Does anyone else feel like everything has gone a bit to shit and that there's no way out of the decline?

[Coldia]

I've noticed that I take it for granted now that things won't work, and that I need to make allowance that whoever I deal with whether personally or professionally is struggling practically, financially or otherwise. Like, my expectations are lowered, because nothing is as good as it was and life is a bit shit for everyone. It just feels so ... hopeless.

Does anyone else feel the same?

Agree everything has gone to shit and I feel pathetically grateful when something actually works.

Just got car back from garage after £340 damage due to pot holes.

Son is waiting 9+ months for follow up appointments that consultant said should be every 4 months.

No phone numbers to speak to anyone on websites it's all fucking AI chat bots.

Dentist expected waits of 2+ years for braces REFERRAL let alone the actual braces

Son won't use toilets in his (brand new) secondary school due to behaviour and vandalism. Extortionate parent organised bus only option for transport (or car shares).

Chaos in primary classrooms (I'm a parent reader at a recently inspected Outstanding school) as kids completely incapable of listening. There are 5 poor sods who can't even read yet in year 3 and they are just abandoned during other lessons as there's not enough staff so can't access any learning at all.

Clothes in shops all appalling quality.

Same with food unless you spend £££££

People just walking straight out of M&S with armfuls of pre mixed cocktails and no challenge.

Hyper focus on inclusion and adaptations meaning some people are just crap at their job but never challenged in any meaningful way so my work and life suffer.

I work in fundraising for a medical charity, supporting people with a dreadful terminal disease. I work with people who are dying or have been or about to be bereaved. And yet, all I see is kindness, passion, selflessness and enormous love in the most terrible situations.

So no, I don't think the world is going to shit. I have a different perspective these days and value everything I have and everything I can do.

Just coming on to say that no they're not. I've recently been to Spain and the roads are very good, in fact everywhere looked very cared for. I wasn't in a tourist area either.

Generally, as child of the 60s, it all feels very familiar.

I am finding that local facilities are declining at an alarming rate. I now have no local post office or pharmacy as that went bust this week. Nothing seems to be walking distance any more unless I want it to take the whole morning involving time off work. Vicious circle as I just do more online.

And sodding potholes... Went down a large invisible one last week with a right thunk and now the sump is cracked and leaking oil.

I agree that nothing works and everything is in bits. I’m bereft. I found a recipe from Snapchat and I made a cake. I went for a bath and someone put the cake in the garden to cool it but then we got a tremendous rain shower. I don’t think that I can take it because it took so long to bake it and I’ll never have the recipe again.

I’m the opposite, not to gloat Op, but I don’t want you to think it’s all going to hell in a hand cart, everyone thinks that, and there’s no hope.

I’ve worked/lived/travelled in a few different countries including African and I’m constantly thankful we live in a country where bribery and corruption aren’t rife (day to day, I don’t see it).

Racism and sexism is lower than it’s ever been. Health outcomes better. I’ve used the NHS recently and it was brilliant. My kid’s state school is fantastic.
I feel very lucky to have the professional opportunities I have here. DH has a good job. We’ve got lovely friends and live in a lovely village. Great sports clubs near by me and the kids go along to. Some volunteer run and the people are great.

I’ve got more business opportunities now than I did 2/3 years ago as well, so for us it’s a great place to live and things are improving.

mental health is also better understood, which has helped me a great deal.

I have had to very unusually visit the GP 3 times in the last 2 months. I dreaded it after all the debate online and the news stories. Had not been for couple of years. I was seen on the same day each time. I was number six in the queue yesterday when I rang but just put it in speakerphone and did other stuff.

@DJQuackers my SIL lives in Spain and has for 30 years running her own business. In Spain if you are unemployed you receive benefits based on how many contributions you have made. It then switches to a means tested benefit, Their welfare state is far less generous than here.

This . There is much in this country that is fabulous. No one has a perfect life. I'm 58. I have seen a lot of stuff. If you look for the worst case scenario you will find it.

Oh no. Is the sweet green icing flowing down. Thoughts and prayers

Thank you. And I’d bought a yellow cotton dress for Easter but I can’t wear it now as the weather’s so shit.

Modern pressures and life in general are leading to higher mental health problems in EVERY age group so focussing on children's mental health from a young age is a good thing.

20% of young people have mental health disorders that figure is 25% in older people so whatever this generation is doing appears to be working! And it's middle aged men who are the most likely to commit suicide so young people are coping better than older generations!

Of course not every young person suffers from generational trauma, I was talking about their parents! But I also didn't say all of them do either!

