AIBU to think this godforsaken country is a shambles?

[Toysintheattic29]

THIS IS WHAT’S ON MY MIND: this country is in shambles. I’ve never seen so many homeless people on the streets; social care services unable to cope with overflowing caseloads; our precious NHS struggling to care for anyone at all (forget it if you have non life-threatening surgical needs or are elderly); train fares continually getting jacked up; rising costs; roads cracking up; broadband speeds laughably slow and the biggest con of all, BREXIT. Even in the austerity of the 1950s things were not as grim as they are now - at least we had a reliable health service and publicly owned transport systems and many members of the public didn’t have to rely on food banks.

I'd rather live here than probably 20 other countries I can think of. We should count our blessings. No country is perfect. There are problems in other countries we don't even consider here. Routinely bent police for example. A legal system that's open to bribes. Medical equipment so old it's virtually extinct. That's not even including the war-torn and third world countries.

Ah the British doing what we do best. Moaning. You are dam lucky to live here op.

To quote afore poster:

"This country is small, relies on import and no longer great."

^^^
This.

I was born in the 1950s and I can tell you things were definitely not rosy when I was a child in the 1960s. We have a much higher standard of living now, for the vast majority of people. There is absolutely no comparison and people who think otherwise have no grasp of reality or history.

I too worry about Brexit because it is a huge mistake. Most of our issues with the NHS and social care come from people living longer. When many people died before they were 70, they only had a few years post retirement and did not have the multitude of complex healthcare needs that the NHS has to deal with now. Daughters and wives did not work when elderly family members needed care in the 1950s. Women go out to work now. Other counties do expect a direct contribution for healthcare and we should do this if we want a better service. We also need a better managed NHS and people to stop abusing it by turning up with trivial ailments in A and E.

We clearly need more homeless hostels. However, most of what we want comes down to paying more taxes. We are not producing enough children to have a high enough tax take in the future and the people with money to spare are lots of baby boomers who do not want to pay more tax. We cannot expect the younger generation to pay for everything that is needed because tax levels would be sky high. We cannot have everything. We do need "growth". If we do not grow the economy, we have less tax take so less of what we want. It is a fairly simple concept.

Of course not everyone should want to live in the South but until the North connects itself together (abandon HS2 and connect the Northern cities) then the best prospects for many are in the South.

The answer is more taxes but nobody wants to pay them, do they?

I was born in 1961 (the result of a forced marriage incidentally, my teenage mum got pregnant because contraception was not available as it is now). Life was much, much harder then.

There was a housing shortage because London (and other big cities) was still recovering from the bomb damage of the war, we lived in a 4 bedroom semi with a lodger in the front room and 2 other families sharing the rest of the house. This was normal - I remember one relation in a shared house whose washing facilities were a small hand sink on the bend on the stairs. That was it. Her husband used to have to stand guard when she had a strip wash.

We were considered posh because we had an inside loo and a bath. We couldn't afford to turn the immersion on more than once a week but we had a bath.

No central heating, just a coal fire in one room. Dad used to carry the sacks of coal home in his back from the depot after working a night shift as an international telephone operator.

We had the only phone in the street because mum did casual work and being easily contactable meant she got more shifts. Neighbours would come to use it and leave a few pennies in payment in a saucer.

Racism was the norm. No blacks, no dogs, no Irish' was a thing. My (irish) mum was educated at a very posh London convent (scholarship girl) and had a matching posh accent so used to go and view rooms and sign rent books for family members whose accents would have had them turned away. I can remember playing in the park with a school friend and being dragged away my a relation and being told not to go near the 'nigger girl'.

Homosexuality was illegal and persecuted.

People smoked everywhere, all the time. On buses, in cinemas and restaurants, the GP would smoke in the surgery and teachers had ash trays on their desks.

My mum was prescribed thalidomide during her second preganancy but couldn't afford to fill the prescription so didn't take it.

Anyone who thinks Britain is godforsaken - even with all the issues we face, with the bollocks of Brexit etc - clearly has never seen other nations.

I have.

I've travelled a bit, stayed for a while in the US, lived in Latin America and a couple of places in Africa. I'm a linguist and have spent extended periods in both Europe & South America and for all the issues we face, I wouldn't swap our country for anyone else's.

Healthcare, welfare, social structure, equality, rights for women/kids/minorities/disabled, literally everything is better here than in the US alone for example.

the Lagos express??

No homeless people, just Eastern Europeans who come to beg??

