Are things in the UK really that bad?

[namechange10022002]

I’ve been living overseas for about seven years and I am lucky to have a very safe, easy, comfortable life here but for various reasons I really want to move back home to England. However I keep hearing about how bad the situation is over there, with the cost of living crisis, housing, energy bills, health service, etc. For example I was watching Triggernometry and the hosts were saying the next few years are going to be extremely difficult for everyone there. I was just wondering, is it really as bad as they say? If you never watched or read the news or looked at social media, would you notice the difference in your quality of life? What is the general feeling on the ground, so to speak?

I guess I just want to know if it would be a mistake to move back there.

Depends. Here all is fine and everyone I know is ticking along, completely normally. We can get a phone call back from GP the same day, go out to restaurants: no booking a week in advance. I appreciate for some it's bad, but generalisations don't help.

Sadly as we discovered during "Austerity" which has since been prolonged and compounded by the Perfect Storm of BPU (Brexit, Pandemic, Ukraine), those with zero or very little slack in their system will always bear the brunt of economic crises. They don't have the buffer of savings or what small amount of savings the have will be exhausted quicker than The Squeezed Middle who tough it out by pulling in their belts AKA not having multiple trips abroad they enjoyed during the good times or other large expenditures they wouldn't have batted an eyelid over.

People's finances differ massively, impossible to generalise, but who knows .. the people brimming out of the restaurants and coffee shops might be "tightening their belts" by not having that skiing trip or Christmas break in the sun they used to enjoy and instead are treating themselves to a few extras back home. So it gives a false readout of the economy.

All speculation, the reality is we are 67M people in UK and that makes for a massive economy with liquid cash and assets circulating on a minute by minute basis. We may be down but we aren't out by any stretch of the imagination. These "crises"are always cyclical.

@MarshaBradyo

It's both about Brexit and not. I actually think the issue is at this point is a government, that seems to not give a shit about the country.

Having pushed Brexit through, or having allowed it to happen anyway, despite knowing that there were realistically very few overall positives, they then spent years doing nothing to avoid and sort the inevitable chaos. Instead of taking the time to be realistic and honest about the challenges lying ahead, they cynically denied there was any preparation to be done.

After the vote they had plenty of time to invest in British innovation, develop new sectors of employment and growth, shore up those we already had, prepare for the inevitable onslaught of red tape and shortages of workers. But instead they fiddled around talking sunlit uplands and sovereignty, and even now, refuse to be honest about the very real challenges a large percentage of people in this country are facing, due in large part to their mismanagement (we won't even get into the future implications of the cost of the Truss/Kwarteng fiasco).

It's nice that you can choose to not let it dominate your mood. I too am in a position where I'm surrounded by loads of different nationalities and happiness in my personal life. But I work in a sector where I see people who are being very much affected and things are becoming increasingly desperate. Unfortunately, I can't look away.

i agree with you @BabyFour2023 many of the restaurants and cafes are constantly busy, even during the working week. If I go into town on a random day eg a Tuesday because I've got an odd day off work, thinking I'll go into town when it's quiet, ha wishful thinking Smile - the Waitrose carpark is heaving, Marks and Spencer's is heaving, every cafe (Cafe Nero, Cafe Uno, Parsons bakery, Greggs) has queues going out the door, Business is booming. Same at the weekends. The local taverna, we had to book a week in advance and chose a Friday early evening table, because later on it would be packed.

not that I'm complaining in a way, it disproves the negativity on this and other sites talking about UK being broken. That has to be a good thing and it doesn't tally with RL.

It really doesn't though.

Although I'm sure all those unable to heat their homes, struggling to feed their children or waiting days in agony for an ambulance will feel much better, knowing that there are still people who can afford to go to restaurants.

Depends where you would live. A combined income of £90k in London will not give you the life you have right now in Quebec, unless you’re mortgage free and don’t plan on paying private school fees.

The NHS is the on its knees but other countries are also suffering similar. If you’re both young and healthy and plan on having health insurance you’d probably be fine, health wise.

Remind us what the correlation is between a few people posting that they've observed some full restaurants and the state of the economy and the impact it's having on the population.

Is there a scientific paper that proves there's a link? 😂

I never maintained that my comments were based on a scientific study. how strange. I'm certain none exists.

