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.

Our combined income is £60k, couple in our 30s in the SE.

The cost of heating, food, petrol, utilities has gone insane. Our mortgage will be £300 more in 2023 than it was in 18-22.

We can't afford more than a small 2 bed house where we live.

3-4 week wait for a doctors appt. 2 month wait for a dentist appt. My elderly family member waited 20 hours for an ambulance last month.

We have a roof over our heads, we can afford to eat and have the heating on in the evenings. But it's pretty miserable. I no longer watch the news. UK politics are horribly depressing.

We wish we'd moved to another European country before brexit.

One of my close friends said a few weeks ago that she fears for the future of her children in this country.

I try to avoid the news. But cost increases I can't avoid. The main impact is fuel costs so we are cold for the first time this year. Petrol was shortlived crazy expensive. Food we can personally absorb.

Services are truly shit. I have gone from a decent gp service to something not fit for purpose since covid. My gp have suddenly started dismissing concerns as a standard response. BP was 180/122 and it took two weeks of taking readings at home on two machines before they stopped insisting it was because I ran down to the self serve BP monitor in the reception, or my machine was broken, or my child was taking it, or I had been abducted by aliens, or, or, or in the hope I would F off and just die before they changed by BP meds. So nhs, I'm sorry I'm not nhs bashing, it's gone to shit. Money will not help you get past the nhs. I'd happily pay say £150 to sit with a Dr that was interested than with my gp for "free at point of service" they pay me at point of service, its irrelevant if its just been fobbed off.

Socail care and education has been bad for decades. If your child has sen I couldn't belive it could be worse now than in austerity but its much, much worse. Unless you have cash and adverage or above intelligence and a passion for not taking no as a answer, your child with SEN is totally fucked. They are more likely to expelled to a PRU than get a ehcp.

not a good time to be below national adverage wage in the uk.

I have no issues with Amazon prime and wouldn't use it as a measure of UK financial pressure in any event. There are some counties without Amazon all together like South Africa.

The A&E issue is because of COVID and Flu mixing. NHS staff get sick as well. Social Care failure is blocking beds so there's a bottle neck. Ageing population etc.

I don't know where half of you are living but I'm in a poor area of UK and people are eating out, shopping and enjoying holidays and driving new cars. Jobs are being advertised etc. We might be wearing more jumpers and have one lamp on rather than 2 but it's hardly destitution.

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No. They’re not the best they’ve ever been but no I do not see the constant rants on SM and in the gutter press, reflected in RL. My weekly shop is more expensive but my energy bills haven’t really risen and the cost of living payments certainly help - have disabled family members. I’ve had cause to take my child to the GP three times over Christmas, we got a same day appointment each time except for Christmas Eve when they told me apologetically we’d need to go to a different GP - 10 minutes walk away, the following morning - as they were the only ones open on CE. We got the required antibiotics from Boots, Amoxicillin, that day, despite the constant assertions that they were impossible to get. The strikes are inconvenient, nothing more - heavier traffic due to lack of trains etc. I keep seeing the lamenting but genuinely see little difference in my day to day life.

Quite

As for Amazon Prime, understandably deliveries took longer in the lead up to Christmas. After Christmas my children are spending their Christmas money on Amazon and we are back to next day, sometimes same day delivery.

I’m in London and rang my GP at 8 this morning and had an appointment at 9!

Its not great for all but i know many that are not as impacted , depends on your finances totally
Someone wealthy is going to be hardly impacted , maybe one holiday a year less etc than someone on the middle ground maybe
Its all a bit subjective and surely depends where you live now and if they are going through similar or will follow suit later

Its not just heating though. Unless you live in a draughty old massive house which would take about 15% of your salary to heat. Its everything else:

If you get attacked or broken into do you want police to help you or just provide a crime reference number?

Do you want your kids to be educated somewhere with class sizes at or below the legal minimum, with a qualified teacher? Or a merged class looked after by a succession of TAs?

Do you want to be able to get picked up by an ambulance and treated at hospital if you have a serious car accident? Have you got enough money for private health insurance for routine health issues?

