Are things becoming just a little bit shit?

[Bloomsburygirl]

I was wondering if anyone else has started to notice the deteriorating standards in public services and private businesses. I went to London over the weekend, and I was shocked by the filth and litter. I moved to the UK in 2011, and I visited many times before I moved. I do not remember rubbish strewn across streets like it is now. And every place I seem to go gives off a feeling that there simply are not enough staff anymore. Restaurant toilets and public toilets are filthy, it takes an age to be served, and don't get me started on public transport (I read the recent thread on this and agree with every word). It seems to me like the consequences of Brexit/pandemic are really starting to bite, and to be honest, I miss the way it was pre-2016. AIBU, or do others feel the same? And is this the new normal? Disclaimer - I still adore the UK and would never want to live anywhere else!

Not just a little bit...

100%, restaurants don’t have a enough staff, portions are smaller and more expensive.

there are regular train strikes, people struggling to get into offices.

food and energy prices are at an all time high.

we’ve just gone through a high inflationary period of time.

everything houses, cars, clothing - everything is very expensive.

Hospitals are under ridiculous pressure. I feel like everything is literally hanging on by a thread.

Yup!!

Theyre driving the country into the ground, chaos will grow and grow, the rich will become richer and the middle class and working class will both become poorer.

They're trying to stop any wealth growing that isn’t in their elitist club.

it’s going to get worse before it gets better - I foresee the total collapse of our government and current systems before it gets rebuilt eventually

Yabu to notice “filth and rubbish” “filthy toilets” but still love it here. I’d move if I lived in filth and rubbish strewn across the street.

Try the last 10 years? I travel a lot and always find UK so depressing on return. We came back from Asia last year and even trying to get the bus from the airport to the car park took over an hour because a sign was in the wrong place - huge group of 30+ people waiting and busses going past on a different road not even bothering to check. People here are worn down and have no more to give. There's no national pride any more (I thank Brexit and all of the gammon for killing that in half of the population) and people can see they have no voice when it comes to how important basic services like NHS are to them because the government would rather focus on forcing away refugees and giving back handers to their mates whenever the country faces crisis.

I still love the countryside, the people, and all the history and culture that the UK has to offer. And I guess I live in hope that things will improve!

Don't worry! Our most pressing problem is about to be solved. Once we can send the pesky asylum seekers to Rwanda at a cost of £290 million, everything will be sunlit uplands, etc.

Couldn't agree more about the obsession that this government now has over migrant numbers. It's become their whole reason for existence. They have f*cked everything else so in a last ditch attempt at bolstering their poll ratings, they'll throw everything at it. They really have run politics into the ground in this country. This must be one of the most dysfunctional governments in modern history. They are amateurs.

Brexit was the answer to our problems apparently. Clearly not so now it's migrants, which of course Brexit was supposed to sort out. There are too many people that still see hark back to a bygone era so are trying to apply values that no longer exist, instead of embracing the reality of the modern generation.

@Isitsixoclockalready I agree with every word. Watching Rishi Sunak's speech yesterday, I started to wonder if I had stepped into a parallel universe!

The UK is by far my favourite country but it has without a doubt declined in the last 10-15 years.

But perhaps everywhere in the West has?

I don’t think we ever fully recovered from the 2008 crash, never mind Brexit and the pandemic!

It’s probably a sign that the developing world has got richer and demand for goods and services has increased globally.

I don’t see the redistribution of wealth on a global level to be a bad thing, but it does mean we in the West have to accept a lower standard of living than what we had when more of the world’s population was poor.

What do you expect from a PM who's the fifth choice, and a Cabinet that's even lower down the rankings?

Even under the best of circumstances, politicians are fundamentally unqualified for the jobs they get, but they've scraped the bottom of the barrel so much that it's more accurately called "excavation" at this point.

And yet...the British electorate keeps saying, "Yep, job's a good 'un" and voting them back into power, somehow blind to the fact that public services fell apart years ago, quality of life is in the toilet and councils are going bankrupt all over the place (something that nobody even thought possible just a few years ago).

Even if Labour get into power, there's literally nothing left in the bank to fix it. Then, even if they do the best possible job with what they inherit, it won't be fast enough and five years down the line we'll be back with the Tories.

