Has the UK changed that much in 5 years?

[Faraway100]

As the title asks really. My husband and I currently live in Singapore and are debating whether to extend his contract here for another two years or move back to the UK.

We would love to be back near our families, however it seems like the UK is very much doom and gloom at the moment. Obviously when we come back we are in vacation mode and thoroughly enjoy ourselves but I wonder if we are a bit blind to the realities.

Has the pandemic, healthcare crisis and rising inflation fundamentally changed how the UK (specifically England) “feels” on a day to day basis? And even if we stayed abroad for another two years would anything change anyways? Hopefully someone understands what I’m getting at 😬

I can’t ask family as both sets of parents are retired and a bit insulated for everything and our friends and siblings would catch on to why we are asking right away!

It's conspiracy theory bollocks, written by someone with the same mentality as the idiots vandalising phone masts because 5G gives you covid.

One thing that is striking about UK vs Singapore is that feeling of downward mobility. UK is actually moderately egalitarian in the sense that very average or even lower income earners expect to be able to move out at 18, rent a decent room somewhere, save up and buy a house with garden by the time they are ready to settle down, all while working in a job that doesn't require professional qualifications and also have access to free healthcare. This is not wrong as this has been the experience of their parents or even grandparents. And if they are low income, they expect the council to house them. this kind of system is falling apart a bit as the country has undeniably gotten poorer and this has fed into lack of funding for public services, NHS as well as stagnating wages. Wealth & Generational inequality has also meant that private landlords have bought up 20% of the housing stock and we don't build enough houses due to the complex planning system.

Singapore is radically different. The people who OP mixes with would predominantly be expats and professional Singaporeans aka not average people in the street. So they would not experience the same problems. And even if OP encounters young singaporeans (who do experience relatively high housing prices compared to their parents like all young people in developed countries), the difference is that they are still entitled to buy subsidized government flats(89% of them still do even if the waiting lists are long) and anyway the culture is to live with parents until marriage and until one manages to buy a flat. So they would still have relatively high disposable income given that they live with parents and there is also no associated stigma. Divorce is far less common as well and most families are dual income. Also given proximity to poorer countries, the childcare is cheaper and more available. However, while these are the advantages singapore has, most singaporeans do not expect the same things that British people expect if they are on a modest income. They are expected to save for their healthcare (even if there are subsidises and compulsory insurance), to live with parents until they can buy a flat (with subsidies), to postpone children until they are financially settled (hence the low birth rate), to save 36% of their income (compulsory) and some more on top of it.

All these ensure that many singaporeans are in a good position when there is a global crisis and so OP would not hear so much complaining from her local colleagues (and her expat colleagues would be in a favourable position anyway). There are foreign workers on low wages and i do sympathize with their plight, but they do come from very poor countries and therefore i guess have no other point of comparison. I am not saying that British people can do anymore to insulate themselves, i think its very very hard in the existing system, but there are reasons why the UK can feel quite crap, but then i don't think there is a basis for fair comparison when the set up in both countries is so different.

Thank you Thetiles and Calisto. Then I hope the OP discounts the post I quoted from in favour of all the sensible helpful posts on here.

Where i am ambulance waits are far longer, if it comes at all. Train and bus strikes. Post often takes 2 weeks to arrive. Teacher strikes and shortages. Tuition fees are the highest in the world now and an academic child who wishes to go to uni, but doesn't have affluent parents is saddled with far more debt than they used to have. Nurse/doctor/tradesmen/hospitality staff shortages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_Entitlement

https://www.motorist.sg/coe-results

https://www.oto.com.sg/new-cars/mercedes-benz

My dad bought a mercedes benz, think it was around $200,000 sgd which works out to £116k. Forgot the model, but it does look like this https://www.oto.com.sg/new-cars/mercedes-benz/b-class

if COE is so expensive, you don't waste it on a ford focus

How is it tin hat stuff? It is all singaporeans know and 1 in 4 singaporean households still own a car, they have much higher incomes than in the UK. My dad actually supports the system, he says it keeps the riff raff off the roads and fewer traffic jams. LOL.

@Twillow

Plus you can only keep the car for 10 years. Once it's 10 years old you can apply for another 5 year certificate for it (and pay for that) but after that 5 years is up, that's it...

Do not come back. Especially if you have or plan children.

Schools are full of behaviour management, very little education. And the education is just to pass the memory test at the end.

Streets aren't cleaned, don't have bins, are full of potholes, fly tipping everywhere as you have to pay to use the dump.

Everyone is angry, miserable, self entitled. Open drug use and drinking in the street.

You can't see a GP, ambulance waits are hours, A&E waits are more than a day.

The price of food, petrol and heating will take any spare income you have. If you want to go out, most places are closed, or work on minimal staff who are also miserable and hate providing the service. You are an inconvenience to any service.

I have to add a disclaimer that singapore public transport is very good, and it costs around a quid per trip and it is half the size of London. I live in zone 3 london and I don't need a car so having a car in singapore is like having a car in zone 1-2 for most of the country. You can have it, but you don't need it.

But the fact that singapore is so small meant that when i was thinking of buying in the home counties in 2019, my parents were horror struck because for them, that was the equivalent of buying in Johor Bahru!

