Are things in the UK as bad as it sounds in the news?

[Lolobella]

I left the UK in 2017 and now live in Europe. I obviously still follow the UK news closely and visit, although I have no family left there.

In the last few months the UK news have become increasingly grim and concerning. I can't tell if it is just the news painting the country in a worse light than necessary, or if things are genuinely as bad as the news make it sound.

Obviously this is a tough historical moment for many countries, but the doom and gloom in UK news is just on another level and makes if sound like the country is in free fall. Poverty, strikes, crazy energy prices, failing NHS and public services.. Is it really so bad?!

@HardRock It's not just fruit picking. That is one example.

I don't want anyone to be on a low wage. I want the government to make all these jobs much higher paid, and for people to actually live comfortably

But that won’t happen because it sounds like the employees don’t want to pay those higher wages. The government can only do so much.

@dollytot and I believe anyone willing to put in the work should be paid fairly for it. Regardless of where they're from or how they got here. They're contributing to society and should benefit from what we can offer them too.

*employers

A visa in the UK costs £7000- 10,000 if you include 5 years of visa, paying for NHS and also citizenship fees. You can't get any benefits until you get ILR and most do opt for citizenship. In the past pre Brexit spouses/family members of eu nationals paid a small £65 fee but this was also a reciprocal arrangement, British nationals don't pay any fees when settling in EU countries Asylum seekers don't pay such high fees due to the UK's humanitarian obligations. The majority of migrants however do pay the fees (including the Hongkongers). The thing about the UK is that once you get a long term visa here i.e. work visa or spouse visa, it's pretty much a done deal you will get indefinite leave to remain etc. Other countries have a tiered system in terms of visas but we don't.
So if you are a migrant from a poor country who married a British woman on minimum wage (nowadays due to raise in minimum wage, many of them can now sponsor foreign spouse as the 18k threshold has never been adjusted for inflation), you would be able to get indefinite leave to remain in 5 years. 5 years isn't a terribly long time to stay married. And once they have obtained indefinite leave to remain, they are eligible for every benefit under the sun. The NHS could probably be restricted to long term residents but at the same time, this would probably cause more problems to British people than actual foreigners given that many don't have passports.

The home office has definitely tried it's best to make sure migrants 'pay their way'. This however does not reduce immigration in itself. English is commonly learned and relatively easy to master. Our labour market is relatively easy to enter as a foreigner; I was on a UK spouses group and many of their spouses got a job within a week of arriving even with limited English. I have a friend whose partner failed to find a job after several months of living in Germany but got a job in the UK within a week of arriving here, he is now a HGV driver. I doubt he has any formal educational qualifications at all. During the pandemic there was a huge shortage of hgv drivers and they commanded high wages. It was said that a lot of British young people didn't want to work in such jobs despite the high pay because they found it boring. So it's not just the pay.

@HardRock

The difference it seems is that the UK offers free dentist, Doctor etc. So, if people are entitled to those services for free then why should they pay for them?

I have no words for this.

The problem with increasing the minimum wage without increasing productivity and output is that it increases inflation. Which ultimately hurts the poor. It's a delicate balance.

I am all for people having more disposable income but we have to ensure that it isn't counterproductive. Too much money chasing too few goods would mean demand pull inflation when we already have a problem with supply push inflation. I think universal basic income might be a better move. We could means test it so that only the bottom half get it. The world is changing as well.as the definition of work. A significant of Gen Zers have said they don't wish to work (something like more than 10%!) . I do indeed have a sister in law who is 24 and writes online. She lives at home and has no wish to get a conventional job..even if you increased minimum wage to £20 an hour and made it possible for her to get free training to do a regular job, she wouldn't do it. She would rather follow her passion, set her hours and live with mum while doing it. It's a different mindset. I don't really blame them on some level.

metro.co.uk/2022/12/07/one-in-10-young-people-dont-plan-on-working-in-their-lives-17896441/

Given 10% of young people don't want to work, I guess we need to get people from other places to replace them.

2012 the Olympics we were the best country in the world and then Brexit and all the rest now the a sick,dying country riffing off past glories with a political class in denial and up to their necks peddling lies. Shit in our rivers, a collapsing health service, a virtual general strike ,failing infrastructure and education and a Ponzi scheme of ever unaffordable housing.

If you're young and can get out whilst you can.

No serious country allows Johnson and Truss to get to the highest offices of state because that is what we are and I douby even the forthcoming Starmer/Labour landslide can do much except expose the depth of the hole we are in.

I agree with every word.

I have much hope for Starmer/Labour though. I think we've all forgotten what decent politicians, who want to serve the country, are actually capable of achieving.

Well said. It feels like a different country to 2012. It was so positive then.

The UK has always been like this, just the era of easy money masking all the underlying issues

Blame the government all u want but they are a reflection of the British people, who seem fundamentally unserious about the economy and just think you can tax the rich to fund everything.

So just how is the present government taxing the rich?

