UK has gone to shit.

[Ilovegreentomatoes]

What is happening to the uk? No food on the shelves, the cost of living has become extortionate coupled with stagnating wages it seems this is a country where unless your in the higher income bracket you really can't afford to live anymore.
Poverty is going to be rife I dread to think the amount of people who will be choosing between food or heating this year.
Aibu to think this country has gone to shit of the likes we have not seen for a long time.
I am lower income and feel like I can't afford to live anymore.

Nope, really is Brexit. Tories will still win next election though….the hard left are essentially sabotaging any chance Labour would have😣

Prices here gone crazy also, food expensive. Gas/electricity prices gone up twice this year. So many also don't seem to give a basic crap about other's (frigging neighbour's across the way their music, the base pounding until 7.30am and their silly kids on a loud mini motorbike thing which is not for kids all day going over and back enough to drive a person insane).. I stopped watching the news as was watching too much and nothing but miserable depressing news. Try to ease off on the news and stop worrying. Cannot even think of Christmas etc as living week by week. But we can change how we think and try to do something positive every day or else just be totally depressed. Hope you are ok. I bought some lovely throws for over us on sofa, lovely and snuggly. take care xx

It’s shit for us at the moment. Full time carer to a disabled child, two children, we don’t smoke, drink or go out, apart from twice a year for birthdays. I cut my own hair, and DH’s. I haven’t had new clothes in 3 years, and neither has DH. We have fixed a mortgage rate so that won’t change, but everything else going up, we are on Bootstrap cooking and we are making plans to use duvets to keep warm in winter to keep our fuel costs low.
We will get through it, but things are dire. We earn too much for benefits, but only just over the limit so we are super squeezed. A school residential came up for DS2 this year and he just can’t go as I don’t have the money. We have sold everything we can, not sure what else we can do, but we feel pretty abandoned by the government. We have to care for DS1 and his disability, but the financial and emotional hit we have taken because of it is huge.

[quote luckylavender]@jgw1 - Corbyn has gone now. It's a tired old argument. Move on. And you can't prove it anyway. Difficult to see how anyone could be worse.
[/quote]
Yes, I had noticed a growing number of but Keir posts appearing. But I don't think I shall move on just yet. After all some Leavers still believe what was written on that bus.

Not scaremongering just generally worried.

No one really. And there’s a lot of things being put down to brexit which isn’t. For eg my phone is a manager for a uk haulage company who this last time last year had 300 drivers on the road. Now he’s got 100. The total lost to brexit is exactly 1 (polish). He lost the other 200 because the drivers need two yearly medicals and they can’t get doctors appointments because of Covid.

I find this extremely difficult to believe 🤔
And if it's true then it's the drivers' fault for not being organised..There is no way surgeries would let people lose their jobs and GPs get paid a lot for the HGV medicals.

@Hulkynothunky yes, I'm hyperbolising. However it's true that the way it was handled has ended up chucking millions of people in the poverty bin. If the people making decisions had been trying to WFH, home school, look after pre-schoolers/toddlers in a tiny flat with no outside space, there wouldn't have been a lockdown and there wouldn't have been the monstrous economic effect on people. There would have been other problems, undoubtedly - but the decisions were all made by people who themselves had absolutely nothing economic to lose. Boris Johnson was not going to lose his children's home because of lockdowns - yet I know several people who did, and two who took their own lives because of it.

And one of the reasons those holidays have gone up BunsyGirl will be that the value of the pound has gone down. That's Brexit related.

@ThirdElephant

I think there are teething problems certainly, and COVID definitely hasn't helped matters!

What will make the difference going forward is if we actually force businesses to pay people a fair wage with decent working conditions, or whether the government capitulate to the businesses and allow them to continue to bring in cheap labour from overseas so that they can maximise profits.

Personally I think Covid has been a great scapegoat for the government. Anything that goes wrong they blame on Covid. How long is this going to go one for.

Eventually they will have to admit they f-ed up.

@BoredZelda

b) if wages go up then businesses logically will pass costs onto the consumer - so prices will go up. So how is that improving matters?

You’re right about the public sector but loads of research shows this isn’t an issue. If prices go up, that’s ok, as long as people’s wages go up with them, which, if you pay enough people a living wage, is what actually happens.

What research shows public sector pay isn't an issue? Genuinely interested. Do you have a link? I don't understand how say a teaching assistant or HCA in a hospital can't be affected by rising prices and stagnant wages. If everyone else's wages in the private sector goes up then these public sector workers get left behind.

FFS we will never know how JC would have done. Let's not compare Boris and his cronies to a fictional government to excuse his mismanagement.

