Why does life seem to shit in the UK

[RosieLeaLovesTea]

Endless threads about schools going down the pan and poor behaviour in schools making teachers want to leave.
NHS waiting lists and quality of care medical is poor.
housing market market in crisis and affordability of housing

I read the threads and it feels like life in the UK is really shit. Plus crap weathe for 8 months of the year.

how did we get here snd what is the solution?

Fair enough. I assumed it went hand in hand.

Yup. Although I’d say only some people love being negative.
Having travelled a lot, every place has its collective of people who think everything is shit. The only thing I’d say they have is common is that they’re pretty feckless individuals.
Place them anywhere on Earth, anywhere they want to go, I guarantee you within a year they’d be moaning that their particular life is a bit shit..
The big thing they often don’t see is the only common denominator of their lack of building a good life is them. That and healthy serving of victim mentality as well.

I'm probably going to be flamed for this but in my area a huge number of caravans and tourers arrived in a local beauty spot and stayed for six months. Piling up garden waste, plastic waste, nappies, wipes, all sorts of rubbish. It lay in an increasing heap, attracting rats. Feral kids whizzing up and down on quad bikes, some of them very young, actively trying to mow cyclists and walkers down. shouting foul language. Local shops were inundated with shop lifters to the point that they had to put nets with tags over all the alcohol and virtually lock it up. Two teenage girls were assaulted whilst out for a walk. The council spent over £40,000 clearing the mess up when they finally left, including pouring lime in the woods which they had been using as a toilet. A month later, they were back and it all started again. There is nothing the council can do because of 'rights'. Meanwhile, the slightest infringement of the law brings heavy fines down on normal law abiding citizens. I sometimes feel that I'm living in an alternative Universe where no one cares at all.

DD works in a large city and isn't allowed her phone at work . She starts at 7am. She hasn't been able to get a doctors appointment at all because she can't phone them at 8 am when they ask people to phone in to get a call back from a doctor. So I have had to do it for her. If I phone at 8am they only offer call backs in the morning. So I phone at 2 pm, when their next lot of call backs are scheduled. Of course I have to speak to a receptionist first and describe her issues (which are quite worrying). I wait 20 mins and am then cut off. In the morning, I am in a queue for 40 mins which our 20 people ahead of me, only to be told there are no appointments when I finally get through. I thought she was exaggerating, but no, it really is that bad. When I finally manage to get her an appointment after a week of calling twice a day, she says the doctor didn't look at her once, didn't greet her or answer her when she said goodbye and thank you. Guess what, she had to ask for blood tests and more or less diagnose herself. On a previous occasion she had a very bad UTI and couldn']t get a doctor's appointment at all for weeks. This country has changed so much in even ten years, it is unrecognisable.

We were a big fish in a huge block of wealthy countries.

But we didn't want that, so now we are a medium standard island, effectively in the east Atlantic on the edge of Europe.

We are about where we should be. We pay medicore tax and have mediocre services.

Not much we can do about the weather.

No one listens to each other any more, people shout uninformed opinions, the rise of misogyny, racism and homophobia is depressing.

And the influence of social media is a whole topic by itself.

But nothing lasts forever. Each individual can choose to be part of the solution, might take another decade or so, but it will change.

@Onand

All those saying it’s shit in other countries are missing the point. The UK has suddenly taken a huge nose dive in the last few years and it seems like some people are keen to deflect and ignore it.

It's not the "last few years" though - it's been decades in the making. Perhaps "some" areas have been late to the party. Our town went to the dogs in the 90s and 00s. The school I went to was crap in the 70s and 80s. The NHS killed my mother and FIL in the 00s due to delays and misdiagnoses. Traffic has been awful in our nearby city since the 80s. Our town lost it's Woolworths and Marks and Spencer in the 00s. It lost it's railway station in the 70s. We lost most major employers in the 80s and 90s (including a head office of a large insurance firm!) I spent four years in the police as a special constable in the 80s and kids were feral, "minor" crimes were ignored, etc. As I say, it's all been coming since the 70s really, "some" people in better off areas (at that time) just weren't affected as bad as those in run down Northern/Regional towns.

Probably because of threads like this making everyone feel like everything is awful? Yes public services have gone underfunded for a long time, but from personal experience state education is massively better than it was 20-30 years ago (surely this is blindingly obvious to anyone who went to school in the 90s - have you totally forgotten 🤣) when progress wasn’t really measured, no one knew (and probably didn’t care) if their school was totally shit and there was never more than 1 member of staff in a classroom. You wouldn’t have been waiting years for an SEN diagnosis because it’s very unlikely it would ever have been suggested.

I can see my GP when needed (though I rarely do, but they always see my kids same day), and my dd has received excellent service from NHS surgeons recently, though we did have to wait, but it wasn’t unacceptable and we got PALS to help.

sure loads of people will say the opposite is true for them, however I suspect I am in the majority as rarely hear anyone in real life complaining about this kind of thing.

I don’t think the relentlessly negative media helps.

Every day I start the day reading the newspaper, and it’s just well-to-wall criticism and complaining.

