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.

@OMG12

And nobody blames modern Brits for the Empire either.

We do however need to talk about it. Germany certainly is aware of it's past and addressed it. The UK not so much.

@Crikeyalmighty - you are right about the odd bods. Not one of the people you identify had a substantial job outside of politics. Successful people in their own right, outside of the Westminster bubble, do not want the grief or the relatively low pay. Though this government started out with the crumbs in terms of a cabinet and that has accounted for some of the terrible decisions which have been made in the last 4 years.

I’m put off by Starmers inability to define a woman. I wouldn’t trust the running of a country to someone so unable to grasp basic biology.

I think the health and fitness boil back to personal responsibility- we need to take the lead on these matters ourselves, same with keeping places clean and tidy. I’d like all young people to do a year charity work

Really????

and how would you like Britain to do that (together, presumably with France, Netherlands, Spain,Portugal, Greece, Italy, Scandinavia etc).

I think it might all because of a "brilliant plan to make Brexit save the UK".

Not forgetting that one of the main drivers for the UK joining the EEC in 1975 was that the country was bankrupt and had just been bailed out by the IMF.

Now fast forward a few years and the UK was doing much better. However the problem with this was that as a better off country the UK effectively contributed more to the EU than it got out. This rankled Thatcher and the Conservatives which set in place a anti European faction in the Tory party.

Now here comes the clever bit, by actively screwing up the UK economy and making everyone poorer so that once again we are close to or actually are bankrupt again if then and only then the UK seeks to rejoin the EU the UK would be joining as a relatively poorer member and then get back more than it contributes.

Genius really...

@Anxioys Yep. It's stuffed full of untalented misfits

I saw a statistic recently IIRC it was in the FT, but may have been another broadsheet saying that the UK's governance problem is that the Prime Minister is paid the same as the manager of a large motorway filling station with supermarket in rural Texas. If you pay peanuts (and I appreciate that £145k pa will rub a lot of MN the wrong way) then you get monkeys. There is a reason that really good people whatever their field are headhunted internationally.

@1dayatatime - it's a bit like Baldricks cunning plan - !! My own version of it was that they let the UK go to total crap , so when they announce we will be rejoining under some new fancy terminology like 'European customs alliance' - their will be an incredible bounce on trade and prices and we will all feel so greatful we will vote Tory!!

The pay is only part of the problem, but also, post Brexit, a lot of experts or good people do not want to be in government or work for it.

The UK is a well educated country and has lots of world leading people. It has great expertise. But this moron culture born of referendums and no experts means that the grifters are left. The non experts and "make it up" crowd won.

I think Idayatatime has a valid point. Membership of the EU was NOT benefitting a large % of the UK in 2016. What they saw around them was their contributed taxes paying for grand infrastructure in poor countries, when our own failing instructure (just ageing) was going from ramshackle to collapse.

Anecdotal, obviously, but I went to Spain by ferry and then drove to Aquitaine, France in 1989/90, and it took 7 hours. The same journey on the new motorway now takes 1hr 45m. Spain and Portugal (chosen only because I have recently spent time there the last two years) look modern now, but when I last went before, in the early 1990s, it wasn't very different (ie, the roads were nearly as bad) to West Africa, where my DSis lived at the time.

Interesting, I have friends in Norway who were complaining the last time we spoke about the number if Swedes moving there because life in Sweden is "shit" (their word).

Agree that trying to get good people to work in public services (particularly local government) is difficult because they have such a shit reputation. Fair enough, you might get a good graduate wanting to join the Fast Stream, but when local governments have poor pay and shit reputations, they aren’t going to get good candidates. I would say that London, and maybe Manchester and Birmingham would be the exceptions. Otherwise the general air from public service is “yes, everything is a bit shit, what else do you expect?” No one seems to want or expect better, and hence we get a shitty government who’s never called to account.

Agree with a PP who said that MN is full of amazing women who should go into politics, but who in their right mind would?

Yes, Portugal and Spain have demonstrated greater improvements from EU membership, but the Netherlands and France have seen great improvements and they are also net contributors (not sure about France because of CAP). If we couldn’t make the EU work for us, then that’s on us. It looks like we chose to get “cheap workforce to keep middle class prices down” rather than any kind of structural benefit.

To a degree, I think the failure comes from population pressure/compression. France has four times the space for a similar size population, compared to the UK. French cities are also better (or more evenly) spread across the land mass, whereas too much of the UK's economic activity is concentrated in the SE.

Couldn't agree more op. Dh is a paramedic and we live by the sea. He regularly ends up right in central London in the ambulance. It scares me that he is deemed the nearest person to do the job.

