Is the UK beyond repair?

[Brrrrrrrrrrrr]

I’m sure plenty will come along to say I’m BU but for the past few weeks I’ve really started to question where this country and our society is heading and whether or not things are ever going to get better and when that might be.

We have economic chaos driven by high inflation, increasing interest rates and a total lack of urgency by anyone in charge to seemingly do anything about it. We have a government in power that seem to have nothing but contempt for anyone that doesn’t resemble their backers, ministers openly mocking critics on social media and a PM who can not remember if he may or may not have had something to do with benefiting from £5 million of Russian money. What on Earth have we become?

Our Health service is being systematically picked apart and left to decay away much to the detriment of those who rely on it or who cannot afford Private healthcare. We have Medical professionals striking because they are underpaid again to the detriment of those who rely on said services, wait lists are through the roof and the levels of care being received are understandably inadequate.

The education sector is a ticking time bomb because teachers are seeing the demands of their roles increase, funding cuts, the behaviour of the pupils start to become impossible to manage and the prospect of an easier life switching to another career too hard to resist.

Food bank usage is at an all time high, not just by those in charge who don’t know poverty but working professionals who can not afford to feed their families because the cost of living has zapped every last penny from them. The reality on the streets of real life Is so far detached from that seen on social media that it’s like looking at a different planet.

It just feels bleak and I don’t see how things are going to change, I’m often an optimist but this is stretching any semblance of light in the tunnel. Anyone else? Is this the type of world you want your children to live in? Surely they deserve better? How can this be fixed?

Do you think? I mean after Brexit who knows what the public would do but what’s for certain is this current system is vastly ineffective and rife with corruption and duplicity. The British people don’t want this to keep on going do they?

I think it’s you who’s in for the nasty shock if you really believe that.

If anything, they will make most of our problems worse.

No matter what drivel Labour politicians come out with, the Labour party is pro mass migration. Many on the left believe in open borders. Restrictions will be quietly dropped, and things will be made easier for migrants, both legal and illegal. Net migration is on track to be one million in 2023. Under Labour you can be sure it will be much higher. Kiss goodbye to what is left of the green belt, that's for sure.

As for the economy, one of the reasons we're in trouble is that we live beyond our means. We borrow and spend too much. Above all, we spend a fortune on welfare. The welfare state was set up to give ordinary working people a few years of peace and security before they died. Many of them were exhausted and crippled (and chemically poisoned) from decades slogging away in factories or fields. No one could argue with helping such people. However, it wasn't set up to enable hundreds of thousands of fit people to sit at home playing on their X-box because they've got a 'bad back', or 'depression'.

Labour is composed of fantasists. I'm a conservative (a moderate, 'wet' conservative) because I'm a realist. To those on the left, every migrant is a poor, frightened little refugee, and every welfare claimant is a Dickensian waif. Sensible, realistic people, who live in the real world, know this is nonsense. Yes, there are many, many migrants who benefit this country, and many refugees who really are refugees. There are also many people on benefits who really are crippled with mental or physical illness. But we all know that for every genuine individual there is a fake. God, I can think of a dozen people in my own life who cheat the benefit system, including a cousin, a brother in law and several neighbours.

You can make a case for higher taxes and more public spending. But you can't even trust Labour to spend public money on sensible things, like mending potholes, funding STEM courses, improving literacy in state schools, etc – things that help the economy. Instead, they'll waste it on hiring more 'diversity and inclusion managers' or funding students through utterly pointless degree courses in 'communication studies' or 'contemporary dance' or whatever.

Unfortunately I do.

Just because tories chat a big game- the immigration numbers are sky high, don’t swallow their drivel

I have exactly the same thoughts and fears. And yet unbelievably in my ward local election the tories were easily voted back in power! Has everyone gone mad?

We are still one of the richest countries in the world, and the most sophisticated.

it is income distribution that is getting worse and worse.

But no, far from broken beyond repair. We need some intelligent redistribution and investment and new policies on health and education.

it is hard to break a country beyond repair. Look at some of the old Eastern Block countries now…

I think many people are voting Tory because they're frightened of Labour who aren't doing anything to reassure people that they're not absolutely insane.

The country will get worse because all politicians are greedy, immature, self serving and not particularly intelligent.

Our local council, which has been Tory since Adam was a little lad, turned LibDem last year. And our chocolate fireguard MP who was parachuted into one of the safest Tory seats in the country (used to be John Major’s) has jumped before he was pushed. The tide’s turning.

Surely the state of things as they are now will see that standing on the world stage slowly start to fade. Sophisticated yet here we are with a failing health service, diabolical environmental policies and absolute disregard for investing in children’s education.

How can the average person get ahead, how do they better themselves or at least have the hope of being able to when everything is pitched against them? When a job with a decent salary last year allowed you to enjoy a holiday and the odd treat now barely allows you to get by?

