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?!

Yes. The healthcare system isn't functional - we don't really have an ambulance service atm. children are being sent away from A&E and dying. We have drug shortages, frequent food shortages, the mail ist operating, the trains aren't running, the busses aren't runnin in my area, wages are super low and energy bills are through the roof. They are talking of blackouts through the winter. Schools are underfunded and some are talking of moving to 4 day weeks. Food banks are being used by those with professional jobs - nurses, teachers etc.

I don't know how much of this is due to the massive overreaction to covid, how much is due to Brexit, how much due to years of Tory austerity or how much is due to our aging population but I do know that the future is looking very bleak.

It's probably 100 x worse than you can even imagine. It's actually scary, and I'm determined my kids wil emigrate Im ensuring they will have the skills and careers to do so.
We are totally fucked here.

@underneaththeash In real terms wages are much higher in Switzerland. You can't divorce wages and prices. So in some poor countries food prices are really low, but so are wages.

It's like the 70's with greater inequality and more malaise.

Yes, exactly. I can't believe how well things are organised in Germany, whereas it's just proper shit in the UK. It's really sad. Taxes are way too high for this sort of return. My sister lives in Germany, and it seems like different world. Healthcare, social security, sick pay, maternity pay, pensions etc.

Paramilitary activity has increased in NI.

Yes.
I am lucky enough to be able to manage during the cost of living crisis, but the state of the NHS really frightens me. We're all only an accident/ illness away from desperately needing an ambulance that we can be almost sure won't come.

It's AWFUL. So far we have been lucky and not fallen seriously ill but I dread someone I love needing NHS care and it just not being there.

I did used to feel proud of my country, decades ago as a naive teen. Not jingoistic but just a general sense that it was a fair place to live, with wonderful universal healthcare, good schools and little extreme poverty. I thought people in the UK had a decent chance at a good life.

After the past 12 years all that is gone and the Tories should be ASHAMED (but I imagine are too busy counting their off-shore wealth to care).

Out of interest is it UK news reports you're reading or are other countries reporting on our difficult times?
And yes it's pretty doom and gloom here at the moment!

As long as you are financially very comfortable and don’t need the NHS then its fine!

A few years ago I would have said we are financially comfortable. Able to pay for some heathcare if needed but now things are financially tight. In our area we are able to get emergency appointments for DD on the day, not necessarily at our GP. Paediatric referrals are taking months. I had to call 999 for my youngest in the summer for breathing issues, they said she needed and ambulance but they didn’t have any and drive her myself while monitoring her breathing.

Yes the massive inequality, pressure on food banks, basic shortages in shops (no eggs apart from designer ones for weeks in my local big supermarket), local bus services massively cut so even less opportunity and social mobility and now the new thing ‘warm banks’ where the local library allows people to come and sit there so they don’t die of cold alone. it’s absolutely terrifying, the Tories have absolutely ruined this country since 2010. Brexit makes us so vulnerable and nobody in power will admit it.

We're a household of two professionals, no kids, so not a demographic one would expect to be affected heavily by economic downturn. However:

• there's pretty much no chance we'll be able to buy a home of our own, as prices keep rising and lending is tightened
• there are bidding wars for rentals in London so I'm constantly paranoid about our landlady selling up (we have negotiated the same rent for at least another year, as she owns our flat outright and is sympathetic to the COL issues happening all over)
• colleagues of mine with mortgages are seeing significant rises in monthly costs, sometimes hundreds - this is something that's happened with rent renewals consistently over the past few years and now homeowners are starting to experience it too. People can't downsize/sell homes because there's nobody there to buy them.
• I've been unable to get prescriptions filled on several occasions over the past few weeks, because the medicine just isn't there to be ordered in - I'm anticipating potentially having to come off one of my medications in the next few months just because neither it nor the alternatives are available. I was on a waiting list for three years to be seen before this medication was prescribed in the first place.
• went to A+E following advice from 111 GP a few months ago, was there for eight hours
• my mum had a heart attack and they couldn't send an ambulance - my sister had to come round in a taxi and take her herself, meaning she didn;'t get seen for ten hours because it wasn't booked in the right way
• the prices of food I buy regularly has gone up significantly - my home-made lunch costs twice as much as it used to
• two of our local swimming pools have closed because there are maintenance issues which the council can't afford to sort out
• it's 8c in our flat right now but I don't want to put the heating on during the day (we don't have central heating)
• I find myself not wanting to spend money on things unless I really really need to, which of course starts to have an effect on the economy as a whole
• I have a holiday booked for next year - which is something I'd wanted to do for a very long time and have taken on extra work etc. to afford, because it's been a hard year and I wanted to just make this happen - and the same trip would now cost double what it did when I booked it in March - fuel price rises mean travel and commuting is much more expensive.

