Which countries specifically do you think/feel/know to be better governed than the UK?

[EffortlessDesmond]

Lots of posters pile on to threads to condemn the UK, and apart from Scandinavian countries with generally much smaller populations and larger land masses, dont actually make constructive comments. I already know that Brexit has not improved anything. So please, can someone tell me where public policy is actively improving the quality of life for the population?

@Greenfairydust Germany, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Iceland, New Zealand, Canada, Switzerland, Belgium

New Zealand???? You have got to be joking!
Clearly you don't live in the country.

Please carry on the conversation. I will pick this up again in the morning.

@pointythings

I don't like the Tories but I will take them over the far right everyday if the week.

Far/hard right not for me thanks.

What doesn't work so well are awful cheap high rises and acres of cheap shoddily built new build rabbit hutches with no redeeming architectural beauty. This is what the UK favours.

I agree and it’s sad to think of decent housing in UK cities that was demolished to make way for tower blocks.
Having said that high rises are built all over the world and as a pp pointed out, the centre of Paris is beautiful but some of the banlieus are grim.

Thehateisnotgood what is JOE please?

@Fandabedodgy if you look at the history of the far right in coalitions in Europe, what has happened so far is that they are in a coalition for a term, none of their policies are enacted, they squabble among themselves and look stupid, then disappear.

Contrast this with 13 years of the Tories destroying the UK and I know what I'd rather have.

Having had direct experience of it I would say easily Germany. Yes it is not perfect and the rise of more extreme political parties is worrying but it generally is better governed with more local democracy and encouraging more general personal responsibility for community. There are a lot of things such as education, public transport, taxation and childcare that seem to just be better run in Germany. However this is based on a very different economy than the UK built on medium-scale enterprises that the UK is absolutely crap at sustaining and a manufacturing base that the UK has failed to maintain.

Someone a few posts back mentioned lack of long-term planning. I think that is a real problem in this country. Constant cabinet reshuffles, career politicians, "inititiative-itis", needless rebranding projects, overeliance on marketing and self-promotion. Projects that would actually be of some use to the country become massively overspent eg the building of new hospitals being mismanaged and delayed and delayed. It just seems to me that the people in charge are simply looking out for what they can get out of their position on a short-time basis. They don't seem to REALLY care or believe in what they are producing. There's a feeling that there is no real passion for what they're producing.

Don’t countries with things like proportional representation end up doing a lot of horse trading and haggling. Was it Belgium that had no elected government for like one and a half years? Not saying it’s better or worse just not sure that it always works out well.

Having said that the Greens have been kicking up a fuss over Scholz’s reluctance to be a bit more helpful to Ukraine, probably an instance where a PR system is good because it’s a bit harder to ignore the people keeping you in government than it is the opposition.

A larger percentage of Swedes live in apartments than Brits do. There's a lot of uninhabited land in Sweden, but the towns and cities have reasonably high population densities. Visit andy random swedish town with a few hundred inhabitants and you'll see some 3-4 story apartment blocks, whereas in the UK it'd be pretty much all bungalows, cottages or other single family homes.

@pointythings

Under no circumstances could I support being in bed with the far right.

Effective or not It's a line I couldn't cross.

The whole world isn't European - there's so many other systems of governance in the big, wide world to consider when trying to discover the best 'system of governance'.

Maybe in the Amazon, Lithuania or the Accursed Mountains of Albania we might find the perfect system of governance, or some useful bits at least.

An infinite question with no definitive answer OP.

@pointythings I was going to say exactly the same- Sweden does not have a far right party totally calling the shots.

Personally I would rather Farage had had 12 seats and his nuttiness out in the open than the Tory party turning themselves into ukip to gain that ukip vote

Belgium, Netherlands.

The index posted by a pp is interesting. I have experience of Denmark and Iceland and would definitely say they are better run.

Just having a government that cared even a little bit about the ordinary people would be a start.

I was just thinking that coalition govt is much more the norm in most the countries mentioned. Coalition govts may tend to moderate the crazy ideas of any single party.

@lljkk I agree. Coalitions (except for the Tory / libdem one we got) tend to keep more of a balance and incorporate checks unlike the extreme system we have now where there is very little accountability. People get away with all sorts now.

You've been cutting deals with the DUP since John Major and his struggles with the Europhobes. So far right they are practically invisible.