Fortunately me and DP are financially fine but for so so many that is not the case and if anything looks set to get worse. The poverty line is now no longer the low bar we once thought it was, employed people using food banks?! How can this carry on?

I do hope you are right because this country and its people cannot take much more of this corrupt tory government

Neither. It's the acceptance that things are generally shite!

All of this.

The 80’s had riots, working class infrastructure shot, unemployment , education controversially went from O levels to GCSE plus the threat of nuclear war.
The 90’s had 15% interest rates, a property crash and nhs worries
2000 had the 2008 recession.
There’s always bad news.

Absolutely agree with SnackSizeRaisin and CalistoNoSolo

And those who can afford it should be prepared to pay more taxes.

Labour will win but it won't change anything, all those problems you highlight are happening in every country by and large (the NHS going private is a decades old meme now so it is tired tbf), you could pick and choose some metrics to highlight how we are 'worse' and say we are doing worse but it is a world wide issue, for example the record low interest rates (that where only meant to be temporary) was in brought in because of the GFC, it was highlighted at the time that a black swan event would cause mayhem for the neolib agenda and Covid was the black swan.

If you think Labour winning the next election, which they will, will actually change anything other than smoothing of the edges and can kicking then you don't really understand the global issue.

By the time the election after next comes around Labour will be considered Red Tories like Blair and the online activists will absolve themselves of all responsibility, a lot of labour supporters are going to be quiet when they are in power as shouting from the sidelines is a lot easier than making the decisions.

Just look at what Kier has u-turned on already now he knows it is in the bag, it is going to be a fun few years

That’s what frightens me. Since the Brexit vote I have very little confidence in the British public.

Labour will make things even worse, if that's possible. We'll lose the green belt, hundreds of thousands of extra people of unknown background will be invited into the country putting even more pressure on crumbling public services and they will completely trash women's rights and force even more woke madness down everyone's throats. Some of this will put children at risk.

The country is in terminal decline. Getting poorer every year. By 2030, our economy will be smaller than that of Poland.

Then again it has been a slow motion car crash for 25 years. First nu Labour set the wheels in motion for the destruction of economy by introducing tax credits to subsidize low wages. Then they mismanaged the economy and destroyed our gold reserves. Did not invest in a single valuable infrastructure project in all the time they were in power. Introduced uncontrolled migration to massage the GDP figures without having any industrial strategy to back up the population explosion. Almost bankrupted then country with out of control public spending.

Then came the Tories and the rampant corruption which has become unbelievably obvious in the last few years. The govt spent a trillion pounds of borrowed and printed money to bribe healthy people to stay at home during a pandemic that would not have impacted their health anyway. They filled the pockets of their cronies with this borrowed and printed money in the shape of dodgy PPE and the disastrous track and trace system. And are now taxing the country to death and STILL borrowing £25 a month just to pay welfare and debt interest.

The country is in terminal decline and there is no way back to the days when we could consider ourselves to live in a leading first world country. Get used to it. While you demand ever higher public spending of magic money without ever wondering where the money is coming from.

Labour need to do a better job of preparing for government.

They are nowhere on education, for example.

Gove sat as Shadow Secretary of State for Education, learning his subject, talking to influential head teachers, building up expertise. He knew exactly what he was doing when he eventually took office (and Cameron before him had been an effective Shadow Secretary of State for Education). I, personally, didn’t like much of what they did - some of it has turned out to be right (Nick Gibb and phonics, for example).

I desperately hope Labour get in. They need to be talking to MAT CEOs, OFSTED, initial teacher training organisations like Teach First, academic institutions like the IOE etc. Everyone will want to be talking to Labour at this point - but are Labour calling them up? I am not convinced that they are, and schools will suffer if they don’t.

The country is in terminal decline. Getting poorer every year. By 2030, our economy will be smaller than that of Poland.

Extrapolating some decade long predictions from recent GDP growth trends rarely end up panning out. In the 80s everyone believed that Japan was going to become a superpower in a few decades, just because the previous decade had been really good for them, in the early 00's it was extrapolated Spain to become richer than Germany, the polish headline is comical to the most astute Polish economist...

As for the rest, kind of agree, the 'left' are going to have to face a few difficulties over the next few years when it is them making the decisions.

*England, Scotland will be fine once our resources are no longer pillaged for the benefit of the English.

How old are you OP?

To me this also feels like somewhere we've been before

No where else is doing well either.
Inflation and problems are affecting everyone.

We've emerged from a global pandemic... And run into a war affecting global energy.

Are you kidding?

The US economy has roared back to life. Inflation there is lower than 5%. Japan’s inflation never went above 2%. Eurozone has pockets of issues button the whole is emerging well. China slowed a little but is still growing only to be outpaced by the next global superpower - India.

Let’s not lie about the state of our country. It’s a mess. Spending money you don’t generate tends to have that effect. We are the new Greece.

2000 had the 2008 recession.
There’s always bad news.

But we never really recovered from the 08 recession...