To think it’s shocking how bad Britain has fallen apart compared to other European counties

[TheColourofspring]

I am in Spain at the moment in one of the big cities. It’s clean, modern, well maintained. Transport is cheap, food is cheap, healthcare seems to work pretty well (from talking to local). Parks are noticeably well maintained- even saw park keepers! Clean & tidy.

Pensions higher, if you lose your job you get a portion of your salary in unemployment benefits while you look for another and there are no penalties. Based on the premise that if you have paid in, you will get looked after if you are in need.

I am not saying it’s perfect- no country is but it was the same when I was in France last summer.

In Britain, everything is underfunded and close to the edge. Schools, the NHS, local authorities are all at breaking point. My local parks look shabby & there is very little maintenance. Roads have pot holes. Yesterday I read an article about pharmacies being the latest at ‘crisis’ point with major drug shortages (thanks to brexit). Queues at borders, people can’t heat or eat properly, food banks, housing is ridiculous for many people.

I think it’s just so noticeable when you go to other places just how run down Britain is.

Finding it shocking and a bit depressing - like I said, all countries have their issues but I think Britain really has been pillaged by the tories & Brexit really is a disaster.

London pays our taxes but much of that is rich investment and financial fund manager types - not everyone else.
I think the class system has lead to much of our failure to compete. Everything is run/owned by the handful of toffs we churn out who move into the financial services / politics rather than building factories or dirtying their hands in research or construction.
We are the only country that has this set up.

They have the money and the power.

No one will change it -they want their DCs to attend these privileged places ,Labour included.

If the level of conversation and discussion on MN has descended to GretaGood's immediate 'it's all the class system' and 'toffs', then I am not even slightly surprised that anyone even slightly successful is considering living elsewhere.

Frankly, why the chuff would you put the effort in to create a business and employment if you are going to be derided as 'toffs'? Thirty years of it for my DH. In a grimy, dusty, gritty workplace. If you're posting in support of the party in opposition, and that's your best shot, then it's probably to be hoped that you win in 2024 and get your promises handed back to you quick time.

It is so, so easy to promise to spend money, especially someone else's money.

Agreed. It's always "I want", "I want", "I want someone else to pay for it."

This week I've been out to several historic houses. Loads of older people (! 😊) out, eating lunch, having a lovely time. Afternoon tea on Wednesday in the Georgian ibrary. Off to two more places next week, this time on two coach trips. I'm really looking forward to it. This country does so much so brilliantly but no one ever wants to talk about what's great about living here. They just want to be miserable.

I agree @PollyPeptide, but go to Spain and Portugal which joined the EU at about the same time as the UK, and see for yourself the infrastructure that has been built for them. It is magnificent stuff.

Then compare it to the roads along the south coast from Falmouth to Dover, and that is much the same as it was in the 1950s. And in modern traffic, what was adequate in the 1950s is now 70 years behind the game.

Not much wonder why large swathes of the UK felt they weren't getting much back on the second largest contributions made to the EU. I don't disagree that other countries/regions/areas needed more money more urgently, but our infrastructure has not kept pace.

A tiny and personal irritation is the lack of toilet facilities for people who drive commercial vehicles: there are too many stretches of 40 or 50 slow miles where there's no convenient loo stop, so laybys become lavatories. Just provide more bloody toilets.

I took Spanish evening class and my Spanish teacher said that after Franco had gone, their roads were in an awful state but when they joined the EU, all their roads got redone. It did not endear her to the class because we were sat there having to endure potholes in the road where we live. And they're still with us 15 years later! Youre exactly right that it was things like that, the UK being a net contributor and so paying for other countries' roads when ours,we're collapsing that contributed to Brexit. In my opinion it was a short-sighted reaction but it's those things that affect people in their everyday life that made people fed up with the EU.
However, to be fair, we've had loads of road investment around us to defray serious traffic problems brought on by excess house building and tourism. It's years of hell of them taking so long on construction and I'm sick to death of traffic queues appearing because of barriers and cones popping up and no one working. But I guess it'll be worthwhile in the long run. Certainly the ones finished so far are already alleviating problems.

You can make that argument with Portugal/Spain that the UK paid for their infrastructure but what about France and Germany? net payers, with a transport system that puts ours to shame.