@Eleganz Absolutely. My H is in Germany for next 10 days with work and goes a lot (and I have been a lot too- all over) - at the moment he's in a town outside Stuttgart that is the home to Bosch- most of the people will work for Bosch- he stayed in another that was for BASF - there are loads of places like this.they have maintained strong 'quality' manufacturing industry, they have a good car industry and they don't spend 450 billion down the drain getting out of the EU. There are a lot of comfortably off middle income earners and lots of them have good £850 a month social 3 bed rented flats plus a place in Spain or Greece. They simply do things differently and I think they have higher expectations too . Again higher tax, higher services. People think the UK is lower tax but you know it really isn't for most by the time you factor in council tax, NI, very high childcare etc- Denmark had no council tax or NI when we lived there- simply higher tax.

Just as an example ladies, when we were in Copenhagen, a politician got caught claiming 300 euros he wasn't entitled to- he was out on his arse immediately. Here it wouldn't even register!!!

We have politicians that were caught out offering themselves up for second jobs at £10k a day - we have many cases of cash for questions, we have Boris Johnson taking an MP salary and away for long periods on talk tours - it's like some of them see being an MP as a part time hobby

I was thinking Belgium. Even during that 589 day period in 2010-2011 when they couldn't manage to form a government, they were better governed than we are. 😔

Someone upthread mentioned the farming/environmental crisis in the Netherlands as a way of making the point that they are not perfect. And of course they are not. However, that very crisis prompted the rapid formation of a new political party, the BBB, who then had massive success in the second chamber elections. This scared the current government so much that they are currently changing their policies on this issue (which were poorly thought out). And that is an example of how PR benefits democracy and gives citizens a voice.

@TheHateIsNotGood this thread isn't about perfect political systems. It's about countries which are better governed than the UK. Of which there are many, and not very far from our shores.

As an ex pat and now NZ citizen I know as public sector workers we are far better off economically. DH developed a hugely debilitating condition after 15 years of living here ( went through full NZ medical which is fairly rigorous and nothing was picked up at the time) he has been a resident since 2002 but has in the last 4 years cost NZ I’d estimate over half a million in healthcare and the costs are ongoing. His publicly funded power chair was £15000 alone never mind all the other adaptive equipment we have in the house. His equivalent of PIP means I have been able to give give up work to care for him and yup it is a hit ( I was a high earner) but we live very comfortably on the carers allowance. To be fair our housing costs are small because I own this house, we eat well, pay our fairly high council tax and even save a bit. We do have some savings but we are cautious with our money and always have been. DH is 18 years my senior and will qualify for his pension at 65. There is no way he would have got the help that he needs in the UK. It’s not perfect but we know and are thankful that he is unwell in NZ and not in Britain.

Yes, NZ is boring unless you like sport, being outdoors and goodness knows I miss poking round antique shops/ stately houses and attending decent theatre and it takes an age to get anywhere but to have a health service that actually serves is a huge plus. Yes, there is a lack of carers to give me respite break but unexpected and life changing illness is manageable in this country. We are incredibly lucky to have no housing costs, I pushed to pay off the house as fast as possible when we felt DH’s health was doing strange things before official diagnosis, which took 3 years and was very complex involving top notch publicly funded geneticists.

I am a leftie but didn’t agree with some of Ardern and now Hipkin’s policies. We are both GC in a country which has a media that portrays anyone who is GC as a right wing bigot. This presents some ethical issues for me in particular.

Had we both been living in the UK we would have been screwed as public sector workers. I also believe that due to my working class background I would not have been able to become senior management/ higher earner due to the class factor had I stayed in the UK.

I feel for NZ because DH has been an expensive migrant mistake but the care, response and package to cope with his lifelong deteriorating condition tells me we are far better off here than in the UK.

NZ public policy for the permanently unwell/ disabled is far superior to the UK in our opinion and experience.

I'm really pleased your husband benefitted from our public health system, @MsRead. I also received excellent care and support in 2006/2007 when I needed three operations, a 7 month stint in orthopaedic rehab, home modifications, home help etc etc. I could not fault the care, medical treatment, accommodation etc etc which was entirely funding by ACC.
However, I'm sure you will agree that now our public health system is almost on its knees, with significant staff shortages, incredibly long waiting lists, etc.

Yup, British cities are unusual for their lack of density, esp in the urban core and around public transport stops.

The UK has very small houses, which I think fools a lot of people into thinking that UK cities are dense. They are not. There is a difference between “crowding” and “density.” UK cities effectively have the worst of both worlds; they have high crowding levels as in very low levels of floorspace per person, but density levels are not very high and are not high enough in most places to allow public transport to function effectively….which means multiple cars per household and loads of public space used for parking….which further reduces the space available for building housing.