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?

It’s madness and when you look at the issues we face and his blustering inability to make it stack up even worse

Who would you like to see elected to right our current wrongs?

Oh the irony of accusing the articulate leader of the opposition of bluster when we observe the erstwhile prime minister - Peppa Pig Land, anyone?

Great.
Now they can afford to be independent and pay for themselves - wheeee !

And how can Labour fail to succeed when we have the erudite Angela "Luscious Legs" Rayner in the team.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/angela-rayner-hits-back-at-abusive-emails-over-her-accent_uk_5811d990e4b04660a438156a

No I haven't. My point was that if migration can increase under the Tories, how much worse will it be under Labour. The Conservative party contains people who dislike mass migration and want to defend our borders, yet they have failed. So how bad is it going to be under Labour, a party that contains people who want open borders and no controls or checks at all?!

This problem isn't going away. Overpopulation is rarely mentioned, yet it's one of the major issues of our time. In 1900, the world's population was 1.5 billion. By 1960, it had trebled to 3 billion. In 2000, it had doubled again to 6 billion. It's now 8 billion and heading for 10 billion. This is madness. What the hell is going to happen when climate change makes it hard to grow stuff? Or coastal cities are flooded? These huge populations are going to move, en mass.

And don't tell me the birth rates are dropping. That might be true in Korea, but in Africa they are still sky high. African women have 5 children on average (in some African countries the average is 7!!)

Blair was an admirer of Thatcher, he said so. He removed clause 4 and didn't reverse a lot of Thatcherite policy and economics, notably the right to buy (with no reinvestment). Of course that's not the whole story, but the overton window has shifted waaaaay to the right in my lifetime.

Except here where no matter what goes right, the UK is the worst ever...

It seems to be because anything not in line with the extreme right disaster capitalists is now somehow terrifying socialism - it's ridiculous.

Yes.I'm encouraging my family to leave.it's not big enough for boat loads of criminals coming here to scrounge,commit crime and use free resources.they have destroyed it.And will continue to do so.

What's intellectually lazy is to spout the same nonsense over and over when the facts don't back it up. The rich don't leave when taxed, 84% of billionaires live in the country of their birth and only 5% of UHNW individuals move after they've become wealthy. You can also implement policies to discourage UHNW from moving aborad a la America.

As for your oil and gas rant you couldn't be more misinformed. The big players have been pulling out for years, not because of taxes but because of the difficulties of extraction and cost of decommissioning.

I attended a decommissioning seminar back in 2018 where various leaders and policy makers were talking about this issue and I dont think much has changed since then. Unlike Norway, who have been planning for decommissioning for decades, the UK have ignored the fact that the good times won't last forever. There's no credible plan on how to decommission the North Sea. Currently the asset owners are required to handle decommissioning, unless they go bust, then they are off the hook.

So what you have is the big players looking at the costs of extraction + the cost of decommissioning v how much profit is left in a field and selling currently profitable operations to smaller organisations earlier than they otherwise would. These smaller companies are happy to take a risk and try to make some cash for a few years then go bust to avoid paying decommissioning costs. This can happen several times with smaller and smaller companies buying into the market.

The governments bright idea to solve this? To say "well, if an asset owner goes bust, decommissioning costs will pass back to the previous owner, and if they're bust too, back to the next, and the next, and the next, until we find someone who can't / won't go bust".

Of course that's never going to happen and the previous asset owners, who may have sold operations a decade or more ago are saying "see you in court if you try this shit".

So the expected billions it will cost to decommissioning the North Sea is very likely going to land on UK tax payers shoulderd because our illustrious leaders can't plan more than a year ahead.

But in any case you do know that North Sea oil and gas is sold on the open market don't you? An increase in production does not necessarily translate into a reduction in bills or increase in tax for the UK taxpayers.

Scotland is a world leader in renewables energy and currently produces 98.5% of its gross electricity needs from renewable sources. Even with declining oil and gas resources they still produce more than 4.5 times the amout of gas Scotland consumes. Scotland is completely energy self sufficient but, gets no benefit from this, in fact they pay higher bills both in terms of supply and connection.

Additionally, Scotland had 25% of all of Europe's offshore energy resource and contains 90% of the UKs fresh water resources and several other key resources.

It's not Scotland that needs England. There's a reason the unionists, including the tories who are happy to let people die to save a few quid, fought tooth and nail, made vows, promises and pledges (they never kept), and lied through their teeth to persuade Scotland to stay in the union.

Are you genuinely telling me they did this so they could keep subsiding an entire country??

Where to?

The depressing thing is that the choice has already been made!

Do people not realise that they actively chose dodgy disaster capitalists and far right social policies when they voted for Brexit?

If you turn your back on the largely centrist Christian democratic principles of the EU with relatively high taxes, subsidised public services, and regulation in terms of employment standards, environmental impacts and food quality… then you are making an active choice in favour of lower taxes, lower wages, poor working conditions and food standards, lax environmental and underfunded public services etc.

That policy choice has already been made by the British people and they voted to go with the USA and Singapore … not with our neighbouring countries which have better safety nets for the poorest and most vulnerable in society. And Johnson and co and now Sunak, with Teuss in between, and their friends such as Jacob Rees Mogg are more than happy to deliver and suck up the resulting profits (eg the scandal and catastrophe that is Thames Water) and watch the disparity between rich and poor grow ever wider.

Hear hear !!!

@BringItOnxxx in 2015 with Proportional representation UKIP who won 1 seat would have had 82 seats.

PR sounds good and it probably is more of a true reflection but extremism on both ends of the political scale would have a better chance.

What matters is without re-investment in oil the oil industry will collapse.

And with it a significant fraction of their exports and tax base from the people who work in the sector on high wages.

Of course if Scotland is part of the UK, it's a loss to the UK as a whole rather than just Scotland.

But the UK economy is a lot more diversified and a lot better at tolerating these sorts of shocks.

I am convinced the SNP don't actually want independence, as they will only have one tactic to deal with the fallout - blame everyone else. That's pretty much what all nationalists do.

Beyond repair? No. If Labour get in at the election, the press will suddenly make it sound perfect overnight. Nothing will actually change other than the slant of the reporting.

Too many people, not enough putting in.

The UK government have mismanaged the oil and gas sector since day one, I'm not sure why you'd think they are capable of doing better now tbh.

Scotland's potential lack of resilience (and it's by no means a certainty as you can't know how we'd do until we actually gain independence) is a direct result of being in the UK.

Oil and gas is the epitome of this. I really hate to make the comparison, and accept there's no guarantee an independent Scotland would have went this way, but you only have to look at Norway to see what could have been. They had to share their oil and gas resources, which are roughly the same size as the UK, between 5m people. Scotland has had to share it's resources with 45-68m people.

That's why Norway has a sovereign wealth fund worth over £1 trillion and never has to borrow, while Scotland has nothing but a share of a crippling national debt and the pleasure of constantly being told how stupid and poor we are.

Our problems under Labour will be so much worse!!

England needs Scotland way more than Scotland needs England. Taken a look at where England's energy is going to be coming from over the next decade or so? Why do you think the Tories are so desperate to hold onto the union, it's got nothing to do with them actually giving a shit about anything north of the border.

The fact is, the tories don't want to fix the mess they have made of the country. They are doing quite nicely out of it.

Will they? Can you explain the rationale behind that belief?

Their policies are not rooted in reality.

No they won't.

The tories have systematically and very deliberately fucked the uk over the last 13 years.

At this point the animaniacs could do a better job.

That’s another slogan, not an explanation.