Just spent 3 weeks in France, over 2k miles and around 500miles on a bicycle, yet to find a pot hole, yet within a minute of arriving back in UK... shit roads... whole sections of tarmac missing, the fabric of the road worn away after decades of lack of mtce.

Maybe, its our obsession with low taxes and corrupt privatisation that is to blame

I completely agree that French and German roads put ours to shame @Alexandra2001 but some of that dates back to the late 1940s and 1950s when the UK lost the peace. Our war debts were not forgotten or forgiven, there was no Marshall plan reconstruction, and UK war debt was not paid off until the early years of this century, just in time for another financial crisis. But great scenery too.

EU money rebuilt Manchester centre after the bomb. I've seen the plaque showing they paid to regenerate so many promenades, town centres etc in recent years. I see it most in areas that voted Brexit.

Our roads have massively fallen apart in the seven years since the vote. They're a mess everywhere now.

We had decent infrastructure before linking cities etc so money was spent elsewhere here. Countries that got roads got them to connect cities and grow the economy. We already had that. The Tory cuts to local government funds have done our roads in in recent years.

Part of the reason our roads are rubbish is the way they were made too. Tarmac over cobbled will repeatedly break up. The cobbles need removing and the whole thing redoing. Not patchwork. So much shoddy work in this country

Just spent 3 weeks in France, over 2k miles and around 500miles on a bicycle, yet to find a pot hole, yet within a minute of arriving back in UK... shit roads... whole sections of tarmac missing, the fabric of the road worn away after decades of lack of mtce.

TBF it has to be said some French minor roads and some towns have roads that aren't great but generally yes, you don't get massive potholesand the main roads are kept in decent shape..the amount of cycling done by people of all ages for all sorts of reasons possibly helps with the mindset around around maintenance.

Another difference is that most of the major autoroutes in France are toll roads run by private companies by Vinci..

If we choose to use their services to go the fastest way possible to/from our nearest city, about 150 km there and back, it costs us about 15 euro for the round trip...gets pricey quickly for commuters...would the population of the UK consider wide spread imposition toll roads in return for better main routes?

In the rural area where I live potholes imv are due to heavier rainfall than in the past, humongous tractors nowadays which must be so much heavier than in the past, wind turbine parts ( huge) , and log lorries also huge which are usually lorry with trailer. The roads don’t stand a chance but somehow the local residents, through council tax, are expected to foot the bill for repairs ( failing woefully).

And Germany made the decision to invest in its own steel industry and the UK did not.

French roads, in general are not toll, millions of miles of N, D and C roads, carry huge amount of traffic, inc lorries, who use them to avoid the tolls!!! the N roads into Nantes or Rennes carry 1000s of lorries a day, a heck of alot of congestion - no pot holes.

Remember the UK did not use to have a crumbling road infrastructure, we kept them maintained...... we haven't, not for perhaps 20 + years and now we see the results :(

We were also amazed at the facilities even a v small town would have, like a new school or hall or a sports centre.

The other huge difference was in "red tape" take small road works... a wheelie barrow traffic light, no cones, no barriers.. soon as work done or them having a break, traffic lights wheeled away, traffic flows again, same with hedge cutting on an autoroute, flashing sign... thats it!!!!

Here we keep the lights up until the privatised traffic light company deem to take them away!, sometimes a day or two later.

BUT French pay a lot more tax and also have PR, i also think the French establishment are also wary of the French taking to the streets, so take care of the population a little better.... our lot just don't care.

UK receive a huge amount of Marshall money, more than Germany did, decision made to spend it on common wealth.
This is utter myth. Britain actually received more than a third more Marshall Aid than West Germany - $2.7 billion as against $1.7 billion. She in fact pocketed the largest share of any European nation. The truth is that the post-war Labour Government, advised by its resident economic pundits, freely chose not to make industrial modernisation the central theme in her use of Marshall Aid

and...

It was this victor's psychology that deluded both Labour and Conservative politicians into believing that Britain - at the centre of the Commonwealth and the Sterling area - could have a future that was similar to her past. British politicians saw the United Kingdom as a first-class power in the same league as the United States

We still see this 75 years later.... AND we did the fuggin same with North Sea oil too.

