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 the loss of some big chains, or reduction in number of stores, like BHS, Debenhams, Army & Navy, House of Fraser etc has been really bad for retail generally. I used to go into Brighton when I needed bras, or towels/bedding, all sorts of stuff, because it had Debenhams, BHS and some decent independents. Now I go to Chichester, to an edge of town John Lewis, for household stuff and buy my bras online.

I sometimes wonder how much longer John Lewis will still have stores outside of major cities. I was astonished when they closed their Tunbridge Wells store. I'd have thought there more than enough well-heeled people in TW to sustain a John Lewis store.

Tbf much of the sneering comes from the right as well no ?
Towards immigrants, benefit claimants, strikers...

@LakieLady Yeah seeing House of Fraser and Debenhams and the old topshop/primark boarded up in Leeds which is a shopping hub is telling, and no big chains to replace them. Think they're gonna be student flats. They're also making old banks and retail places into college and uni classes which is good that they won't sit empty.

Calling an ambulance now means a shocking wait. However, when my mother was dying in 2007, we called for an ambulance many times, only to be told she wasn't a priority. One eventually arrived - but only because I told the operator that if they didn't send one immediately, they'd need to send 2 ambulances because my ancient father was hysterical with fear and exhaustion. And the government then? Labour!
I honestly don't know who I'll vote for next time, but don't expect Labour to right all the ills or to have no corruption anywhere. They are no magic bullet.

It was that as soon as I cited immigration as top priority the rebuff included that I meant racism too.

Research shows it was top concern - even though when asked remainers said other reasons more for why they thought people voted leave including being annoyed with British politicians.

In reality that was very low down for Leave voters

I agree about people being more inclined to drop litter these days. There doesn't seem to be the stigma attached to it that there used to be. Maybe it's down to the "Keep Britain Tidy" billboards that we used to see around and public information films that used to be on tv about litter. And people are possibly afraid to challenge it in the way they might have done.

Years ago, I was in a queue of traffic when the driver in front dropped a Macdonalds bag full of rubbish out of his roof-down Golf convertible into the road. I got out of my car walked up and dropped it back in again, but onto the back seat, where he couldn't reach it. I didn't stop to see his reaction and luckily the lights changed almost immediately.

I wouldn't dream of doing that now, I'd be frightened they'd lamp me.

I keep a pedal bin liner in my car to gather all the detritus I seem to create when driving about.

Good point High St are impacted by increased online shopping.

I'm in Western Australia and it's fine here

Except all the meth-heads.

It costs time and money to make places nice. The councils are so strapped for cash that they have none to spare, they don't even have enough money for upkeep.

I am from a town of about 70k people that had a declining city centre. The council managed to turn it around... because this wasn't the UK and actually they had money to make some decent investments.

Some of the things they did:

• Subsidised landlords to make the empty spaces above flats into apartments. There are now many people living in the city centre whereas 10-15 years ago there were barely any. This has a knock on effect where those people are actively supporting butchers, bakers and those kind of small shops.
• Pedestrianised areas so people can sit outside now on nice days, as well as more space to organise events.
• Together with some project developers they redeveloped a lovely old building that was only being used for storage. Now it houses a museum, restaurant, an arthouse cinema and apartments.
• Revitalised the weekly market by making pitches cheap. The market is big now, town centre is packed on a Saturday. A yearly fixed pitch is 200 euros for a 2 square metres of market table. Cheap enough that entrepreneurs can take a punt. If you want a pitch for just a day it costs 5 euros... so there's always something new.
• Reserved an area of the town center for independent shops. It's great going there now, nice cafe, secondhand bookshop, board game shop, cake supply shop etc. 10 years ago that bit of the town centre was nothing special.

Point being... it takes money and effort. Places don't become nice by themselves. What is happening in the UK is a decade of underinvestment coming home to roost.

Hospital waiting list are certainly not similar to what they were in the 00s.. They nearly doubled from 2.3 million in 2009 to 4.34 million in February 2020. Then Covid hit.😱

Where did you get your totally wrong figures @ImWearingReallyJudgyPants?

Barriers on a motorway are nothing to do with the council. Motorways are the responsibility of the Highways Agency.

I live in one of the few English counties without any motorways. A former director of highways use to bemoan this at every meeting we were ever both present at. He reckoned that the roads in the county took far more traffic than roads in a comparably densely populated county of similar size with motorways, because people would do longer journeys by motorway, reducing the wear and tear on county roads.

