to think we in the UK have a bloody good life and we should stop bloody whinging?

[WriterofDreams]

This is a rant. Feel free to tell me IABU, as I am not going to be moderate in my views.

I know "what about the starving children in [insert poor country here]" is an endlessly annoying response to any complaint but it's been ringing in my head of late. I know people are struggling financially and being uncertain about the future is very worrying. But I do feel at times it would do us all good to stop and appreciate the huge privilege and good luck we have in living in this part of the world.

Something that will always stay with me is something my sister told me when she was working in Namibia. She had a spare notebook and pen so she gave it to a man who was about to study to be a teacher. He broke down in tears and she got a shock until she realised that this man could never have afforded to buy his own notebook and pen. He considered the gift hugely generous and had to be persuaded to accept it. A nun friend of mine also told me about children in Ethiopia who used to have their pens blessed by the priest in the hopes it would make them keep working. They had one pen to last the whole year and if it stopped working they might not be able to do their exams. Contrast this to my kids at school who would lose expensive handwriting pens left right and centre and expect a new one every time. We had to introduce a reward system to get them to look after them.

I wake up every day in a peaceful country in a dry warm house. I have running water, electricity, gas and a council that looks after the roads and collects the bins (as well as a lot of other things). If I need anything there are any number of shops I can go to where the shelves are constantly well stocked. My son will go to a clean well equipped school with highly trained teachers, for free, and get heaps of bloody handwriting pens, books, and photocopied worksheets. If I'm ill I can go to the doctor, for free, and be seen right away, given the correct medicine or sent to a state of the art hospital where I'll get great care, again for free. I don't have to worry that malaria or yellow fever will kill my family, or that war will tear my country apart.

On the whole I am one of the very very lucky ones.

Crazy! The reason we are not starving to death in the streets is because generations of people fought to get us areasonable standard of living. Bevin (NHS founder) said 'the NHS will survive as long as there are people to fight for it'. The same applies to the rest of the welfare state. Coco, I don't agree that your choice to have an epidural is a luxury, fortunately for us it is a right. Lots of people would like us to believe it is an unaffordable luxury.

Yes it didnt come naturally all these rights- but they are there aren't they now?

I am lucky I can have an epidural it not a right its a privledge- in some countries this wont even exsist or if there was no NHS I couldnt afford it. Did you see that documentary about the midwife that went to work in a third world country?

I couldnt even see it all it was too distressing.

xstich and glitter, it's very sad to hear how low you are. I'm by no means saying that you can't talk about your problems, what I'm saying is that some people, not necessarily you, would be a darn sight happier if they stopped for a minute and realised that they have a lot going for them. I agree that if you have a lot of personal problems life can seem impossibly hard no matter how many material advantages you have. I was depressed not so long ago and I considered suicide. That had nothing to do with my life situation though, I was ill and no amount of running water could cure that.

Again my issue is with people who genuinely have a lot of positives in their life, they're not depressed and they still complain.

I am currently praying we don't have a winter like last one. I will be on the streets in a few months and not sure how to cope with the cold.

Am ok with people trying to look on the bright side, but are we lucky or did we make an effort and build a better life for ourselves? Not just us, but our parents and grandparents etc.

It surely didn't just happen.

Sometimes I hear stuff from people in other countries about how we took all the best bits etc and how they should take it from us. I think "yeah, but if you put the effort into building and planting that you put into hating us maybe you wouldn't be in that position"

I believe a lot of the poorer countries are because they have nothing to trade of great value like oil. Or if they do such as coffee beans they are exploited.

Or their resources, and also Aid, are purloined by corrupt governments.

yabu, I take it you didn't watch the programme about children living in dire
poverty in this country

The ones with the smoking parents and the huge dog? The poverty resulting from parental choice? Dreadful.

Of course there's poverty in the UK but most people think it's outrageous that there is and believe that something can be done about it. I live in a country where it's completely normal and the idea that something can be done about it is the shocking thought to most people. And yes there are rich people here, some of whom are rich because they exploited others but that doesn't change life for the 95% of the population who aren't.

well how did Britain become prosperous then? Its cold most of the time, we cant grow things for half the year as we have such winters. We dont have much natural resources, etc.

