to think the UK has become awful?

[ma1formed]

I can't pinpoint when, but it feels like everything that was once pretty good is now quite awful

So expensive
No doctors
Uni costs for kids insane
Terrible rent / can't buy a house
Everyone seems quite unpleasant or racist

Is it just me?

🤣 Your rags to riches story is great but the rest is ridiculous.

Agree - so many things are worse than a few years ago

• NHS is failing and it isn’t even winter
• sewage killing waterways
• schools and other buildings are apparently unsafe
• potholes in every road
• shoplifting is essentially decriminalised as are sexual assaults. Police only seem to care about misgendering and offence on social media

I’m a floating voter and my main priority is women’s rights and safety of women and children and so Labour hasn’t been an option, but fuck me, the conservatives are ballsing up everything

Look, it's not just the UK. I raise you...

Trump, climate denial
You should see the potholes in California...
6th largest economy, I think (CA)
Where is the money going, indeed!
Not a good country to be poor, that's for sure...

@rwalker

Austerity is never going to be popular but we couldn’t carry on spending at the rate we were 13 years ago

For the 999th time - countries dont work like families. Every serious economic organisation was unanimous that a decade of austerity shrunk the economy - in plain English - it made the vast majority poorer. The Tories did it through ideological bloodymindedness and nothing more.

Dunno about everyone being racist but racists certainly seem bolder. Day after the Brexit vote saw big white guy shouting in the street to some very small Muslim woman that she'd be fucking off home now.

I think there's plenty like him really. It's their country at the moment.

This is my adopted country, I hate t here now. After 23 years here I dont recognise it anymore. I cannot wait to get out, but I am older now and its much harder to get out :(

The main problem is over population , you can't keep increasing the amount of people and carry on with the same amount of doctors , dentists etc .

I agree. I also think that universal credit leaves working families better off then old benefit system which didn't provide enough to live on unless you were in council housing yet punished people for working.

Let's not forget that universal childcare was introduced by current government while labour is openly against it and wants to extend free childcare to people who don't work instead.
Let's see where that leaves families and their standard of living when most need to wages to pay their mortgage or private rent.

Brexit was the will of the people. Unfortunate as it was.
Covid was nobody's fault.
War in Ukraine and energy bills going up is not the fault of the government or a country.
Encouraging more boats will only create more deaths and people should apply for asylum by legal means. We are also a very small island with shortage of housing, schools, doctors etc. Being aware of negative impact of large migration is not racist. Actually UK is one of the most integrated and tolerant country in the world.

Thickos who thought by voting YES that meant all those bloody foreigners would be packed orf somewhere else ?

@FirstYouGetTheMoney glad it worked out for you.
Now stop blaming the rest of us. Some of us have worked just as hard but not got rewarded for our efforts

If it’s your adopted country don’t you have citizenship from original one?

I don't know. It's not perfect but I am SO bloody grateful to have been born here and live here when I see how things are elsewhere.

I don’t have a mortgage.

My food bill has nearly doubled. My rainy day find is for broken things & redundancy spending while I find another job (insurance for redundancy isn’t worth it imo as I would find any job before the period had lapsed that would enable me to claim.

To suggest that people have enough of a rainy day fund for all the things it’s meant for PLUS massive hikes on every bill is unfair.

Had to give it up. Not allowed to retain old passport and my UK citizenship

Add:-

-no dentistry
-no mental health provision
-crumbling dangerous and underfunded schools
-prisons that lose prisoners
-crappy non existent public transport in many areas….

I feel the same

I remember going to the local large city in the 80's as a teenager and it being really run down, dirty, boarded up buildings and then I worked there in the 90's and it suddenly started to get better, all those old boarded up buildings became hotels/offices/posh bars etc.
Went a couple of weeks ago to take a relative for a hospital appointment and it felt quite shabby again, loads of litter, lots of homeless, lots of closed shops and to let signs on buildings, felt like it was on a downward slide.

Geez that’s tough. Can you swap back by getting rid of U.K. one?

Link?

The current economic situation IS more complex than just the current PAYE system. We operate in a global market. There are global, National and local issues at play along with underfunding...poor policy and fraudulent spending of public money. Not forgetting global politics and a pandemic.

But yes. It's all about us poor higher rate tax payers 🤣please.

For such a high earner, you seem to struggle with taking a holistic view on situations and removing your own personal issues.

People seem to have such completely different views of it all. I think it's probably based on their own little bubble of life.

For example if you bought your house 30 years ago you won't be affected by the probably with accommodation prices. If you're not a minority you might not notice the increased problems with racism. If you're not sick or live in a well managed area you might not realise it's impossible to see a GP.

I am struggling a bit now, and have DCs 20 and 21 so seeing their struggles too. For example:

Both of them get the basic maintenance loan which is around £5000 a year, and yet both of them have accommodation which costs £8000 a year. So it's genuinely hard to come up with that sort of money. Yes, they can work part time but it's still absolutely insane to pay £900pcm for student digs.

I then worry about them leaving uni and facing low pay, high housing costs, struggles to make their way in the world. It makes me really quite sad!

> I swear people who bitch piss and moan about the UK so much haven't travelled.

What planet have you travelled on? I've worked across much of the developed world and England has very much dropped well down the league - the state of roads, the proportion of dilapidated shops, paucity of goods available, the grubbiness of streets, lack of maintenance of green spaces, filthy public transport, corrupt central and local government - I'm reminded of Greece in the early 70s just after the colonels left.

I agree with this. Despite the sad issues we have with people in boats, there is a very good reason those people want to come to the uk.
We have been for a long time (at least post WW2) one of the most tolerant, welcoming countries in the world and continue to be.

Putting my head above the parapet, this isn't all down to the Tories (although Brexit was). I think that labour would be struggling too with public service costs in the current international economic climate. In fact, I often go onto fact checker website and the biggest determiner of public spending is usually down to the economy rather than particular party. But people like to tend to slate lefties for overspending and Tories for running public services into the ground. It's a gross over simplification. There are corrupt politicians on either side. I do think that there has been too much immigration over the years though which has changed the demographics too quickly without the ability to properly plan for the provision of services to meet the needs of new incomers. That has caused tension, although the population is finally starting to shrink. That brings me some hope (even if it means me having to wipe my own bum with a stick when I'm elderly (assuming that I make it that far).

It really isn’t. There are thousands of flights, hundreds of boats and tens of trains leaving every day.

If you don’t want to work to make the UK better and have anything to offer to the world then get up and go.