To think a lot of the Uk looks like a state

[Novembermummy88]

Not sure if I am being dramatic or if years of austerity are really starting to show…? Lately I’ve really started to notice how filthy, run down and falling apart everywhere looks! I live in a town in the south east on the borders of the M25. Every where there are gapping pot holes (can hardly avoid the volume there are now and genuinely concerned I will lose a wheel at some point!), broken lamp posts, the volume of litter / filth on the roads seems very high and can’t remember the last time I saw a road sweeper, and things like pathways are a state, road markings worn out, SO many closed/dilapidated shops….the town just looks awful as do many of the nearby towns! Is it just the South East looking like this? Aibu?! Or have I watched too much Selling Sunsets and setting my expectations too high…???

I think this is inevitable. All the idiots who talk about ‘plague island’ and how rubbish we are have convinced everyone else the UK isn’t worth looking after.

I lived in London for a long time. We lived within walking distance of the river, so centrally in one of the most interesting cities in the world, and yet people said the teenagers (some, not all obviously) behaved like shitheads because they had nothing to do. I found that one a bit hard to believe tbh.
People drop litter and behave like tossers because they are selfish and don't care.

it doesn’t give you an immediate right to allow the outside to deteriorate into a filthy tip.

It does exactly that, because the responsibility to fix the outside belongs with the owner. Not the poor sod who is merely paying for the owner to acquire an asset. When we were much much younger my partner was scammed and ripped off along those lines: he took on a tenancy at a slightly cheaper rate on condition he decorated and cleaned up. As soon as the place looked nice, the landlord choked him out and got someone in who paid triple the rent. No one is going to invest in a place where they have no security. This is a basic fact that has driven land economics in the past, eg enclosures : initial enclosure thinking was that giving private ownership to named individuals gave them an incentive to invest.

But as soon as those individuals are too wealthy to need direct involvement, or to big to feel any consequences, that thinking will fail and you have the situation that @Uncertain12345 describes, with no market incentive to do anything but cream off profit.

No e of this is rocket science, and in Britain of all places, it has all happened before during the Industrial Age. It has been incredibly frustrating to watch it happen again.

People drop litter and behave like tossers because they are selfish and don't care.

Perhaps it would help if those in charge set a better example and weren't such tossers who don't care and are happy to drop the entire UK in the shit. In a company the tone and ethos is set by the leadership. It's the same with government and the country.

That's pseudo privatisation though isn't it? Customers have no choice who they "buy" their water from or which firm takes away their waste. There is only one infrastructure, so there can't be competition. Same with the railways where the govt still control which firms can run trains on each line, which trains can stop at which stations, fares, and even what type of trains are allowed to be used by each firm - that's not proper privatisation. Same with Royal Mail who are hog-tied by govt prescribed rules as to delivery timescales, "single fee anywhere", etc - they've fallen by the wayside whilst other couriers have picked up the more profitable work because they're free to do things differently!

For genuine privatisation, you need genuine competition and genuine freedom to operate, innovate, etc. That's the exact opposite of the pretend-privatisation of the utilities (and to an extent other public services such as GP practices!).

And yes ^, the constant attitude from the rich that poorer people should be better than they themselves are, does not help matters. You don’t care a shiny shot about their lives, reality and plight: so don’t ask them to care about your precious appearances.

Crazy people are blaming government for people having dropping litter everywhere.

It's more to do with the culture of individualism (v. somewhere like Japan)

Would anyone encourage their child to pick up random litter from the street that wasn't theirs?

This translates to when people get council homes they are paying little for, they don't care whether they leave it in a tip as they don't see anything as their problem, and can wait for it - blame the government for everything..!

That’s what 10 years of austerity does. It was bad in the 1990s too when council budgets were cut for a long time. It got better under Labour in the 2000s.

So if Labour get in those that just throw litter will stop?

amused our town in North Hampshire is money laundering / modern slavery central. Dodgy tanning shops, cake and ice cream shops, nail bars and hairdressers.

A very good single book on economic history, focusing on land ownership but covering other issues, if anyone does want to try thinking beyond “but it was ever thus” and other such crap, is “Owning the earth” by Andro Linklater.

Could also try the BBCs ‘Century of the Self’, but I’d be here all day creating reading lists!

