What do people think will make Britain great again?

[Logiclady94]

I keep coming back to this thought and I wondered what other people thought so I decided to ask the wonderful people on mumsnet for their opinions. I was reading that more jobs were lost, people are being told to return to work to save the economy, coronavirus means that people still don’t feel comfortable doing that, work/life balance needs sorting, income and taxes need rectifying. Not an opinion but you see a lot of the richer need punishing, house prices are ridiculous..

So my wondering is what are people’s thoughts genuine thoughts about what they would change with this country?

@audweb

What does great even mean? I don’t think we were at our greatest when we built an empire based on slavery and colonisation. Even the notion of a nation being great is odd. We should be rethinking what it even means and strive for a nation where poverty is not an issue, where people are happy and healthy, and wellbeing is at the forefront of government policies.

I don’t believe that will happen, but it’s really nice to dream.

This. Also, we should look forward, not back. If we chose, we could reshape our economy to be fit for purpose, in particular to avoid the climate breakdown we’re hurtling towards, and make this country a fairer, nicer place to live. If we did that, and started relating to other countries without the arrogance and stupidity that has been highlighted by Brexit, we might stop being a laughing stock.

Childcare needs to be more readily available at a reasonable price. Parents should not have to choose between working and childcare e.g if I had returned to my old job I'd be working to pay it all into childcare. I feel that a system like those on certain benefits get would be fair so that the parent can get back into the work place.

they’ve not learnt anything of use to them

Most children say that. A full rounded education including things that may not seem important at 14 or even 24 is still important as it gives people a wider appreciation of the world around them, the different thinking skills or arts and science, be ability to critically think and learn.....

Imagine what the world would be like if people like Chris Whitty, Patrick Vallance, Banksey, Tracey Emin....just learned the basics they needed for a mundane life.

I think there should be a salary ratio between the highest and lowest-paid staff in a company, so the lowest aren’t on poverty wages while the highest earn millions.

Bringing manufacturing back- creates jobs, less impact on the environment. I'm happy if things cost more, if they are well made, support British wages and last longer.
UK tourism - lots of investment in making some of the run down seaside towns fabulous places to stay.
Sort out the empty property crisis-enforced sales if necessary.
Stop allowing ridiculous contracts 0 hours etc. Make employees be fairer.
More normal jobs around school hours.
Education should be for everyone and not just about answering questions in an exam apart from English and maths there should be a much wider range of subjects including lots of interest based ones.
Get the money off the big company tax avoiders.

'Stop punishing the poor and the sick for daring to be poor and/or sick. Introduce a basic minimum income so people don't have to choose between feeding the kids or getting to work.Elect a government that can in the entire country without having to bribe bits of it to keep votes (ok that's too naive)'

1. You don't understand we have benefits, specifically ESA and PIP for the sick?
2. www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50947097#:~:text=From%20April%202020%2C%20the%20new,up%204.9%25%20to%20%C2%A36.45
3. We have a democracy, this government was voted in with a massive majority.

I cba to reply to your airy fairy cloud cuckoo loud 'leave universities alone!' nonsense.

I'm not trying to suggest you have a mundane life OP, sorry. I'm a geek too and pend hours on logic problems, but also appreciate (now - I certainly didn't at the time) the time I spent in school learning about the arts and humanities. Even if I was more interested in the link between maths and music and the chemical composition of paint 😂

Hmm, getoff look at my username. It represents the job I used to do.

Civic responsibility, teaching our children to be resilient and independent. Placing value on careers in social care and teaching. Respecting and investing in the environment.

Not the Tories, that's for sure.

Maybe taxing billionaires, investing in a green recovery from Covid.
And stopping pitting the poor against each other while people who have more money than they could ever possibly spend laugh their way to the bank.

You don't understand we have benefits, specifically ESA and PIP for the sick? The benefits system for sick people is unwieldy and unfair and set up to deny benefits, not issue them, shown by the fact that most of those who make a challenge actually win their cases. There was a recent report about benefit changes by the UN which stated as much:

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/un-report-uk-poverty-austerity-government-cuts-special-rapporteur-benefits-callous-a8636901.html

My husband was denied PIP when his life was severely impaired by an incurable illness, so no, those benefits aren't equitably made available (he did eventually get it but two years after he should have received it).