I'm very clear on the difference between correlation and causation. I am just reporting my lived experience of our local town and the economic activity there, just the same as others are saying what a dung heap U.K is.

If there's one thing that academic research teaches is that there are numerous perspectives in life and when someone produces a piece of research to support their argument (confirmation bias anyone?) there will be others who can equally present the opposing perspective backed up by different research.

It doesn't make either perspective as invalid, it just shows it's good to have balance.

Thought about you today and your strange view that France is some kind of beacon of hope and brilliance. The BBC have kindly explained exactly how brilliant they are doing here...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-64216269

Oops 😂

Yeah, I heard radio story last night about French health care is doing, demoralised staff, strikes, protests, people leaving the workforce, etc. Several interviews about their problems.

Germany under stress, too. Telegraph claiming everywhere in Europe in Woe.

New York nurses striking

Japan hammered by Covid

@Obbydoo I saw the BBC piece on which this article is based. The piece was much more nuanced. For example, Julie is misquoted here. When asked where she would rather be a patient, she actually said that since we have a better private health care option she would rather be rich and have private health care in the UK ( words to this effect). This is only the worst mis-statement.

Comparative numbers are not given in the website article. While it is a real tragedy that there are rural French outposts with practically no health care, the overall shortages are essentially an order of magnitude worse in the UK as data on recent threads here will confirm. To summarise, this is a very sloppy article written from a very interesting but more balanced news irem

Mistletoewench · 04/01/2023 17:06
Saw an NHS dentist today who I have been with for a while today. Daughter had a planned op before Christmas, fantastic staff and hospital, couldn’t fault them.

Friends and family still eating out, shops as busy as ever before Christmas. Planning holidays for 2023.

live just outside London“

Lucky you. Haven’t had access to an NHS dentist since we moved to the NW years ago. Called 37 in a 50 mile radius of our son’s university town to try to get him registered somewhere a year ago. Not a single one taking on new NHS patients.

My husband has been waiting on a biopsy since early November. I had a mammogram on 23rd December, was warned I wouldn’t get the result for at least 6 weeks. I had a mastectomy in 2016, so that’s an anxious wait I could do without.

Our grandchild is 2 1/2 now. Still waiting on his 2 year HV check. No concerns, but what if there was an issue?

Oh Christ. The "all opinions have equal value" crap despite some being based on statistically valid studies and evidence and some being based on just a single person's person's experience. 🤦🏻‍♀️🤣 Did you vote for Brexit as well?

On a combined income of £90,000 the “cost of living crisis” isn’t going to make any difference to you. It’s something that happens to others. We have about £70,000 and see no reason to change anything in our lives. Sure groceries are a little more expensive, and heating is double what it was but we can afford it; all it means is that we save slightly less. Of course a mortgage will be pricy if you need one. We don’t. So on your kind of money, no, if you didn’t read the news or use social media you probably wouldn’t notice the crisis. BUT the great exception is the NHS. It’s utterly broken. And that won’t be sorted out soon. So if there’s any chance of you needing medical treatment, the UK is not the place to be. My DP (who is Taiwanese) insists if either of us need medical treatment we will fly to Taiwan to get it. Eastern Europeans working in the NHS would rather go home for treatment than seek it in the organisation they work for. Yes, it’s that bad.
Basically if you are youngish and in good health, and miss the UK, come back. Everything you miss is here. If you are older and more likely to need medical care, either stay where you are, or budget for BUPA.

That seems rather a generalisation. Obviously if you are mortgage free and have no childcare costs you'll be pretty comfortably off but those can be thousands a month.

Did you vote for Brexit as well?

no way, of course I didn't, I wasn't taken in by the Headlines on the double decker bus about the NHS or the "wonderful" trade deals we would get. I knew what I was voting for.

and yes my opinion is as valid as yours.

Depends what you want out of life
We have had years of the Tories who as usual stip everything to the bone and the rich get richer. Unfortunately Britain is a right wing country and theres no real viable alternative.
So yes we are fucked.
We are over populated so the halcyon days are over.

@YDBear Thank you for your reply, that’s reassuring. We will have Bupa anyway from our jobs so I guess we won’t need to worry about that.