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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think the UK has become awful?

815 replies

ma1formed · 13/09/2023 20:26

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?

OP posts:
Thread gallery
13
PinkRiceKrispies · 13/09/2023 22:15

Wouldn't be better under labour at all. As I said, they can't define what a woman is for a start.
We need a whole new government, at the moment they are as bad as each other.

Mumof118 · 13/09/2023 22:15

NutellaEllaElla · 13/09/2023 21:15

You think the UK is worse than the US? You're off your rocker.

I spend about 8 weeks every year in the US and I believe it is better.

I cry when I have to come home to the UK. I wish I didn’t have to come back to be honest. It’s just nicer there.

Barnowlsandbluebells · 13/09/2023 22:15

I remember pre 2010 very differently to now. I don't remember having heard of food banks in the UK back then
The Trussell Trust have gone from 35 food banks in the UK in 2010 when the Tories came in to more than 1400 now.

You've conveniently forgotten to mention that the Trussell Trust was set up in 2000 - 3 years after Labour came to power. The fact that you were so lacking in awareness of food poverty and therefore presumably doing absolutely nothing to help for a whole decade is pretty disgusting.

Mumof118 · 13/09/2023 22:16

PinkRiceKrispies · 13/09/2023 22:15

Wouldn't be better under labour at all. As I said, they can't define what a woman is for a start.
We need a whole new government, at the moment they are as bad as each other.

I saw a meme today that said voting was the e equivalent of adults writing a letter to Santa. True.

IClaudine · 13/09/2023 22:17

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

I'd rather have a beer with the "scroungers" in Wetherspoons than spend a nono-second of my time in your company.

anotherside · 13/09/2023 22:17

@StarDolphins

Labour will be in next & things won’t improve

The Labour Party as an electoral force has been dead for decades. The choice we have is Tory or Tory lite. Tory economics or Tory economics (lite). Neither Tory nor Tory lite are the answer - which is why the best countries to live in Europe largely abstain from governments as right wing as the Tories.

StarDolphins · 13/09/2023 22:18

WinterDeWinter · 13/09/2023 22:10

I worry this is true.

Not that it won’t be better under Labour - it will.

but that we can never be a good place again. 15 years of the Tories has changed something fundamental in our national character. We’re cunts now.

Show quote history

I’ll be voting Labour but if they are in for the next 15 years it won’t improve. I really believe this.

Bromptotoo · 13/09/2023 22:19

No. YANBU.

If only I could still go and live in France....

NamelessNancy · 13/09/2023 22:19

Barnowlsandbluebells · 13/09/2023 22:15

I remember pre 2010 very differently to now. I don't remember having heard of food banks in the UK back then
The Trussell Trust have gone from 35 food banks in the UK in 2010 when the Tories came in to more than 1400 now.

You've conveniently forgotten to mention that the Trussell Trust was set up in 2000 - 3 years after Labour came to power. The fact that you were so lacking in awareness of food poverty and therefore presumably doing absolutely nothing to help for a whole decade is pretty disgusting.

Edited

So they went from 0-35 food banks in 10 lyears under Labour and then from 35 to 1400 in 13 years under the Tories. I was not aware of them back then as they were comparatively rare. Food poverty is now commonplace. THAT is what we should be ashamed of.

Applesonthelawn · 13/09/2023 22:20

Well what are you going to do to make your life better? Not much point just bitching and blaming others, including government. This is a very free country and if you don't like your life, that is to quite a large extent on you.

Princessandthepea0 · 13/09/2023 22:20

DragonFly98 · 13/09/2023 22:12

Well yes as it should be.

Show quote history

Workers should pay more in tax that billionaires? That is why the country is broken.

Barnowlsandbluebells · 13/09/2023 22:21

So they went from 0-35 food banks in 10 lyears under Labour and then from 35 to 1400 in 13 years under the Tories. I was not aware of them back then as they were comparatively rare. Food poverty is now commonplace. THAT is what we should be ashamed of.

They were not 'comparatively rare'. Stop absolving yourself of responsibility - you should be ashamed of your lack of awareness of people in need in your own country.

bombastix · 13/09/2023 22:21

Went to lunch party reunion at the weekend. Well heeled people. The bile at the Tories was everywhere. It wasn't about tax it was about how shit they had been and are.