Some people have generational trauma. Those who recognise this often make steps to halt the cycle. I hope it works and ghouls who want to see children suffering with mental issues throughout their lives to prove a point are wrong.

Materially, we've never had it so good. My neices think that hot food is something a guy on a bike brings to your front door. Medical science is astonishing, all power to the PP who had fantastic treatment.

But culturally, oh I just feel sad for what is gone. My stepdad left home in Edinburgh aged 18 and took himself off to Aberdeen University on a second hand motorbike, his clothes in the sidecar. He navigated with a map.

My siblings and I grew up in a madhouse, surrounded by books, pets, art projects, games from the 1950s that we bought at jumble sales, musical instruments and piles of records and cassettes. Culture meant stuff, objects.

My son has his own bedroom with one bookcase in it and nothing on the floor. His life is in electronic devices, there's no accompanying 'stuff'. He's a keen footballer so it's not all screens, but his life is so different to mine.

I love my phone but us Gen Xers are special - we knew the before times.

When you're old like me you can look back and see the peaks and troughs that have occurred in this country in your lifetime.

This one is nothing compared with the post war years. The Winter of Discontent was shite too.

I actually think that considering the Pandemic we have got though it better than I would have expected.

Every country in the world goes though these highs and lows. Nothing stays great or awful forever.

@MorrisZapp

My neices think that hot food is something a guy on a bike brings to your front door

Lol.

Young people get very worked up about older folk all being daft racists, yet think it's perfectly normal to have a migrant slave bring them junk food on a bicycle.

Young people get very worked up about older folk all being daft racists,

Wot ? Us wrinklies who marched and bopped to Rock Against Racism and told the NF thugs to go fuck themselves ? Us "older folk" ?

Half the reason everything is going to pot is the reliance on mobile phones!

If you walk down the street normally, you are the odd one out if you don't have air pods in or have your faced glued to a screen.

Babies are walked in prams with the parent glued to a screen - baby NEEDS interaction with parent for language and to learn about his environment. And if parent is on a screen, sometimes baby has one propped up to view! No wonder they cannot talk or interact properly when they start school!

I hear the NHS will be monitoring our steps via smartphone app. I do most of my 'steps' with out my phone though!

Thanks to the Russian cyberdisrupters/media reports about Russian cyberdisrupters, I now regard all negative threads about the miserable decline of Western society as part of an evil plan, while sticking my fingers in my ears and chanting, 'Daffodils, Paddington Bear, Yorkshire Gold tea' on a frantic loop.

I'm low in energy at present which always makes you feel worse. A company are really irritating me as I told them to put their request for information in writing but no, they phone and they phone and they phone. It's best for their records if it's in writing, surely?

I would have more to say if I was less irritable!

Our lights aren’t on. Not the street lights in any case. The council had to turn most of them off back around 2012.

We’ve got potholes, no banks, no library, no post office, many of our local health services aren’t even accepting patients onto their lists - you go private or nothing, food costs have doubled, fuel has doubled, insurance has doubled. Most of the shops and pubs are gone. There are weeds everywhere, and overgrown verges.

Since Covid it feels like everything is broken. Nothing is straightforward any more. Routine appointments aren’t made, and always need four phonecalls to chase them up. You need to visit five pharmacies to get your prescription. Workmen rarely turn up. You need a bank loan to post a first class letter that may be delivered the following day or two weeks later. We seem to have lost all efficiency. It’s so frustrating.

Don’t get me started on bloody Paddington. Fuck me, who promoted him to ‘Grim Reaper’? The country is losing its mind.

There are always ups and downs. I grew up in Dublin in the 1980s which was a bit grim looking back, and people were leaving in droves. Then the Celtic tiger happened - yay! - which caused house prices to go insane - boo - then 2007 happened - boo - which caused house prices to fall by half - yay? boo? - then the economy improved - yay! - and now we have a housing crisis - boo...and the same is true for other cities and countries. Our expectations are so much higher now, but we have lost things that were commonplace then.

Basically this is life, it will always be fluctuating and that is normal.

@Menomeno

Our lights aren’t on. Not the street lights in any case. The council had to turn most of them off back around 2012.

Our council thought it would be hilarious to do this also. It won't lead to increased crime they said, which is funny cos guess what, in the higher crime areas they leave the lights on!

Have you had the green bin stealth tax yet? We just have. Next up I reckon is that bin collections will go from weekly to fortnightly. No, wait yet, they've done that one. I mean from fortnightly to every third week.

The UK. Pay More For Less.