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!

Scandinavia

I agree. It's a sign that people are feeling depressed and despondent about the future.

Its also why people like us are out spending what we have. I have no hope for the future so we are living for the moment.

I honestly don't know how the government expects the working age population to work hard and create tax payments when their lives are so difficult. People struggling to keep a roof over their heads, afford bills, food, transport etc. No wonder everyone's depressed. An unhealthy, stressed and miserable population are not productive. The more public services they cut the less tax they'll be able to squeeze out of people. They're so thick and shortsighted. I think the current democratic system of government that we have is no good at all with changes every few years. There's no long term planning, consistency or taking of responsibility.

My understanding is that a large proportion of immigrants are educated and skilled people from Hong Kong, and they are moving into the naive areas, hence house prices still rising in the SE and Home Counties.

They don’t want to live in areas where it’s normal to leave school at 16 with barely a GCSE, then blame everyone else for the outcome. Sometimes it’s wise to look closer to home as to why an area is shit as opposed to always blaming foreigners.

Yes - political discourse is noticeably backward-referencing and backwards looking in the UK.

Where are you that’s better?

What is interesting is how often the Thatcher period is still hailed as being great for the purpose of lifting ordinary working class people out of poverty, and offering them social mobility they never had before.

I'm a little bit older than you, but I am seeing exactly what you are describing from two different directions. I have younger relatives who are stuck in rented properties, despite earning decent salaries, simply because they can not afford the mortgages required to buy. I also recently lost a relative who is the precise age of those who benefitted most from Thatcherism, a "boomer" if you like, and I am currently in the process of dealing with their estate. They died with no mortgage, a fully paid off home far larger than what they realistically needed, an enormous sum of cash sat in the bank doing literally nothing, umpteen ISA's, TESSA's, shareholdings, two private pensions on top of full State pension, you get the picture. Absolutely minted by most people's standards.

This is a person who inherited nothing from their own parents, and spent their entire career in a relatively mundane public sector job. Not a high-flyer, not someone born into wealth.

The thing I find galling, is that for all this talk about elevating working classes, and the fact this person undeniably benefitted in the Thatcher era, people like yourself, who are the current day version of this person, have absolutely nothing by comparison, and will be reliant on inheriting wealth from these Thatcher era "boomer" types before they can actually afford a similar standard of living as their immediate predecessors.

So we're are immediately back in the pre-Thatcher era cycle of the only people with money being those who inherited it. How in hell is that in any way an improvement or an advancement for the working classes? 😂

Shouldn't laugh, because it's an absolute tragedy, but there are still people who believe she was the best thing since sliced bread. In truth, she asset stripped the uk public property, frittered that away, and people think they got a great deal because they were able to buy a cheap council house and a few shares? It's risible.

@Throwhandsupintheair so its peoples own fault if they are poor and where they live is poorly run?

Poland will become richer than the UK by 2030. Possibly earlier.

https://www.theneweuropean.co.uk/when-poland-overtakes-the-uk/
"For the first 20 years of that Polish miracle, the UK was also doing well. It enjoyed a long period of growth. Trouble arrived in the form of the 2008 financial crisis, from which it has never really recovered. The near collapse of the banking system and financial services on which the UK economy is dependent, seems to have permanently weakened the country’s ability to sustain high rates of growth. The lack of growth and resilience meant it suffered more from Covid than other countries, and the UK economy has not even recovered to its pre-Covid size.

Instead it has been bouncing along the bottom for almost 15 years now. Productivity last grew this slowly during the 18th century, wages have failed to keep up with inflation, swathes of government are no longer up to the task, business investment has plateaued and shows few signs of recovering, and then on top of that we had Brexit. Brexit will cost at least 4% of the UK’s future growth, or to put it another way, it brings the date when Poland will overtake the UK at least one year closer. In fact, several parts of the UK are already poorer than Poland."

If you genuinely think that that money saved would be pumped into public spending you're even more naive than those who believed the lies on Boris' Brexit Bus re extra funds for the NHS.