I honestly don't expect it to significantly improve in the next decade.

Becoming.... I think it started when Trump got elected. Followed quickly by Brexit and then Covid. It's all got shitter and shitter imo. Doesn't seem to be limited to the UK though from what I read.

As if it is that easy to move.

Well cut backs! But I live in London and no deterioration of standards as far as I can tell but my neighbours were complaining that the council hadn't swept up the leaves off the sidewalk the other day.

Whenever I go abroad, I come back to the UK feeling lucky. It is very rare that I visit anywhere and think it is better. But it has certainly deteriorated and I fear has further to go yet. Public services were decimated by austerity and then covid, and private businesses are struggling to attract custom due to the CoL. As BoE said earlier this week, the interest rate rises haven't started to properly bite yet.

I’ve really noticed it in the last 5 years.

Currently listening to a water tanker parked on the road pumping. It has had to be on pumping 24/7 for the last month otherwise the taps will go off because the water infrastructure is so damaged and antiquated. We had a 6 day water cut about a month ago.

Couldn’t get into the office on Wednesday because of strikes. Couldn’t get in yesterday or today because of delays.

My child can’t go to school properly because they’ve found RAAC in the roof.

And our broadband has been out for days.

It's been like this since 2010 especially, unless you're a rich white male Tory who went to the right schools/university, one of the approved brood mares from the right family background, or one of the token wealthy Asians those at the top approve of (anyone who can't see Little Boy Rich and the Heiress to Patel aren't tokens really does need to remove their blinkers). Oh, yes, that's right, they're both there because of their amazing skills and general acumen. And don't even get me started on the beyond insane decisions of Stupidly this week.

You’ve only just noticed?!

Yes, I've noticed this. Everything seems to be a bit drab, a bit dirty and doesn't work properly. Litter is terrible, and recently I've noticed near me the council has stopped removing leaves from roads, so they are piled up at the kerb - it's a small thing, but the latest little neglectful action as the leaves do make the roads slippier (not talking about leaves on verges, that's fine).

I recently saw some pictures of the local town in the fifties and sixties with comparisons of today , and even though the buildings were the same, I was struck by the lack of care today. The diminished sense of pride between now and then was so obvious - it looked really smart, as did the people.

The difference in cost of transport and housing and food is biggest indicator of how things have declined. Someone, somewhere is having the time of their life with the money though?

DS1 started university in 2021 - he had to live in another (northern) city to the one where he goes to uni because there was no student halls left and private rented was £££, universities actually paid students to live in the other (nicer, friendly) city. His train cost from the nice city to uni city has gone from £3.50 to £9.00.

Someone online put their March 2020 lockdown online shopping basket that cost £90 into a shopping basket today - it came to £160. Same products, same supermarket. Delivery had gone from £1.99 to £4.50.

My gas and electric bill when I was a lone parent between 2014-2019 averaged about £70 a month. We feel lucky now if it comes in less than £200 a month.

Someone, somewhere has to be doing better at the expense of others. I am aware the the Ukraine/Russia war, Covid and Brexit have all had an impact on the cost of things - they couch it as inflation and how everything is more expensive for everyone. true. BUT then I hear on Radio 4 that the biggest banks, supermarkets, petrol and energy providers are reporting the biggest pre tax profits on record. Hilarious that striking workers are the baddies though!

Definitely not just the UK in my opinion.

It's always been like this in Cornwall. We've had the same graffiti in Falmouth for about 15 years now - It'll be Grade II listed by the time they get around to painting over it.

Dog shit and litter everywhere. Weeds. Potholes. Buses catching on fire.

YABU because none of this is just recent. The decline in services/standards etc started decades ago. I'm old enough to remember the 70s and 80s and generally things were better across the board. Yes, a small number of things were crap, such as power cuts, council worker strikes etc but they were short term and resolved within a pretty short period of time. What we're seeing now is culmination of several decades of "creeping" of poor public services, poor staff service, etc. People in cities, especially London, didn't see it at first, but now they're starting to suffer, they think it's something new. It's not. Lots of northern industrial towns, lots of seaside towns, etc., have suffered terribly in the 90s and noughties but London centric people didn't notice and didn't care!