10 years ago it was nowhere near so anti. A mix of opinions. Now it's something like middle class rage.

LuckyAmy1986 · 13/09/2023 22:22

Mumof118 · 13/09/2023 22:15

I spend about 8 weeks every year in the US and I believe it is better.

I cry when I have to come home to the UK. I wish I didn’t have to come back to be honest. It’s just nicer there.

Show quote history

Wow. Just off the top off my head. Abortion laws? Gun laws?

crying over leaving a place where women don't have autonomy on their bodies...

FuglyBitch · 13/09/2023 22:22

All the people who say it’s not racist - white privilege??

NamelessNancy · 13/09/2023 22:22

Best way I can help alleviate food poverty is never voting Tory. Pretty sure there was no food bank within 50 miles of where I live back then so not sure what you'd expect me to do about it?

Takeabreather23 · 13/09/2023 22:22

Yes i agree very much so .
Add lack of dentists in a lot of places
Closing of local swimming pools

The money is going somewhere but where ?
It’s very sad and the worst a lot of people remember I am sure . We as a whole county should be progressing not going back the way. Such a struggle for a lot of people .
Not to mention the poverty.

I plan to be in a position in a few years that if things haven’t improved I will be looking to leave the uk

Original poster
ma1formed · 13/09/2023 22:23

@cheezncrackers

You're being ridiculous and have no idea what a truly dreadful country is if you think the UK is one. Try living in Libya, Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan. You don't know you're born

My grandparents were born in Iraq. Because they were Jews, they were nearly massacred in 1941 and fled to Egypt for safety, where they were again nearly massacred in the late 1950s. Both Mum and Nan are refugees.

Both think things are awful too.

I also work in international development extracting women from extremist regimes where they have been sold into slavery, raped, tortured or falsely imprisoned, and there's few people around who know more about what a "truly dreadful country" is.

It doesn't mean things here are not pretty awful compared to when I was a kid. You not holding successive governments to account, is largely why they get away with it.

OP posts:
Modup · 13/09/2023 22:23

Teddleshon · Today 20:57

The UK is one of the least racist countries on earth.

🙄 Lozza is that you?

Katbum · 13/09/2023 22:23

Not just you. Country is on its knees. Public services an absolute joke, welfare state dismantled, housing market out of control. It’s a horrible country, that’s been ruined by rampant greed and the end of the post war consensus. Hard to see how things will
improve…

snurtifier · 13/09/2023 22:23

Those who say "It's the Tories!": do you actually believe that the Tories are cynically, deliberately, knowingly enriching themselves and their friends at the expense of the country and its people? Because that sounds like a conspiracy theory.

I've no wish to defend them or their record in government, but I do think they see themselves as acting in the common good, and that for the most part they are trying to make the country a better place. I just think they aren't very good at it.

Ruth98 · 13/09/2023 22:24

I grew up in South Yorkshire and whilst everywhere is on a down turn at the moment the area I grew up in is much more prosperous than it was in the 80's and early 90's. Endless slag heaps are now either built on or turned to country parks which are flourishing. Steel works have been redeveloped for other uses after standing derelict for years. Housing has improved in the areas around me (there were lots of empty back to backs for a long time). The thousands unemployed from closure of steel works and pits has naturally passed and the local economy has turned to other industries. Everything definitely feels a bit depressing over the last 2 or 3 years but when I look where my area has come from over the last 2/3 decades and where it was when I was growing up there have been huge improvements...in my opinion anyway ... and lots more opportunities for people to move on and improve their lives now.

bombastix · 13/09/2023 22:24

NamelessNancy · 13/09/2023 22:22

Best way I can help alleviate food poverty is never voting Tory. Pretty sure there was no food bank within 50 miles of where I live back then so not sure what you'd expect me to do about it?

Bah it's bollocks. Food banks are now effectively part of government policy, it's called the deserving poor.

Daisybuttercup12345 · 13/09/2023 22:24

tescocreditcard · 13/09/2023 20:41

I'm in my 50's and I don't recognise the country I was born in. It has changed hugely, and not in a good way.

I completely agree with you.

Lou670 · 13/09/2023 22:24

@LuckyAmy1986 I was just thinking the same. No way would I want to live over there with their gun laws!