Well, the English capacity for fiction writing remains undaunted in spite of brexit- maybe we could export that and enrich the nation

Procrastinator - I think it's quite well known that you can make more money begging in parts of London than by working in some other countries. the Roma beggars in Marble Arch are an example:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-london-24721538/roma-beggars-on-why-they-return-to-beg-in-london

I was told by a friend who works for the police that the beggars like to target areas where there are lots of wealthy arabs as they know that they will be very generous in what they give.

Yup. We are a small pathetic island with a ridiculous overinflated sense of importance.

And rainy.

I despair more of this fucking place every day.

I've just been reading about Toby Young, so I'm feeling particularly aggrieved.

However it's hardly "many" people. It's a few hundred at best, despite what the mail and the express like to claim!

Begging is like anything else where there is money - most people will be genuine and in need; a few will be trying to exploit it.

Darling, the whole world is going to hell in a handcart.

Looks at America Nawh I'm good. No where's great but we aint that bad either...

I've lived in a few places. Every country has problems. Some, many in fact, are worse than other's. I live in developing world and people here can't understand why I don't live in the UK or even the USA where we lived for years. For them it seems like the grass is greener, but for me it's just different. All countries should address their problems and all citizens should speak up. To make people feel that they should suck it up because some places have it worse is a way to placate the masses. No problem is ever "too first world" to be solved.

How many other countries have you lived in OP? I've been officially resident (ie, have all appropriate permits, rented a house, had a job etc.) in 8 other countries (across 3 continents), the UK compares just fine, to all of them, and favourably to many.

Some countries do some things better, some countries do some things worse, as a rule they're all much of a muchness, but the UK is certainly no worse over all.

my GP practice has just contracted out

You do realise that nearly all GP practices are private businesses run by GPs and that they get paid by way of profits generated by the practice? It has been that way since the start of the NHS.

Yes whinberry...and now, not only does it need to pay the GPs wages but a profit for the management company, and their wages

It is intentional and ideological.

Nothing is eroding.

It is being dismantled.

Americans get far superior healthcare to that provided on the NHS.

No they really don't.

OP - if you lived anywhere else you’d see that It’s one of the best places to live, relatively.

I really dislike people who are so anti-UK. It’s not perfect by nowhere is. Try telling someone from a developing country how hard we have it here.

Raving - I have family in the US, too. Their healthcare services are far superior to those on the NHS, in everything from quick appointment and surgery times to hospital accommodations, from modern equipment and new generation medications to access to specialists (as opposed to being stuck with a GP until you get a referral for 6 months from now).

If your relatives have a different experience, they are doing something wrong.

If your relatives have a different experience, they are doing something wrong.

Or they can't afford it.

That is a rather ridiculous thing to say. Your one families experience doesn't trump someone else's!

The NHS is in great danger in the current political climate. Jeremy Hunt is the co author of a book with Daniel Hannon (leading Brexiteer) that advocates its privatisation.

My GP practice is now part of a large group. I have lost my lovely and knowledgeable GP. I suspect he knew what was coming and left. I no longer have a specialist nurse to manage my chronic condition. I see this as just a foretaste of what might happen to the whole NHS.

Where there is privatisation there are share holders who demand a dividend. I don't want my tax to end up as company profits and dividends. This is what happens now with the railways.

We have to be very careful not to fall for the drip feed of propaganda that the NHS is in chaos and the solution is privatisation. If the NHS is in chaos it is because of underfunding. Now we need to have a national conversation about what we want to achieve with the NHS. What should be off the table is privatisation. We must not be sheep letting ourselves be softened up to accept that the only way to solve the NHS problem is via US health companies. They are salivating at the thought of how much money they can make out of us.

We are at a crossroads being taken away from largely the social medicine of W Europe and propelled towards the disaster that is US privatised medicine. This country is in a very weak position now, put there by too many people listening to drip feed propaganda.

I tend to agree with you, OP. Things aren't as bad as the 50s, but for ordinary people things are going downhill and have been for a while.

The thing the really concerns me though is the amount of complacency amongst the British people. It seems to be an article of faith that Britain will always be a great country no matter what, and if you don't agree then you're clearly unpatriotic and "why don't you go and live somewhere else if you hate Britain so much?". This thread being a case in point.

Profits come first with private companies.

All the utilities and 'public' transport have been privatised, making profit an overriding concern.

Putting in as little as possible in order to take as much out has become the social norm.

Across society, there are fewer volunteers and more people who feel entitled because they've paid.

If people across the country took greater personal responsibility for their health, the environment and their immediate surroundings, we'd be in less of a state.