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?!

@MarshaBradyo You are not being truthful.
2010 NHS was independently assessed as the best healthcare in the world. It has not fallen so spectacularly in 12 years because of demographics. It has fallen spectacularly because it is a deliberate policy of the Conservative government who wants to asset strip the NHS to the highest bidder. They already did this with utilities and transport. They want to do it with the NHS.

Why do you think rail transport is in such a mess? Or utilities can not be capped and are suffering from massive under investment? It is because a previous Conservative government sold them off cheaply and those services are run to make the most money for shareholders. Not to give a good service and invest for the future.

If the NHS is also asset stripped healthcare will only get worse for everyone except the well off.

At the moment, UK public health spending is the equivalent of about 7% of GDP, similar to what it was back in 2010 and higher than in previous years. Back in 1955, it was worth about 3% of GDP.

This is the main issue whoever is in power. Labour will have to fund a NHS which was created, and was a very good model, when health spending wasn’t at such a high demand due to demographics.

If you can't see the similarities between the lack of democracy and the USSR and the ambitions of Germany then you need to re-educate yourself

Can you educate us s to the similarities @Tygger ?

@MarshaBradyo If you know that, you also know in the last few years government healthcare spending has been distorted by spending on covid.
The government spent a lot on covid from covid testing, to business payments where the government was widely defrauded. We are still paying for covid.

But on the grounds spending in health care has fallen. And even percentage of GDP spent on that broad category healthcare has fallen in 2021 since spending on covid has been falling.

Talking about 1955 is irrelevant. We did not even have antibiotics widely available in 1955. Look at Call the Midwives when in many cases when people were really ill the only treatment was to care for them and pray.

As the saying goes there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Anyone who has had anything to with the NHS knows spending has fallen in real terms. Admin cut so appointment notification is chaos. Bed numbers cut in hospitals. Mental health cut.

But people still need healthcare so things like people being sectioned ends up with people sent to expensive private health care. Private healthcare is costing the NHS a fortune.

The conservatives are purposely destroying the NHS.

My family have a genetic disease that is progressive and has flare ups. I know we got more under Labour. Physio was given at a lower level of criteria, incontinence pads were given free at a lower level of need, 1-1 nursing treatment given instead of groups with 1 nurse running it.

You can try and pull the wool over the eyes of people who rarely use the NHS. Frequent users see the truth for themselves.

It seems Labour’s main plan so far is to use removing non dom status £3.2bn

The spend overall is £257.6 billion so won’t add much. People who claim non dom are easily welcomed in other countries and have more options than most, so I guess we’ll see if they hang around.

The issue is we have a 20th C model for 21st C demographics. Even Wes Streeting used this line recently. People are slowly waking up to and talking about the issue - even if some claim when the NHS was created as irrelevant.

@MarshaBradyo So what century were we living in when the NHS was independently assessed to be the nest healthcare system in the world?

In a decade when we had PFI available - and we’re still paying

That £50bn would be more useful now - we’re ageing as a population.

I’d take the £50nn over £3bn ish that’s going to be scraped around for and probably won’t materialise, easy choice.

It's so bad now that it doesn't matter anymore whether you are rich or poor, as money can't buy you the really important stuff in the UK. We have private health insurance, but there is no private ambulance, so even rich people now die if they have a stroke or heart attack or car accident because it takes hours/days for an ambulance to arrive. Even with money, we can't buy a police officer to come out when we get burgled, and crime is just not getting investigated anymore. Money doesn't get you a passport or drivers licence quicker, and even your first class flight/train gets regularly cancelled. And it's not fun driving a fancy car over all those potholed streets. Every rich person here is driving a 4x4 out of necessity as roads are sooo bad. It's obviously a great privilege being rich, but the quality of life even for wealthy people in the UK is very low compare to other European countries, and even wealthy people now fear for their lives in case of illness or accidents.

@MarshaBradyo People are not driving 4x4 out of necessity. That is not true.

Certainly, it all started with good intentions, power to the people etc and ended up with brutal dictatorships, be careful what you wish for when you traduce our democratic vote e.g. decision to leave the EUSSR.
You may also like to study the unification and rise of Germany under Bismarck and how the Russian revolution went wrong.

Exactly. I love the freedoms I have in the EU. The UK is the most watched Country in the World. Performance rating among the G20, UK lies in 19th position, with only Russia below it

This is just waffle. I was asking for specific examples, but never mind.

