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?

@Alexandra2001

We are a "developed" country, please compare with our continental neighbours.

I have. And I would still prefer to live in the UK. For the reasons cited.

London schools are seeing huge falls in school rolls because birth rates have fallen faster than predicted & the trend is moving to other areas.

the cost of housing has done so much damage

@Vergus how old are you?

Why can my friends in Portugal, France and Italy get surgery and dental care either free or at 50% the price we pay and don't have to wait 3 years for it?
Why have we got potholed roads? the most expensive trains in Europe? less HCP's, beds and equipment than any comparable country in Europe? our kids wait 3 years for MH treatment...

Presumably because their populations voted for governments that prioritised those services over making profit for private companies and hold them to account if they fail to deliver.

The UK, it's government, and it's issues are largely a reflection of the public's will or rather, it's apathy.

From 2010 to 2019 we had almost a decade of austerity, where services were cut to the bone, assets sold to the highest bidder, national debt and taxes rose, and living standards fell for all.

What was the response from the public? To vote the same party back into power because they made the right noises about the non-issue of migration, who then rewarded us with more cuts, more debt and more taxes.

AND STILL almost 24% of the public voted for that party in 2024 (with a further 14% voted for something even worse).

Great summary. I don’t watch the news anymore and rarely listen to the radio. I don’t engage with social media, but the attitudes from those mediums bleed into every aspect of society and that still affects me and my family greatly. Young people are carrying the millstone of social media round their necks whether they want to or not. Also phone addiction is poisoning everything.

Migration is not a non issue. Far from it.

Migration is a HUGE issue.

Because there is NOT ENOUGH MIGRANTS COMING IN

There's no one to do the fucking work, hundreds of thousands of jobs unfilled in London

Then we need to be doing those jobs ourselves. Reduce unemployment and benefits.

Give it a fortnight, it's coming.

Oh gosh that’s interesting! Thanks for sharing!!

Then they need to pay more as people can't afford to do low paid work with rent prices and the cost of living crisis.

Why just women? Why not men equally?

Then they need to pay more as people can't afford to do low paid work with rent prices and the cost of living crisis.

Exactly

I don't know. That's just what I remember. Why don't you look it up, you have the whole world at your fingertips.

You’re asking the wrong person there.

incidentally, I just ate half a loaf of sour dough!

We moved back to the UK from Portugal because DD has SN. There was no help for her in Portugal. We asked for her to be deferred starting school for a year which the school could have agreed to. They said no despite the fact that this was supported by her nursery and her paediatrician. I asked how they would support her. They said that if she could not cope they would keep her back a year.

I know that SEN provision in the UK is not ideal but here she is at a special school which is very supportive. The hospital she was born in had to close their paediatric emergency department for a while as they were short of staff. Property in the area we lived in is becoming more and more unaffordable for young Portuguese people .

I think that unless you have lived in another country it is easy to imagine that life is much better there, particularly because the weather is better. Yes a lot of things in the UK are terrible at the moment but I don't think anywhere is a utopia.

There also seems to be a rise in populist right wing parties in mainland Europe who are actually forming governments whether individually or in coalition. Every country has its positives and negatives and I just don't believe that the UK is this hellhole compared to our other European neighbours that many make it out to be.

If you want to fix the problem of too much immigration, governments need to invest in training our own people to do the jobs we are asking foreigners to do. And insist that employers pay them properly, so they can afford to live without state top ups.
I'm not sure why we've tolerated the state necessity of topping up wages, so a select few people can afford super yachts.
It's not right to take workers from other countries (esp ones poorer than ours), whose education and training has been paid for by their own taxpayers and who are needed in their own countries. We should be investing in our own people.
And if you are not disabled and are capable of working, you shouldn't be allowed to turn down a suitable job and claim benefits instead. But that suitable job should be paid properly - none of this exploitation of people and labelling it work experience!

Housing could be fixed overnight if we built mobile homes (nice ones) on brown field sites like all the derelict industrial estates. They are already connected to water/electricity supplies and could be added to bus routes etc. They are cheap to build and decent to live in. I'd happily live in one.

It hasn’t been low though

And how do you see this working over time?

A bit like a Ponzi scheme it can only get higher

We need to keep increasing at a higher rate?

We are not increasing at a higher rate. No one is arguing for that but we are heading for an upside down pyramid. Not exactly sustainable

I live in Germany and I'd love to move back "home" to the uk. I miss the people. So much. The friendliest, the culture.

But I can't bring myself to move my children away from a higher quality of life... My ds had 6 ear infections in the space of 3 months, and other health issues related to the enlarged adenoids. At the 2nd ear infection, he was referred by his paediatrician to ent (we were seen a week later ) and within 2 months, he had his adenoids out, tonsils filed back and is the picture of health now. Just one example from a range of reasons we're staying put for now. It all moved so fast.

Because of the tories that never put back into infrastructure they just took money from the tax payers to their cronies. Look at the ppe scandal in cOVID, for example, also, the austerity measures, Brexit has lost so much of our income. The right-wing press of how much they will try to convince people that you don't have to pay much tax, but then these same people will be like. Well, why is the NHS broken? Why are there no social care?Etcetera.
Neo, liberalism policy, it's not gonna work, it's a Pyramid scheme. The top get richer, but that spread of wealth does not go down to the bottom if you look at the g. Dp per actual person.It's not as much as other figures.Because the majority of the wealth in this country is owned by very few people.
I'll tell you what though people complain about Biden. From america, but in there economy, their growth rate is much better than ours is. Thur employment figures are brilliant to.

Also we need to do what new york did abiut little crimes need stopping as it seems there's a law and order problem in the uk because of police cuts because the tories but fuck me these same sort kf hang them and flog them still are very right wing even though the tory party oversaw so much crime going unchecked courts absolutely bursting

@Cremacreme

how old are you?

42

Yes I didn’t think you were young.

What are you after?

Always increasing?