It sounds a bit bonkers, but pretty convincing when he produced comparisons of maintenance costs. And he was highly respected in his field, so had some credibility.

Bolton town centre’s demise has been particularly upsetting to watch. The Conservative leader of the council, Martin Cox was interviewed on TV and when saying the council probably should have acted sooner to stop the problems seemed to give a bit of a shrug.

If you wanted a lockdown (most on here did) you are partly to blame

I agree with this one thousand percent.

Cuts to local government happened before covid was ever a twinkle in the eye of a bat.

"This is because largely because of reductions in central government grants, which have been the most sharply cut component of local government revenue since 2009/10. Central government grants – including retained business rates – were cut 37% in real-terms between 2009/10 and 2019/20, from £41.0bn to £26.0bn in 2019/20 prices"

Actually, the "benefit classes", by which I assume you people who receive state benefits, don't get to live in accommodation "large enough to make reproduction viable".

They only get the local housing allowance (LHA) rate for the size of property they need, which allow one bedroom for:-

every adult couple (same or opposite sex, married or unmarried)
any other adult aged 16 or over (including live-in carers)
any two children of the same sex aged under 16
any two children under age 10
any other child

So you don't get a property big enough until you've actually reproduced.

And that LHA rate is based on the average of the bottom 30% of rents in the area, so in many areas you'll be lucky to find a place that's at or below that level. In my area, the LHA rate for a two-bed property is a tad under £1k a month, but it's very hard to find a property of that for less than £1,200.

And unless someone in the family is assessed and deemed to be disabled, the benefit cap means that they'll only get £1,666 a month, regardless of how much their rent is or how many kids they have.

I'd say that reproduction is pretty much not viable for the "benefit classes" in high rent areas.

South Yorks seems fine.

We had the council remove all the dead leaves down the pavement on our road the other day from winter. Looks lovely and smart again now.

Locals do help with litter picking as a pride thing.

Not noticed any issues with roads not getting sorted. In fact I've seen a few roadworks recently locally.

Ahh, covid deniers. Almost makes me nostalgic.

Oh f* off!

The population of London in 1600 was less than 300,000, but I doubt you'd prefer their quality of life.

It's not a total population that's the problem, it's an ageing population. Lower tax yields and older generations locking younger ones out of housing.

Comparing 1600 to 2023 is a bit disingenuous lol. I think people are talking more about our grandparents' eras.

I also think it's possibly inevitable that there will need to be a period where there is a lack of young workers. Otherwise, it's just a vicious circle where we'll just need more and more people to care for their ever longer living predecessors.

I take your point. But how is exponentially increasing the population going to help when the government isn't catering for this?

It can be a factor without being the entire reason. There are pros and cons/upsides and downsides to EVERYTHING yet you can only talk about the upsides of immigration and not the downsides?

All of this. Nail on the head.

And nothing will improve until you have a Government that invests in improving productivity. This means decent education, infrastructure, and industrial strategy for key high-margin growth sectors, and removing ridiculous bottlenecks in the tax system at £50k, £100k etc and equalises it to remove the penalisation of single adult households.

No chance this will happen because the average British citizen has no grip of even the most basic economics so there is no pressure on MPs to do so. People seem happier fighting over how they divide up the remaining crumbs or resorting to xenophobia.

I guess you get the politicians you deserve.

All very nice but pointless without productivity growth. This is the only way that living standards can rise. There has been zero productivity growth or real-terms salary growth for 15 years. That is unprecedented, at any time of economic record.

And that LHA rate is based on the average of the bottom 30% of rents in the area, so in many areas you'll be lucky to find a place that's at or below that level. In my area, the LHA rate for a two-bed property is a tad under £1k a month, but it's very hard to find a property of that for less than £1,200.

Being expected to pay only £200 per month yourself for a two bedroom property doesn't seem entirely outrageous, tbh.

I'm sure I remember a campaign for the first vaccination rollout that you could come forward even if you didn't have an NHS number. And it being mentioned in the press that there could be up to 10 million people in the U.K. not accounted for in population estimates.

Adding that many people to already densely populated areas near major cities isn't likely to have a positive impact on the standard of living if there isn't the money to cater for the population as a whole. Hence the NHS and GP services creaking. Immigration may or may not be a contributing factor but adding millions to already strained infrastructure isn't likely to help, in the short term at least.