AIBU to ask if there is anything at all that works as it should in the Uk?

[Lavendersquare]

Just been having a discussion with a colleague and between us we can't think of any public service/government department or agency that is delivering a decent service. Examples include:

Education
NHS
Immigration
Police
Social care
Roads
Railways
Dental Care

it never used to be like this, there was a time when things worked, were maintained and replaced. Now it seems everything is left to the last minute and patched up or left to deteriorate.

What's happened?

Well there is no money.
I'm not sure where the money has gone but we were mainly a financial services country from 80s onwards, and that did very well up until the bank crash of 2008. We then paid a fortune (tax payers money) to bail out the banks. We then let in huge numbers so the population is much higher (like 10 million since 2000) so we should have a sixth more of everything to deal with that eg schools - there are 24,000 in England so we should have 4000 more for the increased population), We also paid a fortune for covid.
Now we seem to have millions not working.
We manufacture very little.
And we all buy Chinese made goods and pay for internet / netflix etc etc to California.

So we are stuffed really unless we stop spending and make more.

It is precisely that @Thebestwaytoscareatory

@StarTrek6 When we get a party in power who doesn't waste our country's money deliberately in order to further enrich their mates there will be more money than there is now.

For example we could make asylum seekers wait two years for their application to be reviewed and pay Serco millions a month to house them. (Tories)

OR we could process their applications in four months and cut costs by 80%.(Everyone whose priority is the country's finances, not increasing the bank balances of Tory donors)

Yes, they are great. They don't create a drama..👍

A lot of this has been going downhill for decades, under different governments.

The only new shitshows are the NHS is getting worse and dentists refusing to treat NHS patients.

Related philosophical question… If all of these gov’t programs and agencies are broken why are there som many comments and threads with the ‘Gov’t should do more’ theme.

I’ve raised this same question with people from my non-uk country that want the government to take on more in our lives but when challenged what gov’t agency or program could be counted as a resounding success they are hard pressed to do so… they usually wander away from the discussion when I ask why on earth they think it would be any different for whatever they want to be taken over.

Because they didn't used to be @saltinesandcoffeecups.

For example here's NHS waiting lists:

Here's immigration @Zebedee55

Check out what happened after the Brexit bongs in 2020:

To try and be positive..

Passport came in 5 days recently
Flew in and out of Heathrow last week and had no queues anywhere. Plane left on time
Public transport round here excellent (London).
Got a doctors appointment same day recently
Parent had GP appointment, CT scan, cancer diagnosis and Operation within about 6 weeks
Had regular mammogram last week, 2 years after last one
Free community fireworks this evening
Rubbish collection weekly and very good

Feeling quite lucky...

Yep, the Tories and chronic under funding

That graph is so revealing.

Us and our facts eg @BIossomtoes

The NHS is a behemoth and going to get bigger. If anyone looks at the projections for complex care for the elderly and employment rate at 1 in 11 by 2036 they’ll see why

But it’s crap right now according to your facts and a lot of threads.

Let’s say for the sake of this discussion you get a party in that turns this around. Are you not at risk for the same thing happening again when they are no longer in power?

This is kind of proving the point. All government run programs are good or bad at the whims of whoever controls them.

A lot of the things we are complaining about are privatised @saltinesandcoffeecups

Tories. A government of entitled, arrogant people who only care about their own interests. They don't care about citizens.

My parents in the New Forest still don't have any water since Storm Ciaran.

Because they are elderly they are supposed to get bottled water delivered according to their water company but they are not. Neither is anyone they know.

They have to go and queue up for hours for bottled water and they find the bottles themselves quite unwieldy and heavy. My dad has been unscrewing the tops for their more elderly neighbours.

No word on when it's coming back on.

The voting system? There are still polling stations within easy reach of most homes and every adult has the right to vote. Not perfect but functioning.

But the rest - yes, the Tories have stiffed the country for years. It's worn down, not fit for purpose and driven by greed alone as if profit were the only desirable outcome of any transaction.

The voting infrastructure is fine. The voting system is absolutely not fine.

We’ll see at the next general election whether it’s still functioning after the introduction of entirely unnecessary voter ID. The effect of that has yet to be tested.

Took us 16 weeks to get ds1's passport renewed in 2022 and cost c£250 including a dash to the passport office on the morning of our flight which we subsequently missed. So no.

But not the NHS as you used as an example of a failing system

We kinda don't have the right to vote like we used to.

You have the right to vote only IF you can provide the required papers and IF those papers are accepted.

Millions of us don't have them.

You're right. I forgot they had taken steps to screw it over too. Voter ID. Ideal for the Labour voting poor who don't have driving licences or passports.

There's quite a lot of privatisation in the NHS @saltinesandcoffeecups.