I think everyone should order online from U.K. companies for U.K. goods- a bit of searching usually brings up the actual manufacturer - order from them instead of pouring your money into the USA. Not hard but unfortunately it takes a few mins of your time and it won't arrive next day so people can't be bothered. and prefer to blame everything on gov/ big business / the rich

1/ Cheaper childcare
2/ Cheaper and better public transport wherever you live & stop people needing to use a car
3/ Better range of education
4/ Make university free so people can actually afford to become things like doctors and engineers
5/ Better designed and cheaper housing
6/ Better food regulation, so that ready meals and fast food isn't either really expensive or loaded with crap that you wouldn't put in if you were making it yourself
7/ Decentralisation of the economy. Why does it need to be so London centric
8/ Stop building on green spaces in towns & cities
9/ Have spaces so that people can actually do things which aren't just live, work and buy their shopping
10/ Better mental health care. So many things could have been solved at the beginning, rather than much later (if they are lucky) when the person can no longer hold a job and is too far gone to ever really be cured
11/ Make violence unacceptable regardless of who against
12/ Ban EastEnders as that's how too many people learn conflict resolution

If all leave voters left!

think the desire for greatness can be part of the problem tbh. What we need is a government which is just, wise, compassionate, egalitarian and truthful. Not sure where we're going to get one of those from though - not from any of the main political parties in their current form, certainly.

Agree with this. Not getting involved in foreign wars but still retaining the capability to defend ourselves would also make us "great again".

I'd like it if we looked at some of the Nordic countries and did what we could to emulate them. I'm happy to pay more taxes, as long as they are spent wisely.

@GetOffYourHighHorse

Having lived and worked in many other countries I'll tell you what makes Great Britain 'great'. Free speech, tolerance and inclusion. People are allowed to practise whatever faith they wish, they've allowed to wear what they like. Workers have rights, vulnerable people have rights and get benefits. The NHS is so taken for granted in this country it is staggering.

We live in a free society and the biggest complaint seems to be Boris Johnson's hair style and he waffles on a bit.

In this whole thread yours is the only positive post I have found.

My life would be much better if people didn't grumble so much and looked for more of the positives in life. I know people with horendous problems but they are still happy because they have a positive outlook. Conversely there are people with health and wealth who still moan and grumble all the time.

My life would be much better if people could state an opinion and people could/would argue the point if they don't agree without insulting the person holding a different view.

EG. 'I think that is wrong because ^alternative view*', or 'Have you considered ... when you decided that'. Instead I mostly see insults and labels attached to people with different views.

My life would also be improved if there was less envy. You never know the whole story of someone else's life and having more money or more possessions does not make a person happier.

I also think people could be happier if they weren't so invested in criticising others doing things differently. Domestic abuse and other abuses aside, how someone else lives their life is no business of anyone else's - although that brings another issue up.

People just having a bit of thought for how their behaviours impacts on others would be lovely. Not to the extent of putting their lives before your own but just 'Is this going to have a negative effect on others and if so, is there anything I can do to mitigate it.'

I'm sure there are other things but at this time these are the things that stick out for me.

Less populist nationalism.

Forgive me if this has been pointed out before - I haven't read the whole thread - but 'Great Britain' is just the name of the largest island in the British Isles. It's the greatest British Isle. No more. Nothing to do with prestige or power. Just the biggest rock.

It was never 'Great' in the first place.

There are two conflicting arguments about why the ‘Great’ was stuck on the front of the name. The first is that it is used to distinguish Britain from its similar sounding, but much smaller French neighbour, Brittany. The second reason is due to the ego of a certain King James I, who wanted to make it abundantly clear that he wasn’t just the king of the oldRoman Britain(which only included England and some of Wales), but of the entire island; thus he referred to himself as King of Great Britain.

In order to make Britain a better place in my opinion we need to:

• sort out our hugely biased media which is continually brainwashing the public and is only serving its billionnaire owners
• invest a lot more in our education system and cap the number of private school educated pupils who work in the government, civil service and who are offered places at HE to ensure our key institutions are more representative
• Sort out our huge productivity issue, invest more in our industries and do more to prevent our start ups and remaining companies being sold off.