As for the pay and working conditions don't get me started.

Our eldest lost out on lots of school because of all the strikes.

I could go on.

@SgtPercyTwentyman maybe they have much much higher standards than ourselves then- because when we lived in Copenhagen we used to go to Sweden regularly, both Lund and Malmo and Stockholm and Uppsala too and the lifestyle looked pretty good to me too - (same in Copenhagen ) and I would describe exactly as @Simonjt said- we only are back in UK for family and work reasons - not because it wasn't a better lifestyle- it was

@Anxioys absolutely- a celebration of the stupid and self interested grifters. Go to twitter or x as it is now- the number of reasonably intelligent middle/upper class girlies and guys on there with really right wing self centred views is incredible- - and I have a strong feeling with many of them that they don't even believe the bullshit they spout-- just think there is good money in that 'shock jock' political space.

Yes @Crikeyalmighty there is something very cynical about it.

It's the Jeremy Clarkson effect. If you say something shocking then people engage. Furiously, impotently, and all you need do is sit back.

That's good for a troll, but it's a disaster for people and politics. It's dividing people deliberately and making the conversation stupid. This isn't a new tactic but it is more and more potent on social media. Angry people mean more engagement.

Of course, you can go too far and go the full Trump with a conspiracy theory, but the process is the same to start with.

Brilliant. Never thought of that. We're a basket case give us a few billion £ in structural funding please!

Some Tory Baldrick has been hard at work....

Yes! But first they have to work out why it was all Labour's fault Britain left in the first place. Probably coz they are all traitors who want the economy to collapse. Or something.

Then a few months of the Mail saying how world beating Blighty will offer leadership to the benighted EU. Job done.

@Anxioys totally agree- writing sensible logical columns only works when you already have a lot of traction/clout (think people like MatthewParris or David Aaranovitch . To get traction these days it appears you have to turn to shock jock territory or be fantastically good at communicating and responding to idiots (James o brien territory)

@Abhannmor Ha- so bloody true!! The Mail would spin it somehow

Isn't the Netherlands densely populated too? They seem to do alright.

Thinly populated parts of the UK like Scotland don't seem to be doing any better as a result.

I think the UK is doing badly partly because of Brexit and partly because of over-centralization and terrible planning systems that stop things getting built. It might also help if Brits were more open to living more densely and using public transport, which tends to boost productivity.

That said, all countries have their challenges. The UK scores higher than most countries for things like race relations and tolerance, and English schools do well in international assessments.

Our infrastructure is collapsing because Govts chose not to spend tax payers money on it & waste what they do spend - strangely enough, the EU (still) is part funding the new bit of the A30 in Cornwall, as it has done other sections of that road.

Santander to the French border is approx 200km, i'm pretty sure a car in the early 90s could do that in less than 4 hours, it was a busy route but similar to many current English A roads back then, i cycle toured Spain in 1986 and we never came across a corrugated dirt road, every road was tarmac and we avoided the main roads too

Sure EU states money was spent in Spain but our 11bn wouldn't have built much hi speed track or motorways & now they ve a decent economy, we can sell stuff to them, benefitting us all in the UK, same with Eastern Europe too.

What you really mean is many who voted for Brexit didn't understand the EU or how we benefitted.

I think the health and fitness boil back to personal responsibility

The NHS dietary and weight loss advice is behind the times, diabolically so. People might think they are taking personal respnsibility by following it but it will likely lead to weight gain and poor health.

Generally we live in an obesogenic society, with private transport treasured, worshipped and prioritised. In a country where evenings can be long and dark and the weather is often awful, good options for indoor exercise are a basic. Where I am there's little, the choice is poor, opening times bizarre ("the pool will close for half term"), public transport poor and expensive (half an hour round trip £22 for a family of 4).

Oh and I love the term moron culture. It sums up the level of political debate so well. It's so sad that there are so many excellent, decent people out there but none of them are in government.

When talking about look of UK, I mean like, putting rubbish in a bin instead of just tossing it is not really depending on Gov. We had shite governments, we still use bins. Or you get told off... We even had a kick offs against some tourist groups in places just leaving their rubbish in parks etc.
My mum was really surprised at the amount of rubbish on streets here.

The underfunding really shows, but tbh I came before tories came in 2010 and it was not all fine and dandy either.

Absolutely agree with transport and public access to pools etc. moans. It is ALWAYS very frustrating. I also used to fly back to see my doctors. Many of us did. NHS had a reputation of "here, have some paracetamol and see if it helps first" for a looooong time.

I think that decline started well before 2010, but within the last 12 years it got sped up and multiplied.