane. People bring their guns to work in the states. Some offices have signs saying they are a "gun free workspace".
Traffic accidents are too common in the rest of the world. It is much safer to walk around in London than NYC/Paris / Johannesburg.
Abortion right in the UK.
Mixed race relationship everywhere in London.
No real segregation like you see in the States. The housing association system in the US is enforcing segregation.

You must be earning an absolute fortune if your paying 60% tax
If you're so unhappy here why don't you piss off to China or Noeth Korea or even Russia?
Pretty sure they would give you a rousing welcome 😉😉

Childcare a third of that in the UK.

My friends recently moved back to Denmark, after 12yr in the UK. They are both higher rate earners with two kids. What do their taxes give them? No help in childcare. High house prices. Their childcare bill is £4k+ a month, for a bog standard nursery in London zone 2. When one DC is ill, one has to take time off. Can't go to nursery. The DC are 1 and 3. We just lost two high earners in the UK. The jobs are moving with them.

DH's ex employer is setting up a subsidiary in Italy, to take advantage of the tax relief in Italy.
Another friend has moved to Italy with her DH for the same reason. Childcare cost is high in Italy but taxes under this scheme are lower than the UK.

The slightly higher earner bashing rhetoric has to stop. The financial industry does contribute a lot to the UK.

All being well I'm emigrating in a few months (not to the US) and ironically this is a large part of the reason why. There are lots of things I love about the UK, but last summer I went on holiday abroad for the first time since 2019 and while I was away I realised how nice it felt to be around people who were generally optimistic, excited to tell me about their country and not constantly sniping about politics. I realised when I returned that I was never likely to get out of the low-grade funk I've been stuck in since the pandemic if I was around people who are constantly moanng about how shit everything is. I don't mean to suggest that no-one has legitimate complaints about the UK, there are things I'd like to see improved for sure, but the living standards where I'm going are objectively lower and yet everyone seems much happier. It does seem like people here drag each other down sometimes.

Luckily I only see this on mn so day to day it’s fine. People are happy and positive.

Mn is the opposite though. Plus I have reduced general media engagement which is good.

It does suck, yes. Nothing works. The only point on your list I would disagree with is the greyness. The rain gives us a shitload of plant growth, which is useful and beautiful. I would emigrate if I didn't have so many ties here.

I only really see the specific 'Britain is a third world country' stuff on here, but I do think there's a lot of low-level everyday grumbling in real life too. As an example, in the country I'm moving to I boarded an international flight that got delayed on the tarmac for an unspecified reason, so we all had to get off with no idea of how long we'd have to wait. Everyone took this completely in stride and cheerfully headed off to get food, and it wa so striking not to be surrounded by people performative sighing and eye-rolling and going on about how 'bloody typical' it was. It sounds like such a trivial example in isolation but when you experience a lot of small setbacks like this it definitely adds up! I used not to mind people complaining here (it's always been our national sport, after all) but I feel like in the last couple of years it's got a lot worse.

Speak for yourself OP. I love the UK. I have lived in 4 different countries on 3 different continents as well so plenty to compare it to. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure other countries are nice as well but home is where the heart is.

I read all the doom and gloom on Mn but that is not my experience at all.

I don’t know why but people are nice where I am. If rl was anywhere near mn level of negativity or even the constant complaining you mention I’d be out of here too.

I’m intrigued where you’re going but you don’t have to say..

There's bad and good in every country. So the UK does suck but also is lovely in other ways.

A balanced-ish scale.