The UK has plenty of challenges, but I'm laughing heartily at the people whining on about 15-minute zone conspiracy theories and REEECCYCCLINNG!!!!

Singapore has strict recycling guidelines and it's extremely hard to own a car; the government pushes for urban density, walking and public transit much more assertively than the UK does!

Nobody is 'whining on' about conspiracy theories, They are just not helpful information to give the OP.

Yes, it has changed a lot. Standards of behaviour have drastically declined. Even driving standards have declined from being some of the best in the world. If there's a medical emergency people will stand and film it, they have a long time to do that because the ambulance may take hours or even refuse to come. They swear and drop litter everywhere and the streets are covered in litter. Children vape. Men walk around with no top on, drunk.

If you didn't have children I'd say weigh up the options, but for me personally, if I had children I wouldn't bring them here because I wouldn't want them to be influenced by the shocking behaviour.

I don't know which route you are travelling but you've been very lucky.
I assume you are not having to try and travel on the numerous strike days.
Or on the days where there are overtime bans.
Or on the days when some idiot decides to trespass on the lines.
Or the days when there are signalling faults, power outages, points failures, broken down trains etc.
We live in outer London, and most days there are cancellations. Very few trains run on time.

I live in a relatively affluent coastal area (not in the SE) and things look okay from here. Not so great 30 or 40 miles away in what has always been a deprived area, but life goes on, people earning under £30k are having free PV and air source heat pumps fitted, healthcare is still free, even if the wait is longer. The NHS is staggering after Covid, but I hear from friends in Ireland and Europe that their health services are struggling too.

Food's gone up, but is still cheaper than much of mainland Europe. People are still eating out in cafes and restaurants. We tried to get into a nice pub for lunch yesterday and there was no space. Must have been 60 people in there eating. The car park was full of shiny new cars. The cost of domestic fuel — gas, electricity — is up, but that too is not just England.

We've had a long period of fallout from the 2008 crash: ridiculously low interest rates that made a lot of people borrow too much, low food prices that the rest of Europe envied. Now we're returning to something like the normal of the 90s. These feel like complicated times wherever you are, I think. Friends in Canada, New Zealand, Australia and the States will all tell you that a lot of the things they took for granted 20 years ago are now up in the air. Massive world power shifts, global warming, Russia/ Ukraine, the rise of China — all unsettling.

If you're high earners then you'll be fine. London is still one of the world's great cities with great cultural and social opportunities. Wonderful European cities and scenery is a short hop away. The British countryside is still lovely. If you can afford to live somewhere nice then it's fine.

A 12 year old wa knocked down by a car on my road. (Busy road.) No ambulance available. (We're not in London where it might be better.)Someone had to drive her to hospital. I had a window broken by someone (next to dd's bed). The police closed the case immediately

Following with interest as I've been thinking and wondering the same things, OP.

I read a lot of concerns from people in the UK about the direction things are going (and they don't look brilliant from the outside) but I do wonder how much of it is 'compared to the luxury we're used to' vs 'compared to the reality of a lot of other countries'.

I'm in Spain and do chuckle to myself when my friends in the UK complain about customer service / 'bureaucracy'. I'd chew off my right arm to get to deal with HMRC now that I've experienced the Agencia Tributaria!

I know a family who had been in Singapore for a long time. They returned to a ‘nice’ area of the U.K. a couple of years ago, and are now leaving for another EU country - they just couldn’t stand it any longer.

I think it’s changed a lot. There seems to be a lot more teens with anxiety, and the MH service is rubbish.

Agree with this.

People complain about bad things and the news reports bad things, not good things generally.

Compared to the rest of Europe who are voting in extreme right parties, we are much better off.

France were voting in increasing numbers for the FN even before the recent riots.

In Germany, the extreme right AFD has just taken control of a council.

In Spain, the far right party Vox is growing and has recently won regional elections.

In the Netherlands an extreme right party has won seats and the farmers are rebelling about the PM and the EU

In Sweden, a right wing party has become the second largest party.

I think lots of the people commenting on here are living in less salubrious areas. There's not a lot of litter in my area because people pick it up when dog-walking. You might find the number of dogs everywhere a bit of a shock, OP.

And I hate to have to tell anyone, but men wander around with their shirts off, and teens vape, in the places in the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium as well as here. I'm pretty sure I've seen Italian kids vaping too.

And Singapore has been a 'benign' dictatorship for the past 50 plus years. Its not great politically though I must say that right now, i would prefer the PAP to the Tories. though to be fair, the PAP has an extremely competent civil service to thank, and working in government in singapore is very well paid, hence attracts the best minds. I think they have the same level of intelligence really but singapore is a city state and a financial centre so much easier to run. Also the economic growth overall was higher and so more tax revenue.

If all the Tories had to run was London, I think we would probably have lower taxes and a better NHS as the taxes would not be required to subsidise poorer regions.

a quick drive on a motorway will show you how bad the litter issue is. Your little patch might be ok because you still have a sense of community in your area

As some comfortably well-off, I’d leave for a better quality of life abroad in a heartbeat.

I'm in Surrey and we have very long ambulance waits and the police closing cases immediately. Also train problems, teacher/nurse/doctor shortages.

I think this is accurate - our infrastructure is broken, however, for me, the sense of doom is the decline in public behaviour. It’s noticeable when you see how well-behaved people are in public abroad.