It’s just the commonly proposed solution to Britain’s problems on MN. Which is not a solution at all, just economic cannibalism

This is the people who need benefits cut. No benefits if you simply don't want to work.

In 2012 we probably hadn't quite felt the effects of the 2008 banking fail. We bailed them out remember. We also were probably still feeling the +++ easy wealth making years of 2000 onwards when the tech boom took place. 2008 marked the end of that imv.

“I caveat all of the above by saying that I don't have to worry about bills, am mortgage free and have private health insurance so am insulated from most of the things people are complaining about.”

so you are not affected at all. Trying finding the money for £200 extra a month energy bills, £100 month mortgage, having to pay private for a dentist for the whole family, cannot get a GP appointment for the next three weeks. Do you live in some isolated bubble somewhere that is really missing the point of this thread. Just carry on voting Tory paying minimal taxes.

Let me preface this by saying I’m quite middle class and live in a bubble, before anyone comes at me. I’m just giving my experience. But life hasn’t changed that much apart from things just getting more expensive. We can absorb it though, as we always had money left at the end of the month - we’re going out less, I shop at Shein instead of H&M/Zara and have turned down the heating from 20 to 18. But I personally haven’t seen the abject dire situation painted in the Daily Mail, apart from the NHS which has ALWAYS been abysmal as far as I can remember. They’ve never been interested in trying to get to the root cause of my IBS, just sent me out with leaflets or peppermint tablets or “don’t eat citrus fruit”.

I went to Oxford Street recently and it was more heaving than I’ve ever seen it, restaurants and bars packed, everyone I know booking holidays. My commuter town is also absolutely rammed, everyone has multiple dogs and babies and all coffee shops full. The only person I know not using heating earns really good money, way more than me but basically begrudges putting it on at the current prices because “you don’t need it, why pay it”.

We’re lucky as we’re both in professional jobs but live in a cheap ex-council property with a 5 year fixed mortgage, it would definitely be worse if we were due to remortgage and I’d be very worried about that.

Our bill went up from £100 to £184 (with the £66 rebate included) so £84 increase isn’t great but it’s affordable, thankfully. I must say I don’t really sympathise with the “I live in a 6 bed detached Victorian house and it’s SO hard to heat” - you must be pretty rich to afford one of those, and surely you knew it was hard to heat when you bought it! We bought a modern ex-council property partly because I wanted something easy to heat with a better EPC.

It doesn’t matter whether you sympathise or not, the fact is it is part of the overall picture of things getting difficult just like people in small efficient houses with less money freezing is.

Just throwing one more thing into the mix which is important to many of us in Scotland: we have no legal way out of this now. We are repeatedly stuck with an increasingly right wing Conservative government very few Scots vote for, who dragged us out of the EU against our will, damages our industries by refusing the negotiate different immigration rules via NI numbers (hospitality is really suffering), reneged on promises to deliver additional devolved powers and is now busily pretending those promises were never made. The rises in energy prices hit those in the far north more than anyone else (check out the temperatures in Braemar right now).
Even worse, the UK government and even Labour is now treating Scots like naughty children who need to be disciplined, rather than listening respectfully to our concerns and working out compromises wherever possible. They like waving the union jack around, but their commitment to do what it takes to make our union a happy and successful one just isn't there. The sense of powerlessness is enraging.

This is a very inflammatory headline given we don’t know exactly what they were asked. One of the answers said they ‘stated they don’t think they will ever be able to achieve their career ambitions.’ The 10% figure included prison leavers. It’s entirely possible they were asked some variation of ‘do you expect to get a job’ in which case them answering no doesn’t mean they don’t want to, it means they feel hopeless and believe no one will hire them, which is the general tone of the article.

If we can liken a political union to marriage, it's like saying that a woman who has been badly treated by her spouse for upwards of a decade must stay 'married' to him because she once believed a pack of lies that he would change his ways, and treat her with more respect. And that's not anti-English, that's anti Westminster.

The difference between 2012 and now is how much social media has grown. We are now all digesting doom and gloom 24/7 from rolling new sites, Twitter, Facebook, sites like MN.

Even Barry from the pub who in 2012 would have been dismissed as a fruit loop because no one listened to Barry, but now he has an audience from like minded individuals from all over the globe who agree with his flat earth view and he's got such a strong opinion of immigration, the NHS, the government and their failings, his views get shared time and again as fact.

Joe Lycett uploads spoofs and they get shared time and again as fact. Others copycat and it worries folk who think it's real. They search to see if fake photos, spoofs and these lies are true and fall down rabbit holes of warped views presented as fact. Full stop. No other view welcome here.

Years ago we would have got our news from a daily newspaper and the 6 o'clock news which would report the NHS is on its knees and inflation is rising or mortgage rates have hit 9% and then we would go out into our local town where everyone would be going about their business in a normal manner.

I'm as much a sucker for social media as the next person, but can remember the days before I woke up and went straight to Twitter, Facebook, MN. It weren't that long ago!