Sorry but UK problems are UK caused problems.

The reason it wouldn’t work is that we place a huge burden on PAYE and nearly 50% of adults here pay no income tax. There is a misconception that the Scandi model means taxing higher earners more. It’s doesn’t. Higher earners on PAYE are already taxed very highly compared to elsewhere. What it would mean is everyone else paying a higher % of tax. We don’t have enough people in this country working and too many taking.

No we don't, we have low wages, so huge numbers of people, doing skilled jobs, aren't getting paid enough to be paying taxes (without needing in work benefits), companies take huge profit but pay low wages, meanwhile, use any excuse to up prices.....

Hate to harp on but food general cheaper in France, esp eating out.

☝️☝️ This a hundred times. Bloody 'Great Britain'/ we won the war/had an empire hangover. Mahoosive attitudinal problem. We have still not worked out our true place in the world. Our standard of living and GDP is being outstripped (it'll be less than Poland's in a generation) we have massive issues and yet we're tied up in knots for years over 'taking back control'. That, that was our most pressing issue? The mind boggles talk about a massive diversion.
The other uniquely British disease is our failure to invest (both in the private or public sphere). The state just doesn't do investment any more (crumbling schools, hospitals and roads which will be much costlier to fix now). The private sector has been so unregulated we have been an international fire sale, multi nationals have asset striped and debt loaded everything from water companies through to care homes and football clubs. And don't even get me started on our failure to invest in New industries (wind/solar biotech). We are live for today stick it on the credit card idiots.

What we need to do is tax wealth more and income less. It makes absolutely no sense to me that people work really hard long hours and a big chuck of that money is taken in tax but money made from money has a much lower tax rate and we seem happy about that. Look at the way people scream about inheritance tax (for example) a tax only about 4% of estates pay anything at all on and even when they do its a low percentage of the money received. Capital gains tax is only 20%. And when the old rates system was replaced by council tax, millionaires (now billionaires) got huge tax cuts.
And yet for some reason, the ordinary worker in this country screams about how unfair it is if wealth is taxed. I don't get it.

@Alexandra2001

French roads, in general are not toll, millions of miles of N, D and C roads, carry huge amount of traffic, inc lorries, who use them to avoid the tolls!!! the N roads into Nantes or Rennes carry 1000s of lorries a day, a heck of alot of congestion - no pot holes.

You're absolutely right about the N,D and C, routes etc, no argument there.

Nevertheless if you want to draw comparisons between major Motorway networks that you really need to use if you want to move between the major cities swiftly then a big proportion of those are toll and many (?all) are a greater or lesser extent privately run.

I agree with you that a lot will be down to the level of tax.

I think NIMBYISM is a massive great problem in the UK as well. I don't know what can be done about that though. Any politician who tries to face down NIMBYISM will just get voted out.

But i didn't, i never mentioned motorways, i think the toll roads encourage traffic onto non toll roads and our (uk) m/w network is generally well maintained.... but who else has smart motorways? what a waste of 10s of £ billions, straight into the hands of private companies.

We also need a lot more capacity on the rail network... another debate!!!

@hettie Agree 100% we have allowed basic mtce to fall behind so far now that to repair the road network will now involve replacing large sections of the foundation of the road, patching resurfacing will not be enough i.e the road A386 into Tavistock is now so exposed that the original cobbles are exposed with pot holes, 6+ inchs deep... they'll fill and they 'll reappear again with the year.

We also need to look at why councils use poor quality materials/workmanship, a newly resurfaced road had sections tarmac wash away within months.

Well you won’t get support for this because everyone in the SE has a load of wealth thanks to house price rise.
im a pensioner but if my income goes above the tax free limit I pay tax on it.
Perhaps like Australia we could limit pension paid to people with assets valued over a certain amount .

Thirteen years of conservative government combined with Brexit explains a lot. But I also think a lot of it is the British mindset of not wanting to pay our fair share, an 'I'm alright Jack' mentality amongst the middle classes and also a mentality of begrudging others things that would benefit society as a whole. An improved welfare system would improve society as a whole and help people get out of poverty, but many of those who pay in view others as undeserving and so the cycle continues.