One does wonder what the point is when, essentially, people can just about afford essentials and none of the other stuff that makes living life, well, living.

IKR especially from a party that were mainly educated at ETON.

They make me sick.

It’s pretty dire and it’s only going to get worse.
we’re getting screwed by everyone .

It’s not great, no. Some people are ok, just about. If you earn a fairly good wage, have low levels of debt and good health, it’s still possible to be avoiding feeling the worst effects of it. But things definitely feel precarious - like if you got ill or had an accident, or the car had an unexpected problem, or you lost your job, there’d be precious little help coming.

I live in a nice little village in an area with some very well-off people, and some who are not - we have a village community shop now, selling food at a big discount, and the neighbouring village has set up a warm space in its village hall. I know some of the families at my son’s school are struggling. The school itself is having a lot of trouble accessing fund to meet my son’s SEND support needs. Getting a GP appointment is a massive challenge, because the surgery is snowed under. A lot of rural poverty is hidden, but it’s still there.

It will be exponentially worse in a less well-off area. My sister and brother-in-law are having a terrible time at the moment, after he lost his job. None of us can afford to bail them out. It’s really tough for them.

I mean, those things are true but I haven't actually seen any difference to my life really.
Half the population are wealthier and half are poorer.

No not in day to day life for most people. Prices for food especially are up as are energy but so are they across Europe. Theres strikes but again they don't affect everyone, certainly no difference around here because we don't have a train line, buses aren't on strike, my DD's lecturers aren't on strike either.

This doesn't make good newspaper headlines though

I haven't seen a huge difference to my life - I still have a job, I can still go to the supermarket and buy what I need without having to keep a running total in my head - but things are starting to break down in little ways all the time and every so often I come across it in my everyday life and it really does make me feel like things are fucked and all we can do is just...accept the slow decline of everything.

Yes in some ways but some areas are worse than others. You can get an ambulance and hospital bed in my area. Food, energy etc have risen and fuel though we just walk more so fuel isn't costing more for us. I cook from scratch and can make home made soups etc with in season veg so that has been mitigated a bit plus the government have put caps etc on energy though it's still expensive. I say all this and hear a lot about cost of living crisis but every weekend when I leave work I see cocktail bars that charge £12 a drink full, restaurants full, pubs full etc so some people still have money. I also see new cars, people booking holidays etc but maybe people are accruing debt not sure.

Food inflation not quite as bad as Germany or the EU - inflation based on the Consumer Price Index 10% in Germany compared to 9.6% in the UK.

www.destatis.de/EN/Press/2022/12/PE22_529_611.html

www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/bulletins/consumerpriceinflation/latest

this graph is from May so a bit old!

www.thegrocer.co.uk/fmcg-prices-and-promotions/uk-food-inflation-vs-the-rest-of-the-world-how-britain-compares/669057.article

this is a really interesting and unexpected video about US versus UK costs!

energy price according to this not as bad as France/Germany, but still pretty high:

www.bloomberg.com/graphics/europe-energy-crisis-updates/?leadSource=uverify%20wall

NHS very terrible at the mo, and I'm not sure what it's like in other countries.

Shocking neglect from our government for years has led us to this. Covid gave them the opportunity to raid the public purse for their own pockets so they jumped at the chance

Yes it is bad. The country is poorer and much of it self inflicted.

The usual thing applies, if you have money and assets then okay, won't notice. But lots of people are falling into poverty. Next year is going to be even grimmer.

Can't stand the Tories I should add but I'm also in a past life an economist and most of the current issues are due to things outside of the governments control. Not defending their record pre covid i want to stress!!!! But in this case they are struggling with external factors

Food prices which were always low compared to elsewhere in Europe, are up about 12%.

Heating/power is up about 150% on last year.

Mortgage rate has risen by about 2.5% so housing costs are rising significantly. Some people are seeing an extra £750 a month on payments.

We have a staffing shortage which means people costs are rising and there are public sector strikes.

And the NHS is struggling to recover after two years of covid. GPs and nurses are retiring or leaving.

It's not great. Having said that, Black Friday sales were the highest ever recorded, so some people still have plenty of money.