To think everything is getting worse?

[francesfrankenfurter]

I watched the British Olympics opening ceremony this morning in 2012. It was only 10 years ago, but it seems a different world. It was such a hopeful time with a public mood of feeling proud of our country.

Now everything seems to be getting worse. The economy, cost of living crisis, crime, housing, corruption amongst MPs, poor public services, etc etc. Every day brings more gloom and doom and the public mood seems to be, things can only get worse.

AIBU

Are you proposing to encourage young people from abroad to come here to live?

Perhaps you mean emigrate?

People who leave here to live in another country emigrate. People who come to live here from abroad immigrate.

Sshhh, you’re not allowed to say this. Especially as many curtain twitchers on here we’re falling over themselves starting threads on wanting to report their neighbours for taking their second daily walk. Not to mention the grown adults, sorry idiots, stood outside their houses banging pots and pans, and enjoying Netflix all day while the economy was being shafted.

The chickens just came home to roost.

We’ll said. There were always going to be massive painful consequences to the lockdowns etc. Some suffered at the time, such as the 3 million excluded, but now the consequences are affecting everyone else with inflation, interest rate rises, etc.

@jcyclops you obviously knew what I meant.

It was obvious at the time but so well covered by campaigns that people demanded more damage.

There are more job vacancies now than people to fill the jobs. I know inflation is high but government has just thrown people some additional support. The Commonwealth games are on Birmingham end of July and August. We have jubilee to at end of week. We are now also free to travel again after various lockdowns and travel restrictions. Not all doom and gloom.

I don't see the coming years as a threat to capitalism in its many forms, rather I see the rise of populism as a threat to democracy.

Populist politicians will always get more votes than more serious vision politicians ( whether you agree with their vision or not) by

1. promising all upside but no downside (Brexit for example) or
2. promises that they know will never be delivered (40 new hospitals or 10 new nuclear plants) or
3. by appealing to the darker side (illegal migrants get shipped off to Rwanda - though fortunately this is likely to be another lie that will never happen) or
4. nostalgia / patriotism- flag waving - let's bring back ounces and pounds etc.

The challenge is that the average voter is dumb enough to fall for the initial promise / lie despite the warnings of others or the "so called experts". Then even if they realise they have been conned / lied to, the average voter would prefer to double down on their original belief often with anger rather than admit they were wrong. The "others / so called experts" do not help this with their taunts of "we told you so!!". Examples of which are Brexit or Boris being a shameless liar.

The threat to democracy is a race to the bottom in populism whilst important matters of state are ignored or be incapable of being dealt with by bad quality politicians.

Or as Winston Churchill said:
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter"

...and what would have been your alternative?

If it had just been the UK that had lockdowns, fair enough but much of the world did as well and countries like Brazil and Russia that didn't have horrendous death rates.

The real issue is the war in Ukraine, without which we would have had decent economic growth, compensating for the cost of LD....

Assuming we accept your premise that all the bad things are caused by stupid voters who don't know what's good for them and refuse to listen to experts - what do you think can/should be done?

@daimbarsatemydogsbone

"Assuming we accept your premise that all the bad things are caused by stupid voters who don't know what's good for them and refuse to listen to experts - what do you think can/should be done?"

++++

Well historically what has tended to happen when voters become disillusioned with democracy or feel that the current system of Government is not working out is a lurch to a far left or a far right dictator.
However I personally don't see this as realistic for the UK as such changes away from democracy usually requires a strong catalytic event such as say a 1930s type depression or serious civil unrest, plus there is an established history of democracy in the UK.

My hope is a combination of some voters getting wiser to the lies of populism, those voters that don't get wiser become disillusioned with all politicians and don't vote and that populist politicians contain the seeds of their own destruction by believing they are untouchable by the electorate and fail to keep upping the ante for populist policies ( give voters a half priced Nando's one year and the next year they will expect more.)

Johnson will either get no confidenced by his own party or lose / not do well at the next election so loses his job then. He will be replaced a populist lite politician such as Liz Truss or Sunak who will simply not be able to get away with the same shit that Johnson has.

But either way we are in for some turbulent political years ahead with potential for some civil unrest.

I seem to remember 36 in one of my primary classes. That can’t be right, though, surely? Scotland, in the 1980s.

I understand why you feel this way but I don’t think it is as easy as move somewhere else. The fact is the causes are due to a finite amount of resources, and increasing demands on those resources due to an improved expectation of living and on a world scale over decades, an increase in population. We need to better with our resources to use less but what we’ve done is improve our access I.e we’re better at getting oil but use more, we expect a teacher to teach more pupils rather than improving teaching methods. There is hope as I think this is shifting and technology is helping us be smarter but we’re playing catch up. The U.K. is better than many places to do this.