I also think it is shambolic how disabled people are treated in the UK. There needs to be huge investment here for proper services, proper educational provision, proper inclusion in the workplace, and disability benefits like PIP and DLA need to be at least doubled to actually cover the costs of disability on top of normal living costs, as they are meant to.
State pensions should be based on a % of the amount contributed not just the number of years, like in most other European countries. As should unemployment pay, with far more focus on a contributory system.
Part of the problem the UK has is that there are a great many people who contribute little or nothing then wail that public services are terrible. Well of course they are when so many people can choose to work part time and have their living costs subsidised. There are posts on here about it all the time, how people can have the same income choosing to have a SAHP or one parent working minimal hours and the taxpayer pay a large chunk of their rent and living costs for example. Some moves are being made to change this which is good as it is not sustainable or reasonable and that money should instead be used for decent quality education, healthcare and support for the disabled.
Oh and obviously - it goes without saying as it's so obvious - any Government that actually cared about the standard of living in the UK would rejoin the single market and customs union immediately.
Ultimately the services people want can't be funded unless everyone pays much more tax. Often people say they are happy to but they are people paying a few hundred pounds per month and are thinking what, an extra £50-£100 will do it? It won't. Mostly the expectation seems to be that they say this but what they mean is that other people should pay more.
The wealthy in the UK who earn their money in dividends/ from investments need to pay far more for sure: raise capital gains and dividend tax to the level of income tax. But due to the maths, even if that happened, it won't be enough. The only way to do it is to widen the tax base again, reduce the personal allowance and raise the basic rate of income tax substantially. People need to put their money where their mouth is and realise that it's not other people who need to fund it all for them: the systems they wish for are paid for in those countries because everyone pays more tax. People earning under £50k in the UK pay next to nothing, not even enough to fund their current services so how can they be improved?
Then you also get social cohesion and any support for services collapsing because they are funded by only a small proportion of people, and increasingly those people are even prevented from accessing them as well as paying for them for themselves and others. Not a good idea: that is the fastest way ever to erode support for public services which - cynically perhaps - I think is one reason this has been done. And like Brexit, sadly a proportion of the British population is economically illiterate enough to have fallen for it.
But obviously people in those earning brackets can't pay more at the moment because we've all been impoverished by bad economic management and Brexit. The only way to fix it all therefore is for productivity to rise because that is the only way for living standards and salaries to rise in proportion to the cost of living. Which brings me back to my original list: long-term plans for the economy and industrial strategy (infrastructure, SM and CU, fixing the tax system per above, support for start-ups to grow new businesses), huge investment in education and technology and linking that to businesses and technical apprenticeships and retraining mid-life, water/ energy/ food security, long-term plans...
Oh dear. I do not hold out much hope because ALL of our politicians are too incompetent to do this. It doesn't even appear to be on their radars.