So people can’t take their dog poo home because of the government, can’t take control of their own litter or spend twenty minutes a week tidying their front garden because of the government.

if people spent even a tiny fraction of their time doing something positive instead of sitting browsing the internet or watching crap TV, it’s called taking responsibility.

And do you have to swear to make a point, the English language is rich in available acceptable expletives!

Apparently yes.

Realistically I think half the problem here is that people think problems are for someone else to fix. Drop litter - council will take it away. etc etc.

Scotland isn't ruled by the Tories and it's in an absolute state as well. Edinburgh has had a labour or snp council for years and it looks appalling these days. And CT is very high. What they spend it on, I've no idea.

I feel strongly that essential services - like utilities and the health service - shouldn't be in private hands for this reason. Not only are they then run for profit, but when things go tits-up, the company bosses and shareholders expect to be bailed out by the government - ie the taxpayers, who are already paying over the odds for a shoddy service in the case of utilities - because they know the government can't let them fail. So the tax payer ends up being doubly screwed over and STILL gets a sh*t service.

This is why Conservative ideology doesn't work - at least, not for ordinary people. It works just fine for millionaire shareholders.

Hospital waiting lists were similar to now.

They weren’t.
www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-waiting-times

My skanky neighbours magage to work full time and have a nice part time job in drinking too much / takeaways/ smoking weed. Pity they can't fit in a 20 min garden tidy or bring their bins in.

I don't dare join the budding neighbourhood group as I'll get a brick through my window if it ever gets out how much I report to the council / community police.

Wales too. Maybe no litter there either

Hardly. Litter is one thing - although a lot of it has been caused by the number of litter collections being reduced by the council, meaning it now spills out all over the streets. But unless we stop driving cars, there will always be potholes. They don't fill themselves, nor can we fill them. Ordinary people haven't made business rates so expensive that shops are empty and closing down, nor have they sacked half the council staff, police etc so everywhere is unkempt with rising crime. My town is full of homeless drug addicts and looks like an absolute sh*thole despite the residents paying some of the highest council tax in the UK. There are litter pickers out all the time, and loads of local people trying to organise to improve things, but it needs proper investment for the situation to visibly improve, not just Bob out with his litter stick on a Saturday morning.

If people spent even a tiny fraction of their time doing something positive instead of sitting browsing the internet or watching crap TV, it’s called taking responsibility.

I suggest you take your own advice on that.

And do you have to swear to make a point, the English language is rich in available acceptable expletives!

Fuck off is an acceptable expletive on Mumsnet. If you don't like it here you can go forth and multiply on a site that prefers euphemisms.

I visited one of my favourite cathedral cities in the wealthy south east this week and was shocked how much it has declined. It's now a surrounded by huge new housing estates but no new infrastructure that I can see and so the traffic is terrible.

It used to have a wonderful shopping centre with independent shops as well as the chains but now loads are boarded up and the rest look scruffy with temporary pop up places. The main department store and big post office, in the prime spot, right opposite the cathedral green, are shut and boarded up.

It looks so rundown and sad and this is in a supposedly affluent part of the south east. It's like a barometer reading of just how bad things are.

No but they would pay more to councils so they can afford to empty the bins more often. That would help.

1997 to 2010 = 13 years
2010 to 2023 = 13 years

Compare and contrast the state of the country in 2010 with now.

Agree 100%.

I live close to a big town, Croydon, and it’s been run into the ground for the past 5-10 years or more. Whenever I have to go there I stay for as little time as possible but you can’t help noticing the deprivation and general run down-ness of it.

It was supposed to get a Westfield but that fell through, the street leading from West Croydon station to the hospital is awful, really dire. A close friend thinks they’re letting it run into the ground now.

This was one of the towns that in the 2013 riots suffered a lot with damage and looting and promises were made to improve the town then but nothing happened or not a lot.

Croydon Council are now bankrupt for a second time so god knows what they’re doing there either!

Why are people going on about dropping litter?

Places don't look a state just because of dropped litter, we are talking about the country having major structural issues. Loads of litter is usually because the council have had to cut the budget for bin emptying and street cleaning and there aren't enough bin men and it is all blowing about from full bins. Lazy twats always drop litter, there was no halcyon time when they did not. I remember the Keep Britain Tidy Campaign when I was a kid.