Exhausting!

Having to deal with the issues that some folk are facing will also be exhausting.

Customer service and deliveries/collections/installations too. It used to be so efficient but now it is going downhill fast and almost mobody cares about customer experience and loyalty anymore

The change is peoples behaviours since social media, a never ending news cycle, Brexit and Covid all happened in the last 10 years. I agree life was crappy for many in the 70s onwards but the country itself was more stable and you could see the Dr easily- remember calling a Dr out?

The droves of rich people and those who can leave the UK are going now, the rise of illegal immigration is happening now, the utter shambolic failing education system is happening now, NHS wait lists are off the charts now, food bills are rising now, Brexit inflicted bureaucracy and red tape is happening now, local council budgets are being cut now.

Late stage capitalism, innit?

More and more concentrated in the hands of the super rich, less and less for everyone and everything else.

It's not likely to change for the better though, is it?

Absolutely agree with this. I have most definitely noticed a dramatic decline I the UK in the last ten years. To be honest, I find it shocking and disturbing, especially how sudden it was.
However, some places have been like this for decades. I grew up in the supposedly wealthy south east in the 70s and 80s, in a very deprived seaside town. The deprivation and social problems I saw growing up were appalling. It makes me laugh when people blame immigrants for these problems because I grew up in a very white town. There were most definitely no go areas (purely white). I was beaten up so many times as a kids by strangers. Bored teenage girls who were probably beaten up themselves at home and wanted to take it out on someone else. I was mugged, my friends were attacked.I knew people who were murdered, ended up in prison, I knew a man who killed himself and his mother. My friend's mum disappeared and her skull was found months later by our school. I could list dozens of really nasty and disturbing things I saw growing up.
Many of the people we went to school with have died. I see my school friends on Facebook now 50 years old, still living hopeless lives in poverty, in poor health. They blame people on small boats for their problems but their lives have always been shit.
This country has a huge problem with inequality and poverty.

You sound amazing and positive… I wish you all the luck in the world.

Social media doesn't help. First you have people sharing content that makes you feel fed up because it's been edited to show the very best of things and lifestyles and leaves you wondering how people are doing this and affording that etc.

Then on the flip side, when things happen, you know about it instantly and not just from one source but your getting hit with images and versions of events all at the same time so no-one really knows what happened but people also believe everything they read online regardless of where it come from.

In terms of the UK, life is shit for many and it feels depressing but what would your life be like and how you feel if you stepped away from social media and news for the day?

If you look at your own immediate life and experience and see how vad that is. That's, realistically what you need to deal with, you can't solve everyone's problems but you can make the best of the situation for yourself.

This forum for example, people generally come on here to moan. Good news is rarely shared and anything lighthearted is shit on. I think depression is rife amongst posters on here which doesn't help and that's down to the sheer volume of negativity and bad news that's thrown at everyone daily.

You start a post moaning about an argument with your Mom, 2 posters will sympathise, 4 posters will tell you you should be grateful your Mom is still alive

You grumble about an unfair teacher, 3 posters will give helpful advice or a shared experience, 16 posters will slag off all teachers and schools and 10 posters will blame those 16 for them leaving teaching.

Of course parts of the UK are going through shit times and I've no idea what the answer is but I do know that people have lost the ability to be positive because so much negative stuff is aimed at us all the time.

Read the Liam Payne thread, pictures of his body were released within an hour of him dying and the inside of his hotel room and people on there are arguing over whose ticktock feed is showing the real truth rather than lies. We've access to too much negative stuff and nothing is checked or confirmed, it's just sent out into the world for everyone to see and will stay there forever

Eh?
You've assumed a lot there.

It depends totally on where you live, whether you have young children, the stage of life you are in. We are retired. We have money. We live in a beautiful village . We live 6 miles from our nearest city and we get a lot of McDonalds rubbish thrown out of car windows. But people take a huge pride in where we live and just pick it up and bin it. We have a litter picking team of locals who scour the area every fortnight. Our local surgery is 6 miles the other way and is brilliant.They operate a triage system. If you need to be seen in person you will get an appointment on the same day.If it can be dealt with over the phone it will be. My father died nearly 8 years ago. The medical teams he had from our surgery and hospice were brilliant. My mother is healthy currently and lives nearby. My adult children live close by with their wives and children .We are able to look after our grandchildren every week and often have them at weekends to give their parents a break. As others have said ,life is what you make it. I was poor 28 years ago. I was a single parent. If you want more make plans for how you are going to change your own circumstances. Oh and one of my DILs is American. Her family are still over there. She has no intention of going back there or ever having children there. And she was brought up among the sunshine and palm trees of LA.

I don't believe UK is shit at all, in fact it's rather good here and personally, I love the UK.

However, I can believe for some people life is a bit shit at the moment, especially if you are struggling with the cost of living, job prospects, partner problems, elderly care or any number of other 'life' problems that would have hit you anywhere.

Secondly, I do think that some people have a very negative mindset and this is pandered to by the press/media. Whatever the public is given, there are complaints, it isn't "good enough" or the press pulls holes in every political party/decision/attempt to change things before they've even been given a chance.

