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.

10 years of austerity and the country looked it - shabby and run down. Then Brexit and the pandemic. All led by a conservative government, that daily Mail readers and the well off will continue to vote in.

I don't know why agencies and organizations (including the EU itself) put so much time and energy into collecting detailed statistics that allow you to compare across countries. Clearly, you could just ask someone who has a mate who lives there instead.

Are you trying to desperately defend decades of british goverment failures or what?

lagging ambulances,failing dental and health care etc is a fact, run down buildings,roads,schools etc.-its there in plain sight

before you say about living elsewhere well i did 20 years and have had over a decade
of living in the uk experience, cant get fairer than that when i have an opinion right?

COVID was really expensive excessive money was printed. No other country copies the NHS , the tax burden is getting higher, skilled workers are retiring less tax receipts. People want highly funded public services but don't want to pay the tax needed. They also don't want to pay for any private healthcare or social care so this is where we are. I don't think even labour can fix the NHS not going to happen.

@Reallifelurker its not a brexit thread
i rather think it is

and maybe there are brexit threads because people can see what an effing disaster it is
but there’s a whole board dedicated to Brexit. Why not post there?

Brexit has nothing to do with dirtiness of UK. It's always been visible that people here don't get what bins are for or that you actually can physically take rubbish with you until you find bin. Like from parks and beaches... Austerity also doesn't take away ability to bin rubbish

It depends on your income, mine would be 39.2%

That’s a bit too real for mn. Also agree with Hardbackwriter

Well Brexit was always going to go mainstream when we could talk about it without screaming. It’s only now we’re seeing they we are on a gradual decline worse than EU countries because, well you know.

Starmer would walk the next election if he wasn’t Starmer. But he’s too weak and uninspiring. We need a Burnham or a Cooper - someone you could see running the show without refusing to say what they think. (99% of women have a penis).

We need to choose which way lower taxes but you will be forking out for more things or much higher taxes. This in the middle isn't going to work much longer.

The NHS is a shitshow (dentistry already has been for 20 years)
Education is a shitshow
Public transport is a shitshow
Social care is a shitshow
Childcare is a shitshow
Extreme poverty is a reality for more people than in a long time
No libraries
Potholes literally everywhere

No dogshit near me that I've noticed
No rubbish in streets or roadsides that I've noticed
High Street still busy/diverse/affluent/pleasant to spend time there
Lots of new play parks (that is down to parish council funding and/or specific grants)

It's not great is it (understatement)? But I don't recognise every single thing in your OP in my area and I do have European (Spain, Italy and Poland) colleagues who say they still won't move back home as job prospects are still better here and they want their children to grow up here (not sure whether that might change in near future)

I don’t think you can decouple Brexit from
the rest of the political and financial decisions made in the UK, as the impact is obviously far reaching, so in that sense, everything is a Brexit thread.

"Brexit has nothing to do with dirtiness of UK. It's always been visible that people here don't get what bins are for or that you actually can physically take rubbish with you until you find bin. Like from parks and beaches... Austerity also doesn't take away ability to bin rubbish"

It is, because the systems we have in place to clean up are too strained due to decades or more of austerity and the various constraints of Brexit. And this is happening in all of our social systems. Like I said, it was just one example.

I think it depends where you are. NHS is fairly good here and I could get a doctors appointment

I also have an NHS dentist

In France the riots are full on. The price of food has shot up & is now incredibly high & the amount of beggars following you & continually approaching people is worrying. To many people France looks clean with wide empty roads but like the UK it too has many problems.

Poorer countries to uk manage to use bins. The problem is "someone else will clean it" attitide imho.

I was recently in the UK for 2 weeks (we live abroad) and bar the weather it was delightful. Spent most of our time in Berkshire and Oxfordshire and they were as charming as ever. The main difference I saw from two years ago was much more homelessness in London and Oxford Street is looking shabby, but nothing else was that different. TCR station is amazing!

Do people not see how this tourist view of a place is not the day-to-day reality for the people who live there? Yes the UK has many problems at the moment and the government needs to be held to account, but so do many, many other countries. All this "Spain is so clean and the rioting in Paris is wonderful and the UK is the worst place on earth" is absolutely ridiculous.

Well Brexit was always going to go mainstream when we could talk about it without screaming

????

It really is.

I agree with the idea that you only see some cracks in some countries when you are resident, but OTOH being resident also allows you to see when that country's situation is being inaccurately reported in another country's MSM.

For example lots of people in France don't like the proposed pension changes but I'd certainly caution the idea that seems to be doing the rounds that the whole of France has been striking and rioting 24/7 for the last three months over the issue.

It is of course right and fair that having lived elsewhere, you prefer it, and think it a better place to live than the UK. My point is that we all have different priorities as tax payers. I choose to live here because in my experience, subjectively, I think it is a better place to live than other countries I have lived in.

I value safety over easy access to dentists for example. We all have different ideas of what is important to us.

Yes! But the tories cut all the police, and the ones left are struggling to recover the public trust with scandal after scandal.

So do we, which is why we decided leaving the UK was what we needed to do.

So do we, which is why we decided leaving the UK was what we needed to do.