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?

Well I'm not going to write you a comprehensive essay, this has been done to death.
Labour support self ID. Self ID erases single sex facilities such as hospital wards, prisons, domestic abuse shelters. It erases women's ability to report some types of crime, it turns statistics into garbage.

The trans shitshow happened under and because of the Tories.

I really hope it's a good sign that behind the scenes he is actually doing the hard, grown up work of running the country, rather than frolicking about demanding publicity cookies like the floppy-haired narcissist before him.

I think you’re hoping in vain. He’s swanning around like royalty this week - Westminster Abbey and Lords.

@JaneyGee Labour deported hundreds of thousands of immigrants every year. Many many more than this bunch of lazy, ineffective Tories.

I disagree

The UK is still one of the richest countries in the world

The UK is one of the most welcoming & open

Why do think that people wish to come & live here for ?

Free education (not including university)
Free health care
Good employment opportunities
Long life span
Benefits
Freedom of speech, religion, race, gender
Social housing

We all "worked together" to get through the covid restrictions & we should all be proud of that.

We have a lot more to be thankful for, compared to people who lived through WW1 & WW2 times which are within living memory.

I don't have anything to moan about currently

Lots of people in other countries are worse off

Free education (not including university) - crumbling schools with chronically unhappy teachers having to bring in their own supplies

Free health care - NHS with waiting lists as long as your arm and outcomes nowhere near as good as comparable countries - dreadful social care

Good employment opportunities - possibly agree here but as UK becomes less productive, the brain drain or people leaving for places with better standards of living companies will cease to invest and this will no longer be true

Long life span - recently downgraded and seen as a good thing as the government was going to raise pension aim again and then didn’t because they figure we will die anyway

Benefits - millions economically inactive on the sick, long term idleness bred into generations now - covid furlough also got people thinking they could sit on their arses and be paid for doing nothing

Freedom of speech, religion, race, gender - radically eroding, see cancel culture

Social housing - nowhere near enough to meet demand and not enough house building in general. Chronic levels of migration- both legal and illegal placing huge burdens and creating resentment up and down the country about allocation

Could any of those advocating more of the same list the achievements of the Tories over the last 14 years.

This should be good. They did legalise same sex marriage so there is that.

Not really. That was the Lib-Dems.

Oh, I was taken in by Cameron taking the credit. So not even that.

At least you tried @Blossomtoes.

Anyway I'm sure some of the Tory supporters will be along in a minute to tell us about all the ways the Conservatives have made life in Britain better. And what we can look forward to from another term of Tories.

It’s been 3.5 hours now … They were all over this thread like a rash last night.

I've had a thought. I know it's not popular here and I'm not a fan myself, being a feminist and all but:🫣

They have made life easier/better for the UK's transfolk. I'm sure some people think that's an achievement.

One of the first ways to fix the UK, is before people can vote what if they have a quiz to show their knowledge and policies of the parties they are voting for ?

That's a ridiculous idea @Hawkins0001. It will just be easier to vote the Tories out.

Gladstone and the Pankhursts must be revolving in their graves.

They may have got us the vote, and it's appreciated but look at the majority have done with it, how many people truly study what they are voting for?
Then people wonder why we have x parties in power

It would be easier and maybe better to vet the candidates rater than the electorate.

But then the candidate's are just the figure head of the party, and it's still the public that vote for the party

I think you need to do a bit of research into an MP’s role. They’re not a figurehead.

Fair points

Sadly I think you are absolutely spot on. Can’t believe anyone voted for the Tories (or voted for Brexit) but honestly Keir Starmer is not the answer. I’m thinking of voting green at the next election as this government seem happy to let the rest of us burn while they quaff their champers in their air conditioned bunkers with their billionaire backers.

I was in the Republic of Ireland recently. Fuck me, what a difference. The roads there are like American Highways, straight, smooth, no roundabouts every half a mile. Perfectly logical speed limits, a touch higher than here and no stupid 20mph limits or speed cameras at every corner.

The food was AMAZING. All supermarkets and petrol stations have deli counters with staff who will make everything from a breakfast roll to a full Sunday roast. And about 30 different kinds of coffee, rich and creamy, not the anemic shite we get here. All the supermarkets were full to the brim, no empty shelves, no "only two boxes per person" signs.

Virtually no ASB, not a single hooded teenager hanging around outside anywhere. There was a profound sense of how much happier people seemed.

It seems being part of the EU isn't such a bad thing after all. Coming back here it was immediately obvious how fucked up things are. I'm not sure how we can fix any of it. We have royally fucked up.

We have a fundamental problem with a government that pleads poverty, says they have to raise taxes, make us all poorer, but at the same time they give away or waste so much of our money. And nobody seems willing to talk about it. Each and every year, the government literally gives away 15 billion pounds of our money on foreign aid. By its own admission it doesn't even know what this money is used for. The last figures I could find were for 2021, and they reported that this "aid" only generated 376 million in revenue for the UK. So over 14 billion is simply written off. But thats our fucking money! We could have 450,000 extra nurses or police officers for that money!.
They say they can't afford to pay for more police or more NHS staff but they're literally lying to us. THEY HAVE THE MONEY!

They wasted billions on PPE during Covid.

They say that criminals go "free" and illegal migrants can't be deported because of "the law". Well it took them less than 48 hours to create new laws that stripped every citizen of this country of every right they had, making it illegal to leave your house of see your family. So they are fucking lying when they hide behind the "It's the law" platitudes. They have already demonstrated how quickly they can change and make up new laws. So they are lying when they say they can't change things. They just don't want to.

We need a new government. NOW.

The R o I benefits from not having Brexit and very low corporate tax. Neither of which the next Labour government is doing much about,

Especially low corporation tax. They won’t re enter the SM or CU.

On the illegal migration bill it’s the H o L that are opposing it. The H o C has voted it through. Ironically a Labour proposal to abolish the H o L would aid it right now if that had happened.