It could be because of good organisation, working together, political and financial systems that support the people and enable them to be productive, and systems that allow us to trust each other (with recourse to the law), greater fairness and equality. People have fought for these things, they didnt just appear out of the blue.

It is very important to retain these good features. This government, with its attacks on legal aid and public services, are undermining the very systems which enable us to perform and succeed.

We do not have a 'very good' life. Many people live in poverty. People who become unemployed not being able to afford household bills and having to go without heating, having to ration their water use, children turning up at school hungry and with worn out clothes, etc.

If people who could previously afford holidays and handbags find that their incomes have been squeezed so much that they no longer can, they are right to question it.

gooseberrybushes the mother in Poor Kids had a dog because her house had been burgled before in broad daylight. And before you mention the nails, you can get them in Poundland for £1.

Snap judgements about others and easy blame are the curse of this country imho. That and the 'I'm alright, now b*gger off' attitude.

I find it interesting that the OP lauds the council services and free healthcare in the UK which are now under threat because a massive percentage of the people in this country think they are provided by 'scroungers' from 'their' money. I can't feel very optimistic and contented while that remains the case despite the fact that I personally will probably be able to afford the private services I'll no doubt have to avail myself of in future decades.

I don't want to live in a country full of mean, self-obsessed and paranoid people and that sometimes seems to be the way we are going.

Could you please tell me how healthcare is under threat?

Well I do know that my DD was supposed to have an echocardiogram last November. They stopped the cardiac clinic at the hospital she was attending so I had to transfer her onto a London hospital list. She didn't have the echo til June and now has to have cardiac surgery in precisely 23 days.

So healthcare is being diminished.
Speech and language therapy and occupational therapy are being decimated.

yeah yeah

Yes, stop whinging and shut up and put up with everything because you could have been born poor in a developing nation. Except you weren't. You were born here. Comparing an apple to an orange doesn't make either one any less than what they are.

Divide and conquer.

My £0.02...

The UK is one of the most advanced countries in the world. Countless millions in other places see the UK as a place of amazing privilege.

The UK has many things to be proud of. It also has flaws, some of them shameful. And even in it's strongest areas (eg NHS) it fails some people.

Let's recognize this is a great country. Let's also recognize that it is far from utopia and there is a lot to fix, and human nature means it will never be perfect. But I suggest we remember the great things as inspiration and energy to fix the bad. it's like climbing a mountain: you need to look up and see how far you still have to go, then look down and encourage yourself with how far you have already come.

yes we do have it very good in this country, but it should really be better than it is

but we still have a right to have a moan about the injustice of the share of wealth in this country, we have a growing upper class (as in earning money) many who have contributed to bringing this country down. this has now had a knock on effect on all our lives with all the cutback and this really is not acceptable as many are still getting richer

I would also say that with complacency those mountains won't get climbed.

errrrr...Indigojohn what country are you living in?! The Tories want to privatise the NHS or had that one passed you by??

Hear, hear MrMan!

Let me tell you about how great life is in the UK. my grandfather is 89. He has worked all his adult life, paid taxes and never claimed a penny off the state. He bought a property and saved money - not a great amount...but to him the £20K he saved over his working life is a fortune.

He is now infirm and ill. He needs proper medical care 24/7. None of us can give that to him (i.e me, my sister, my mum, my aunt...) because (a) we aren't medically trained and (b) even if we were we all have to work full time in order to survive.

So he is in an NHS geriatric ward at the moment and is undergoing an assessment for a residential placement.

In our wonderful first world country his assessment is based on his ability to pay. Not on his needs. Nice that aint it?

Last week he fell whilst on his ward and had to be transferred to A+E 'cos he broke his shoulder. No one from the geriatric unit could go with him. If I hadn't have been able to meet him at A+E and be his advocate he would have been all alone for hours. An 89 year old, confused, scared, immobile and in pain.

So OP, whilst we are lucky enough to take advantage of the rights that have been hard won and fought for in the UK please do not think that life is one long bed of roses for all of us. For some of the the elderly in the UK life is not much better than that in a third world country.

And we should be moaning about the disgusting imbalance in our society where people like fred goodwin are living in clover and people like my grandfather are being shafted.

:( aliston