Thirdly, there are vast areas of the world where life really, REALLY is shit - these areas are full of poverty, disease, war, famine and a huge lack of resources and infrastructure. We are so lucky not to live like that in the UK, anywhere. Nor do we suffer from serious weather, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes, seriously dangerous diseases....

Fourthly, some of the best nations I have lived in do not have sunny weather - try Scandinavia. Northern Norway and Sweden have winter for more months than we do; they manage perfectly well through blizzard season, happily cope with temperatures -25 for weeks on end and darkness from November to February. And do you know what, they don't complain about the weather either. Since it's not possible to change a country's weather, they've learned to embrace it instead, rather than constantly ranting about it.

Finally, the Scandinavian countries have one of the best standards of living I have experienced. Their health care is brilliant, their schools are good and rates of literacy is very high, unemployment very low. Many goods are expensive but things like energy and childcare are very cheap indeed, to make it possible for people to live. How do they pay for this? They happily accept high taxes, which goes to create such a society. In comparison, UK has a strange mindset which wants everything provided but assumes there must be some magic money tree which might pay for all this.

The "solution" you asked about could include a change in mindset in the UK, and a preparedness for everyone to work together to create the sort of society we really want.

I think people have really short term memories. Yes we - like many countries - have had challenges since the 2008 crash, covid, oil price issues (due to wars, Russia etc), but I remember growing up in a house without central heating and ice on the inside of the windows, going to bed in several layers of clothes and a coat, of a 1hr walk to secondary school if you missed the bus, of the strikes in the late seventies (hours each day with no power, reading by candle light, being left by mum in a queue at the bakers for two hours to buy bread, while she queued for something else. I was 7ish). My parents and in laws remember the austerity of the 50s and 60s, the still being on rations in the fifties etc. The nineties and the naughties were a bit lush and we were living through idyllic times - and we became spoilt. We don’t need annual AI holidays, big screen TVs in multiple rooms, dozens of tech devices in every family, new/fashionable clothes every season and all the other trappings that make us feel ‘not poor’. But we still want them.

I agree the NHS is not fit for purpose and needs to change as we simply cannot afford it, but look at the DNA stats and see how many people abuse the privilege of a free at the point of use service; money needs to be invested into schools and successive governments need to stop moving the assessment criteria goal posts every 3-5 years (for staff as well as students) and parents need to step up and bloody parent. And the grass always seems greener everywhere else. I know lots of people living the US and Europe and there are issues in all of those places too.

But what we do all have is 24/7 hypercritical media that eats away at contentment, feeding a narrative of ‘life is shit’ oh, and ‘it’s everybody else’s fault’ so we are also powerless. I’m choosing to unplug as I know it is what feeds discontent and creates resentment.

Posters like to moan on mumsnet, apparently the UK is dreadful in every way compared to rest of the world.

It's the traffic that really gets to me and I know that obviously as I drive I am part of that. It's constant roadworks which never seem to actually improve things and in my village you can't even drive down small roads as there's so many parked cars everywhere. We need better public transport, not that that would really help me as I have to travel to people's homes for my job. It's just so frustrating trying to get anywhere ! Same stress for low pay every day. If I didn't have to work though I would probably have a very different outlook as life for my age group is not that bad.

Message boards give a bias view because it's less likely for someone to start a thread about their life being brilliant- about having a decent job, plenty of disposable income, really good experiences with public services; people invariably post for support or advice with problematic things. Its also not limited to the UK, lots of countries seem to be struggling at the moment.

I don't think its necessarily worse than previous decades, its just that expectations of a decent standard of living are higher. And of course, in the 70s and 80s we got news at 7am, 1pm and 6pm with a late bulletin at 10pm. Plus one daily newspaper early morning. So we read the bad news then that was it until the next day. Now thanks to social media etc we are bombarded with it 24/7 and no let up so its bound to make things even more depressing. I'm sure that people living in other countries look at the UK and think 'wow thats an awesome place I'd love to live there'. Familiarity breeds contempt!

I think that negativity is what sells. And we have access to news all the time. In reality, when I do need to use the NHS or indeed have an issue that needs sorted at school I find I have no problems. The crap that is splashed everywhere online has a lot to answer for.

People voted for 70 plus LD MPs in july, so we can vote differently.... we could vote Green?
The Tories and Labour formulate policy based on polling, focus groups, the media.... its simply not true there is no alternative, we had an alternative in Corbyn, rejected that, the majority who voted, wanted Brexit....

Of course its our fault and we voted for it.

We could vote change but we don't, we vote for a Tory with a red tie or Lab with a blue tie, there is very little to choose between Lab and Con but we don't vote for change either...
Did Blair build council houses? nope, did he change dentistry? nope, did he focus on the services economy? yes, did he bring social care under the NHS? nope & our roads were still a hotchpotch of potholes and temp repairs, its just worse now

The NHS was still shit under Labour, just less shit than it is now.

Based on what we've seen so far, Labour wont change much either, tinker around the edges but that'll be it, we are heading for Austerity 3.0