@Malteserdiet I agree about the hideously negative media being one of the worst things about this country (and probably many others). Because we've been fed a diet of "disaster is just around the corner" all the time, some of us totally refused to take Covid seriously at first at all; to us it was just more press hysteria, like the Millennium Bug, your mobile phone is killing you, there are weapons of mass destruction, immigrants are stealing your jobs, every man is a paedophile, etc. The government use the media to sway the public all the time, and the public blindly follow it. The last few months have proved this.

Have fewer career politicians who are born into wealth, attend a posh school, then Oxbridge, then straight into politics, barely dipping a toe into the world the rest of us live in. Before entering politics, having a requirement of having worked in a customer-facing role for a few years would be no bad thing.

End this culture of top-down micromanagement (mostly by government) which seems to have taken over everything, such as the NHS being run from behind a desk in Whitehall, schools being run from behind a desk in Whitehall (usually by somebody whose only experience of education was being a pupil at a posh school), and a constant sense of "I'll have to ask head office", or "I'll have to check our procedures". We have turned into a country of robots, where nobody can think for themselves, and the Covid crisis has reinforced this all the more.

Despite having a "personality", Boris himself is probably one of the worst offenders for not thinking for himself: did he bring in the compulsory masks because Cummings or someone told him "it's now the popular opinion"? You can see the checklist he was told to follow:

• Wear a mask in public - tick.
• Hint to the public they might become compulsory, to test their reaction: tick.
• If the public ask why they weren't brought in earlier, keep fobbing them off - tick.
• Make them compulsory - tick.
• And, here is my box waiting to be ticked: a big police presence around shopping centres (or at least a few photos of them in the papers) on Muzzle-Up day, to make people think the police have the manpower to enforce it, just like the boys in blue made a token appearance to slap the wrists of those sitting on park benches.

Stop drinking ?
Start moving?
Stop being so entitled
Start voting properly
Stop tolerating incompetent politicians
Start tolerating each other
Stop blaming forriners for everything

Massively changing our attitudes. The country is shit. The rich are getting richer, the poor are getting fed from food banks. People buy from companies that don’t pay proper tax, criticise workers that try and stand up for themselves and are generally very self centred and false. It just feels like we’re on a steep slippery slope to the bottom. Britain hasn’t been great for decades and I very much doubt it ever will be again. I feel very sad about the country.

Rejoining the EU and eating a lot of humble pie.

OK as that isn't going to happen (though in a year's time, who knows what the mood music might be) I suggest the following (we don't need to be "great again", we just need to be a considerate sensible country:

Complete review of tax system and use taxes for wealth distribution and investment in infrastructure and public services.

Health and education should be priorities and I would also include public transport and broadband infrastructure.

Discourage second (and more) home ownership and encourage more brown field building (it looks like Boris is actually going to do this but builders should have to pay towards local infrastructure in proportion to size of development so "infill" builders don't get away with not paying anything.

Build a sustainable economy after covid. Do not make people commute to London just to keep sandwich shops open. Create jobs elsewhere.

Sort out noise pollution generally but ban personal use of fireworks (and garden bonfires).

Proportional representation - so that every vote counts
Localisation of decision making - so that the people we all vote for are accountable to us not Dominic Cummings

And shut down the military industrial complex that sucks up so much of the world's money

The problem is that people define greatness differently. The 'Great' Britain that people are hankering after was built on colonialism and a sense of superiority and I wouldn't welcome that back.

To me a great country would be one which is fair, welcoming and equal. Where hard work is rewarded but wealth distribution means no one goes without. I'd be far more comfortable in a society which doesn't value the acquisition of wealth and consumer goods above education and experiences. I'd like a sensible housing market and no ability to profit from life essentials - shelter, warmth and water.

A country where politics is less tribal and where people are taught to think critically would be a start. We celebrate going to the 'school of hard knockz' and the 'University of life' rather than valuing experts and science.

Reading that back makes me sound like a socialist and I'm far from it. I'd just like things to be fairer for all. I'm very aware that the majority of people who hark on about making Britain great again would disagree with most if what I've written as they tend to be people who think success = wealth.