Is the UK about to collapse?

[Penfield]

Sorry - There was probably a better way to put this.

Does anyone else have a feeling that we are close to some collapse, explosion, disintegration of society ...

With gas prices, petrol shortages, inflation, Brexit fall out, Covid, gaslighting government etc

I feel like we're on the edge of something - big ...

Indie started in the 80’s not the 90’s!

[quote Maxmaher]@Claudethecat we didn't see the full extent of damage the 2008 recession did because we were just on the tail end of the shockwave from the united states

My feeling is This time we will be that shockwave

Job losses ,businesses closures , price hikes everywhere , negative equity , rioting , looting

Don't want to sound like the apocalypse but i am very concerned a lot of our economy is being held together with Boris Johnson's chewing gum and spit[/quote]
If that all does happen (and I don't deny that it could, but I also don't think it is a foregone conclusion) it won't be fun at all. The UK will not collapse though. Many of us have lived through all those things before, so more than once!

some more than once

I think big change is needed on a lot of fronts. And something will have to happen to trigger the shifts we need. I'm thinking about environmental and social change, which means economic too. Unfortunately I think the status quo is a cockroach.

Collapse? I'm not sure, but I do find it strange that we were kept at home by the pandemic, now we're being potentially kept at home due to petrol shortages. I agree with a previous poster who spoke of how consumerist we have all become and it feels like that's starting to be a bit 'controlled'. I feel like there's something going on that we don't know about.

From an unemotional observational point of view - people don't seem to riot in the winter in the UK. It seems to be an April-October activity.

Bad flu season or new Covid variant

The bad flu season may not happen.

They are plans to vaccinate more people this winter than ever before with flu vaccines to try and avoid this - millions of people taking tiny steps to avoid that situation.

I am very concerned a lot of our economy is being held together with Boris Johnson's chewing gum and spit

Superb. I may have to steal that.

OP if you have been reading the news you may have noticed that the world is going through a pandemic and at least 5 million have lost their lives. For their families, the worst has already happened. You can't have failed to see people trying to flee Kabul, standing in a sewer, handing their babies to soldiers, being blown up in a terrorist attack. You meanwhile are sitting in a safe environment typing about how shit the govt. is.

MatildaIThink
@Sarahlou63
Yup, I think you're right. The cycle is just about at the top, as soon as interest rates start rising (probably early 2022) there will be a massive "correction". Nothing to do with Boris and his buffoons, obviously
Interest rates will not rise, the government will make sure of that, even if it do so meaning that they need to take direct control of the BoE, because if interest rates rise it is political suicide for the government. Also, with the majority of the Conservatives and their supporters (not necessarily voters), being owners of large property portfolios they will not allow the hosing market to crash, it will be sustained at all costs, even if that means damage to the wider economy.

Really? After all of these years of economic turmoil you haven't even looked at the most basic information?

The BOE's remit is to keep inflation at 2%. It's currently 4%. They are allowing some time to see where it stabilises because Covid has skewed it a bit BUT it's pretty obvious inflation is rising a lot right now, in real terms NOT just Covid impact - on many of the items in the basket "basket of goods" used to calculate it such as housing, fuel and food - so to think the bank won't raise interest rates is bananas, frankly.

I really hope you have no mortgage or debts if you have no clue as to how the very basics of the financial system works. The Bank will absolutely raise interest rates if inflation does not reduce by itself, and there are no signs or market forces indicating that it will at present: quite the opposite. The Bank have warned of this for years, repeatedly. Do you think they will just let inflation run away? They have a remit: they will carry it out.

If you are relying on that your only hope is for the Government to save you by changing the BOE remit which is highly unlikely to happen because runaway inflation erodes wealth. Who do you think is in power right now? Oh...

They are plans to vaccinate more people this winter than ever before with flu vaccines to try and avoid this - millions of people taking tiny steps to avoid that situation.

The real worry is that those vaccines are out of date. There was no flu season last year to predicate the formulation. The vaccine this winter could easily be useless.

@OhYouBadBadKitten

From an unemotional observational point of view - people don't seem to riot in the winter in the UK. It seems to be an April-October activity.

Hot summer are know to have more riots.

www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/link-between-summer-heat-riots-1816054

Field studies have shown cities that reported higher temperatures consistently above 32°C had greater rates of domestic violence, assaults – and, bizarrely, baseball batters being struck by pitchers.

Laboratory research has shown people become more irritable and interpret things negatively when it gets hotter.

As temperatures rise it seems subtle, but important, changes in our mood follow that can prove the catalyst for not just individual outbursts but collective anarchy.

Another downside to global temperature rises.

It was hot with London riots - the sound of helicopters and heat

But I don’t think a few bouts of anger at forecourts are close, it’s understandable people had arguments / anger etc I’m surprised there isn’t more sometimes (recent IB stuff).

Most consumable lines even in places like Lidl and Aldi are up 30% across the board

No hard evidence of this, of course.

inferiorCatSteve that's really interesting. Thank you! I'd put it down to a mix of fewer inhibitions when it's warm and conversely rain and cold literally cooling things off.

@MarshaBradyo

It was hot with London riots - the sound of helicopters and heat

But I don’t think a few bouts of anger at forecourts are close, it’s understandable people had arguments / anger etc I’m surprised there isn’t more sometimes (recent IB stuff).

You may find yourself surprised at how quickly people become very angry and - in some cases, violent - when they are losing homes and supermarket shelves are rather bare and they can't afford heating. "Society" is much more fragile than many seem to realise.

apologies for getting your name wrong inferiorCatSlave

@Blossomtoes

They are plans to vaccinate more people this winter than ever before with flu vaccines to try and avoid this - millions of people taking tiny steps to avoid that situation.

The real worry is that those vaccines are out of date. There was no flu season last year to predicate the formulation. The vaccine this winter could easily be useless.

I'm fully aware the matching may not be great this year - doesn't mean it won't have some protective effect.

On plus side it's been suggested that some of the rare flu vrisus may have died out due to global lockdowns.

Plus more people are handwashing and there still some mask wearing going on - will should help prevent spread.

A bad flu season is a very real possiblity - what it's not is a certainty.

If you believe the BS bbc news roll out, yes.
In real life no

I wouldn’t be surprised - there’s that saying we are three meals away from a riot.

But we’ve had bare shelves already and people may have got angry at each other but no where near riot. So it’d have to be far more of an issue than we’ve had already.

What sparks reaction? Something symbolic like the US recently. High unemployment at 30% historically

OhYouBadBadKitten it's fine - I was being glared at by our tortie cat when I was name picking.

It's a horrible time to be alive

If you have a mortgage, I'd be looking for longer term fixed rates. Interest rates are going to go up quite hard and fast when the BoE decides to act.

Marsha is right I think. It doesn't mean that things aren't terrible for many and about to get worse for more. It just means that people are going to be too busy surviving to react.

inferiorCatSlave

People are quite right to respond to my earlier post by pointing out that many industries were devastated by Government policies in the 1980s, and many people harmed as a result.
Others have pointed out that the driver of those policies was to end the subsidy of outdated, inefficient and uneconomic activity - which might have been the right thing to do but was inhumanely executed - and the scale of present day devastation is of a different order, involving the dismantling of every facet of a functioning economy with no forethought or plan involved, and based on no known economic model. I agree with the latter.