I think it's a bad time to judge as it's hard to know whether things are going to get better or worse this year but things do feel like they've rapidly declined- post, trains, appointments, fuel bills. That said, I am not sure it's vastly worse than elsewhere. France has power cuts. German trains were unusable over the summer. I spent ages on hold to Dr but then they called me in same day. Had to go to two different pharmacies for antibiotics, which feels a bit frightening but more for what it represents than what it is.

Baffled by some of the hyperbole on this thread

Me too. Some people will always moan no matter what. Some on this thread were probably the ones moaning about people exercising for more than 15mins and killing grannies if they sneezed in public during lockdown! Misery likes company and all that.

There is no denying it’s more difficult atm with the rising costs of fuel and utilities. We are in a global recession though, doesnt anybody on here realise this? This isn’t specific to the Uk!

People saying they are contemplating moving to a third world country or “to Europe” instead make me laugh - where exactly do you think you are going to up sticks and move to during a global economic recession and suddenly all will be peachy?

And those laying all this at the door of the tories - what exactly do we think labour will do better? Borrow more money from the magic money tree and fuck us up royally again for even longer into the future? Honestly.

I think a lot is just dependent on your general attitude to life. I’m sure the people fighting for their lives in Ukraine and such places would give anything to be living safely in the UK, even if it meant waiting a week for their Amazon parcel to arrive Ffs!!

Exactly same here! Rang at 8.15 - appointment at 9.

@namechange10022002 if on 90000 you can't afford to heat your house , then you either have a massive house you can't really afford or are doing something very wrong ? People on half of this are heating their homes , maybe cutting down etc but not sitting in the cold all day everyday

It was bad for over 10 years, then it got proper bad about 3
years ago, then it got laughably bad about a year ago, now it's what he call 'beyond the point of a joke'.

It's imploding, some won't be touched by it as have the wealth to insulate themselves... other than that, it's been coming for 12 years and now here it is... stay where you are.

Walk down most ordinary high streets. Even the charity shops are closing. So many boarded-up shops. So many obese and unhealthy people wandering around.
Expect a 30+ minute wait on the phone for the simplest contact with a doctor's surgery. Pray nothing requiring an ambulance happens to you. Expect zero action from the police on burglary and criminal damage.
There are of course enclaves of naiceness where the wealthy spend their time. But the politicians should know from their surgeries the everyday struggles so many people are having, there is absolutely no safety net for a vast number of people.

Yes. The main things I notice are the price of heating oil, electricity and food. Plus if you’re unwell - good luck to you! You may or may not get medical attention, and if you do it will be a battle to get it.

Also the train strikes and school staff strikes aren’t helping!

@Twillow closed shops are mostly to do with internet buying etc , i was abroad this year and similar with shops and even bars closed down due to covid and not re open

Where are you living now and what are your reasons for wanting to return? I think that makes a difference really.
You have to think about what happens if you get back to the UK and really hate it and then want to return to wherever it is you are now. You will have difficulties moving back to the EU due to the new post-Brexit requirements.
I live in an EU country now and there's no way I would ever move back to the UK. A lot of my family members are struggling with the cost of living crisis and they are struggling to get access to appropriate health care. Several of them haven't been able to access an NHS dentist in years.

If you don't read the news and aren't sick, it's not too bad at all. Especially if you're in a financially secure position.

Pretty fucking big ifs though. Ifs you have little to no control over. So it really depends how you fancy your luck.

I don't want to get all conspiracy theorist about this, but it's always worth bearing in mind that there are many countries and organisations in the world who benefit from destroying the morale of comparitively successful countries, such as the UK.

A very popular 'chatty' website apparently used by regular type people would be a great place to keep dropping this idea. Specially if threads like this are started by posters with a short posting history.

Apologies, namechange10022002, if you are just asking an innocent question. I'm not accusing you of anything, just suggesting that posters keep an open mind. Not everyone on the internet is who they claim to be.

It’s a hard question to answer because people’s personal experiences will depend on their circumstances.

But it is a fact that, at a population level, living standards have slipped and are continuing to decline.

@PuttingOnTheKitsch i think when these people sat worse in Europe they inky think of france , germany etc not some of the poorer European countries