Cost of living horse shit

[ShittyGlitter]

Sorry I know there are a few similar threads running at the moment, but I need to vent frustration. I see so many struggling and talk here of scrimping and saving for the basics.

why is it so shit in the uk?

I’m in France. Diesel for my car is costing €1.78, supermarket food is fresh, local well stocked and cheaper.
i unfortunately saw a young boy cut his head yesterday at an event, the cut was small, he was fine, but possibly a stitch or two required. A rural location, ambulance called, arrived within 10 minutes. Where I live the current advice is to only call an ambulance if it’s a life or limb situation.

I was told energy companies have put their prices up by 4%. (Not sure if this is true!)

I know this is very anecdotal and France are not without their problems too, but why on earth am I or we we sitting back and living the way we do! Is this all Brexit!? Can someone smarter than me tell me why things are so utterly rubbish for so many in the uk? is there a practical solution?

You could vent on any of the 20 current threads...

And you can go elsewhere, yet here we are

Too many people and not enough services to go around.

Probably because the French would actually kick off if their govt was as shit as ours, we are so passive over here!

The tories have significantly underfunded health and social care. The ambulance is probably parked outside A&E unable to dispatch it’s patient as there are no beds to receive them. So the ambulance is out of action detained on site and not attending calls.
There is a huge recruitment and retention crisis in NHS and the demand s upon the service is too high
Food we are no longer in EU so the distribution network we are used to, that’s gone
we don’t benefit from EU collective purchasing or economy of of scale as we aren’t a member. Exports and imports are a costly faff
For too long many people looked other way when unions and public sector staff complained .Hunt demonised the doctors and people who 2 and half year ago clapped and effused about nhs now look away from the shortages,funding crisis or don’t seem to care

Ten years of austerity means that every service is cut to the bone.
Then add to that leaving the EU, covid, and a very ineffectual government, and here we are!

i thought we were paying in crazy amounts to the EU and leaving meant we would be better off. I voted remain, but was optimistic that maybe in the long run we’ve find a way to make it work.

The French pay much more tax than we do, with the rich being taxed far more steeply than rich folk in the UK.

A lot of Tories say that rich folk will leave the country if we tax them more - a few might, but most people don't want to up sticks and leave their whole life behind to save a bit of money.

Did France have a Furlough/Self Employed grant scheme during Covid - that alone has cost the UK a pretty penny.

The economies of the two countries are structurally different. In a nutshell, France borrows more, taxes more and spends more. In 2021, France had a debt to GDP ratio of 113% while UK had 95%. You could argue that France can afford to do so. It exports more. But at the same time has twice the unemployment rate of the UK. France has a lower credit rating.

Essentially, France has a very different attitude to managing public finances and the economy. It has its pros and cons. It’s simply a case of whether you are a consumer or a producer. If you are a listed company this year, you would rather be in the UK. But if you a salaried or wage worker, you would rather be in France.

But we got most of what we paid in back plus we had the advantage of free movement and trade within the EU, which we've now lost.

Plus COVID, the war in Ukraine and the shitty corrupt Tory government that's destroyed public services and fucked over the majority of the population

That’s not necessarily a good thing. Macron actively stood on the ticket to lower taxes for the rich. He called France ‘Cube without the Sun’ and got rid of the wealth tax. Yes, that’s right. France scrapped the wealth tax because it did not work. France had a net outflow of 60,000 millionaires as as a result of this, causing a shortfall of 7billion Euros of revenue per year.

Sure, you can eat the rich. But when they leave, which they absolutely have the means to do simply because they are rich, then you find a big black hole in the finances.

These facts are not popular on this forum, but they are facts.

And the paperwork and faff of settled status hurdles the govt imposed hasn’t made EU nationals feel welcome . The EU nationals who are care staff, NHS a staff. Priti Patel has made the UK an unwelcoming and overly bureaucratic place for relocation with the effect it puts skilled workers off coming to uk. We are haemorrhaging trained doctors to Australia and NZ

IIRC they had a freeze on energy costs during their lockdowns.

Anyone have any clue on what the wages are in France? Comparable with the UK?

In France most of the rural areas look reasonably well off with mostly lovely looking homes. I wonder what the city suburbs look like. Does poverty look the same in the uk as it does in places like France. I don’t see any food bank donation places in supermarkets in France for example.

I'm not rich but if they cranked up taxes on higher earners in return for more public services, I would definitely reduce my hours to try and avoid it. Have you seen how many higher earners try and dump as much money in their pensions as possible to still keep 30 hours free childcare or to avoid the 60% marginal tax rate? Imagine that but magnified.