Yes and it cannot be all put down to putin. not even mostly. Fortunatley for me I have a 'summer house' in Scandinavia where i am at the moment. It's minus 11 outside and the heating is at 21 day and night. Has been since November. No price increase here at all for the last 5 years. No government bailout either. We just have renewable energy and a good biofuel crop this year has kept the price steady. It's going up 10% in January but that amounts to less than £10 per month for us so it's easily manageable. Government recommendation is to keep house at 21 this year as opposed to previous years at 23 to save energy. Food prices are noticeably dropping here now also, though food is still more expensive than the UK. If I didn't have family in the UK I would never ever choose to live there over the alternative here it's dire.

When I left a long time ago now people were cheerful, courteous, open and now I am struck at how ridged, impatient and miserable people, and in fact, places are. Generally speaking, people and the place seems down in the dumps, forgotten, neglected. I think that's what I miss most about the old times. When talking to people was easy enjoyable and warm - something the Scandis could never compete with the Brits on - it seems lost now unfortunately.

I do have optimism that it'll come back though but we need to be honest with ourselves that we cannot go back we need to be different and dare I say more european to be prosperous.

People are now wondering if the tens of thousands of fighting-age men that have been landing on the Kent beaches for many months with a Government/Police/RLNI taxi-service instead of resistance, are actually United Nations mercenaries who will all suddenly appear on our streets in blue helmets when a coup becomes able to be maintained
Suddenly it all makes sense

deliberate policy of the Conservative government who wants to asset strip the NHS to the highest bidder

This has been repeated so often over the last few years, and you know what? Nothing has yet happened to date. Privitisation of the NHS has not happened, and will not happen, under any party. It's a red herring. Let's start to be grown up, and have a proper conversation on reforming the NHS with a modern model of shared state and private provision underwritten by a shared state and private insurance model.

Oh and by and the by...... the NHS bought millions of pounds worth of private care during Covid, which was never used. Now THAT is a scandal. They could have cleared thousands of orthopeadic cases, like other countries managed to do with a more flexible system.

For the person who mentioned the French get payments to help with energy costs from the government at the moment - so do we in the UK. Everyone is getting £66 a month from November to March.

Embarrassingly (because I am a low energy user and fairly comfortably off) as a result I am paying less per month for my energy than I was five years ago ina cheap fixed tariff.

I think they are,
people are all driving big heavy 4x4s because the big heavy 4x4s are carving up the roads and making them too dangerous for normal cars
soon the big heavy 4x4s will make the roads unnavigable for 4x4s too

I don't get why your going on about this 50bn?

IF Labour hadn't had PFI, then Govt borrowing & repayments would now be even higher OR if they didn't build new hospitals, then where would we be now?

Its not an either or, Thatcher was spending around 4% on NHS, by 1997 Labour had to do something, they were tied to the fiscal rules for a couple of years then started funding NHS, both pay and the estate.

But where i do agree is demographics and Labour aren't being honest, i see their FB posts and they will not be able to increase staff, without making the profession more attractive e'g' pay, even then training will take many years to get significantly more nurses etc., we also do not have EU people coming here now and Labour wont change that.

It took Blair 8 years before public satisfaction scores on the NHS improved & he had significantly more money and a relatively small national debt, we ve also had 12 years of austerity, UK in so much worse position that 1997, i really don't know how the NHS can improve.

@helford It is to fuel the lie that Labour are really to blame for the fact that in 2010 the NHS was indepently assessed as the best health system, in the world, and over the last 12 years the conservatives have wrecked it.

Tell me where in the UK roads are only navigable by 4x4?

This is getting ridiculous.

France increased energy prices from 4% and 14% including business, UK increase almost doubled including the help.

Which ends next April, new cap is £3300 and support only for those on UC, so millions more will not afford to heat their homes and good alone knows what that will for inflation as business will either go bust or pass on rises :(

So we will have gone from £1200 cap to £3300 in a year.

Good that you are on a cheap FR deal, not available to the poorest on key meters and not the norm for most now.

It's pretty bad round my way the roads are strewn with them you can barely get through
parked up all over the pavements, massive vehicles everywhere it's appalling
So many people too lazy to walk a mile or two

It got dragged out as a poster tagged nearly every post.

Are you for the system then? If a government can only improve what we have by landing future generations with excessive costs then it’s not sustainable.

Paying now is even harder than then.

Anyway Labour will be in soon so we’ll see if they can do it without Blair’s system.