Boris runs a fictional government, now it all makes sense.

Yes I'm thinking positive that I have a roof over my head and I won't starve so I'm luckier than a lot of others. I really feel for families on the bread line especially with the 20 pound uplift taken away.

@Ilovegreentomatoes

If tory get in at the next election....well really I give up.

Then Labour had better get themselves organised into a party fit for government. But no, they're too busy playing student politics.

If inflation rises a lot there will be pressure to raise interest rates so that will not be good for those who have over stretched themselves with a mortgage in the recent buying frenzy. The housing market could crash and that would be a disaster for a lot of people.

@OwlIceCrem

Whenever I get worried about this sort of thing my DH says “In a thousand years this will all be dust” 😂 Not trying to be facetious but the point is that people have been through far worse in history, great depressions, mass inflation etc and things always keep going. He reads a lot of history and worries far less than me- there must be a connection 😄

This is the best comment I’ve read, well said 😊

Personally I think Covid has been a great scapegoat for the government
Anything that goes wrong they blame on Covid

SUCH a convenient scapegoat, I agree

Yes OP it has. Nobody is running the country and this is the result, the problem being our prime minister who does NOTHING and does not even have a plan, because he just doesn't care and is completely irresponsible. He is a disgrace, and does nothing at all, there is no government going on, so everything falls apart.
He should be ashamed, but is a stranger to that emotion. But ev veryone who voted tory should also be ashamed, and in particular those tories who voted him in as their leader. They knew what he was like because of his laziness and wasting of public money when major of London.

I am in an eu country and went for some blood tests on Friday. When the nurse told me she'd be taking four vials I asked her if she was worried about running out of vials. She laughed at me, thinking I was joking, and said come on we aren't really taking that much.
I then explained that in the UK there was a vial shortage and people were not getting blood tests for iron deficiency etc. because they only had enough for really important or urgent tests.
Her face kind of went white and serious and she reassured me they definitely had enough bottles. She had definitely never heard of a vial shortage in Europe.
And then as if it were an ironic sketch she accidentally dropped one of my bottles on the floor and had to call her colleague to bring a new one and print a new label with my details.
So the issue with the vials really does seem like it's brexit related.
Same with the food. Shelves fully stacked. No queues at petrol stations.

I worry for my relatives in the UK - especially the elderly ones who rely on certain products and can't be dashing round multiple supermarkets as soon as the shelves are stocked, or who need heating and can't just put on another jumper. But then they probably voted for brexit in the first place - based on massive lies.

@wherearemychickens So holidays to the US have gone up in the last two years because of Brexit…bollocks. The pound was weaker against the dollar two years ago!

Anyone else think the cries of 'it's not Brexit ' are starting to sound a bit hysterical?

@jgw1

FFS we will never know how JC would have done. Let's not compare Boris and his cronies to a fictional government to excuse his mismanagement.

Boris runs a fictional government, now it all makes sense.

JC running a fictional government as he was never voted PM. I thought my comment was clearly tbh

Eventually they will have to admit they f-ed up.

And on that very day, big pink oinking things will take to the skies

@Rosewaterblossom

It's a case of since the mid 2000s, cheap foreign labour has been in abundance. Now businesses have to actually pay living wages to people instead of cheap labour, people are starting to realise : oh shit, that's why wages are actually so shit.. because foreign labour was cheap, now employers have to pay living wages to brits but don't want to.

And this will lead to price increases etc

The total lack of investment in infrastructure for decades is coming home to roost.

The stupid and short sighted decision to switch from coal and oil fired power stations to gas is one feature - gas was already a finite resource back when the current power stations were built to burn it.

Using gas meant a 'cleaner' burn and building the 'scrubbers' needed to clean coal smoke was too expensive.

We now lack the ability to generate all our own power and are helplessly reliant on foreign power sources.

Roads, power, transport, logistics, manufacturing - all done according to the cheapest criteria.

Just in time logistics is fine, IF there are enough lorries to transport the goods

Labour intensive farming and food production is fine as long as we import cheap labour

Our roads are falling to pieces, food is rotting in the fields, animals are being culled instead of butchered, electricity and gas are phenomenally expensive and we are failing in all sectors because of our dependence on foreign food, natural gas, oil, LPG, raw materials, imported finished goods and labour.

Both the Conservatives and Labour have ruled as more gas powered stations were built and no one seemed to think about the future.

Short term expediency over long term gain wins every time.

@FrankButchersDickieBow
I took it that @suzie888 doesn't work with poor people but with people who can't manage their finances