Why is it worse in the U.K.

[Thatsaturdayfeeling]

I’m British but not in the U.K. at the moment. Where I am, we also have food price increases and petrol was v high for a while, but it’s all not to the extent as the U.K…why is the U.K. in such dire straits compared to other places?

It's not. Inflation is currently higher in the EU than it is in the UK

Meanwhile the NHS is doing its utmost to save my DMIL who is 93 with dementia and several incurable conditions, who really isn't very keen on soldiering on any longer. Make her comfortable please, but there's no life to save.

@britsabroad your post and mine jar awkwardly.. You don't think enough is being done, and I think too much is being done. My DMIL is/was delightful but is now reduced to infantilism by dementia. For two minutes in every ten minutes she knows she wants out, and for eight minutes she screams for release.

I’m living outside of the UK and have been for many years now, having resided in multiple Countries. I can honestly say the UK is a much cheaper place to live overall. I have many expat and local friends living in an array of Countries and absolutely everyone is seeing a huge increase in their cost of living in various ways. Food, energy, white goods and rents are seeing enormous increases.
I really think the UK media is not helpful in the way it makes UK citizens feel victimised when this is simply not the case.

@Boxofsockss

exactly Brexit

www.worlddata.info/cost-of-living.php. This website is interesting (although I’m not sure how current the data is) - comparing cost of living in countries around the world with the USA, but also each country’s purchasing power index, to show how much someone on an average salary can actually buy compared to people in the USA. It shows more clearly why life is difficult for so many people in the UK, and why anecdote from people who have lived all over as ex pats is pretty unhelpful, as they are patently not living a life representative of the majority of people’s experiences.

Here’s another interesting table:
www.worlddata.info/quality-of-life.php

For all those advocating a return to a Labour government....Anyone else remember Labour Treasury Secretary Liam Byrne’s note to his Conservative successor? 'Dear chief secretary, I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left'.
I really wish there were 3 proper political parties to choose from, but there aren't. There are 2 very imperfect ones. It reminds me of what the bible says - 'Put not your trust in princes' and also another verse which tells us to pray for kings and all who are in high positions. Perhaps not enough of us are doing that....

anotherangryvoice.blogspot.com/2015/05/theres-no-money-left-argument.html?m=1

It was a joke. It was a joke that was used as political capital in an absolute dick trick of a move.

XingMing · Yesterday 20:57
@britsabroad your post and mine jar awkwardly.. You don't think enough is being done, and I think too much is being done. My DMIL is/was delightful but is now reduced to infantilism by dementia. For two minutes in every ten minutes she knows she wants out, and for eight minutes she screams for release“

So sorry.

12 years of Tory austerity and self-serving governing.
Brexit.
Low salaries (countries with high costs of living usually have much higher pay).
Extortionate rents and house prices.
High taxes (I would actually be happy with this if our public services we're good).
Poor living conditions due to inadequately funded public services.
A class system that keeps some of the poorest and most vulnerable voting for the very party that destroys them.

I am not British and have lived in multiple countries (I currently live in the UK). It is significantly worse in the UK than in some other countries. My family are finding a way to leave the UK because quality of life is better elsewhere.

Yes exactly that @MooseBreath
We're in Switzerland with high living costs but much higher wages and low tax. Better healthcare and quality of life. I don't think anyone minds paying tax if you see the benefits/it's well spent - brilliant public services, healthcare, fantastic pension, everything works etc.

Rich countries tend to have higher wages and higher prices.
You can't just directly compare costs between countries. I could buy a loaf of bread very cheaply in some very poor countries, it does not mean it is a better country to live in.

Are you joking? The tories have increased our debt by £555 BILLION since then.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-uk-national-debt-has-risen-by-ps555-billion-since-2010-under-george-osborne-a6947661.html

That's six years old! UK still has lowest debt to GDP ratio in G7.

@BigWoollyJumpers Can you provide proof of that? Because it is not what was said on the TV news.

Also, I agree that the figure has to be considered with gdp but my point was in reply to the poster who was implying that the Tories are much better with money than Labour.

Lower than Belgium/France/southern Europe/US/Canada but higher than Germany and Scandinavia.

tradingeconomics.com/country-list/government-debt-to-gdp

I repeat Brexit and the present appalling government.

Crap govt
We are an island so rely on import and export
Brexit
No strategy anymore for COVID which'll totally overwhelm NHS this winter

@britsabroad
Perhaps experience of the NHS depends on where you live. My father has had a series of collapses - 6 hospitalisations over the past 3 months and 3 ambulance call outs. Only once did we have to wait for an ambulance. The other couple of times it was there within 15 minutes. Yes. He did have to wait overnight in the assessment ward next to A and E but he was offered light snacks and cups of tea. It wasn't ideal but neither were they the worst experiences of his life. The worse thing was sometimes the lack of communication skills between doctors.

Ireland is no better.

Unless you're on benefits then you're laughing.

Ireland is not a G6 member. Until relatively lately, it was an "emerging economy".

Many countries are struggling but the UK is suffering from a Tory government inflicting their internal psychodrama on all of us.

Russia is suffering the same.

This.

Also, arguments about the cost of various items don't take into account structural factors affecting households' economic position before they even get as far as shopping for those items. Sure, certain things may be cheaper in certain other countries than the UK (although I'm pretty sure the state of our energy prices dwarfs most of them), but how many of those countries

• require students to pay most of the cost of higher education, charging above-inflation interest rates on the loans that they'll be paying back for most of their working lives
• have astronomically expensive, privatised "public" transport systems that eat up so much of low wages just to get to work
• have eroded workers' rights and deregulated the "gig" economy to the degree the UK has
• have run down their healthcare provision to the point where it's basically non-functioning and anyone wanting reliable treatment will have to pay for private health insurance

Probably the only country comparable in these terms would be the USA, and that model is clearly where our government is steering us, so comparisons about how bad things are in the UK vs the USA might be meaningful. The problem there though is that they're both such unequal countries that generalisations and averages don't mean very much.

The answer to the OP is that 40 years of neoliberalism, culminating in a decade of Tory austerity, brought the UK to the point where things were much tighter for a lot of people before the exceptional shocks of covid, the Ukraine war etc. happened. This was not an accident: keeping the lowest paid on the breadline while maximally deregulating the profit-making opportunities of the highest paid is the conscious, deliberate goal of neoliberal economics.

There's a game that the Tories play associated with that goal, which is how bad you can let things get for the plebs while still convincing enough of them to vote for you. This is of course not rational, but a process of complex psychological manipulation dependent upon the Tory control of most of the media etc. Even the Tories understand that there is a lower limit, which is why we had the furlough scheme for example. But a combination of short termist politics-over-reality (Brexit), the arrogance and corruption that comes with established power and unexpected international crises, means they have lost control of it. So much so that they no longer seem to even give a shit.