This country has been run into the ground by the Tories who are utterly incapable of running any arm of government effectively, including immigration.

THEY are choosing to continue housing those asylum seekers at that cost to keep people like YOU angry so that you're more likely to give them their vote EVEN THOUGH THEY MADE THIS MESS!

Shelving the nurses bursary was also a turning point in the country

@GotMooMilk young people with well off parents will be fine, they will inherit. It will be poorer young people who are shafted. And I am in my fifties and know people my age in rented shared houses.

@EasternStandard Sydney or Spain, although minds are open to other places at the moment. Sydney for better career opportunities, Spain to be close to family. If we can find a way to make Spain work career wise that’d be option number one.

Is this not due to a lack of funding rather than an individuals mindset? I’m pretty sure no one goes into those types of jobs wishing to fail others. It’s systemic of a failing infrastructure.

This ^

Similar experience, cc @mantyzer

I had a tonsillectomy in 1991. I had to come off the contraceptive pill six weeks in advance, and I woke up laying in a sea of blood as my period chose then to turn up.

The hospital the operation was carried out in was awful. Truly a relic from WWII. But they had put 18 year old me on a mixed ward; I was surrounded by people, both male and female, with ages ranging from mine to well past 80.

I can still remember the look of shock and horror on the face of an 80 somewhat old man when he saw me get out of bed and totter towards the bathroom with the back of my gown saturated in blood.

They told me to have a bath; it was a stark, freezing cold room, with a massive bath, sort of rolltop iirc, and it was absolutely, disgustingly filthy. Like people had been bathing in there for a week and it hadn't been cleaned. Covered in dead dry skin, hair. Still up to my eyeballs in anaesthetic and half asleep, I had to wash it before I got in.

I can also remember my family in the mid 80s all wishing they were still located near the family doctor they had seen for decades, their perception way back then was all doctors they had encountered since were rubbish.

I wonder how far back memories stretch when people say the decline in the NHS has been rapid. I don't ever remember it being good, and I'm 48.

We have had very poor leaders for decades. Tories have been a disaster and although Labour funded more, they've never full-scale reformed taxation in this country after it went disastrously wrong in the 1970s.

We need higher taxes on the wealthiest of the country as people with £400,000 swimming pools need to give more so the country can actually run.

It's the taxation system that's at fault and also that we have no real industry other than financial services and Brexit has hit hard there, as well as covid.

No big corporate wants to list anymore on the FTSE100. Listings have plummeted the last couple of years.

Big companies are choosing USA or other countries.

We have lost our only advantage. Expect things to get worse.

Many of the utility companies are bust as are local councils.

As I said at the start, we have had a shit bunch of leaders for a very long time.

I do not plan to retire here.

Corruption. That is why we can't manage to build HS2 to budget/wasted so much money on useless PPE. It's a like a third world dictatorship where all the cronoes siphon off the cash.

I am in my fifties. We can see from looking at the stats that waiting lists were far less under Labour and waiting times in A and E far less.
I don't know why people try and claim the NHS was as bad back then. It was never perfect, no healthcare system ever is. People using private healthcare also have bad experiences. Because it relies on individual staff and how well they do their job.
In London there was an A and E for mental health issues. They were open 24 hours and staffed by people with specialisms in psychiatric issues. Long closed down. Nowdays even people who need sectioned can not always get a bed.

It's a lifestyle choice. As a country we've collectively voted to maintain (or improve) the wealth and income of the very richest at the expense of everyone else, especially the poorest.

Council spending has been eviscerated, the poorest councils affected three times more than the richest. Our hospitals are in permanent crisis, our mental health services broken, social care is a mess.

This is what we chose. We chose "austerity" even though we were told it was economically foolish & that its impact would be social vandalism. Over 330,000 excess deaths were attributed to austerity by 2022 and it's still growing.

We knew the long term plan for the NHS and Higher Education was to underfund and mismanage them and privatise what could be monetized and we went along with it.

We elected crooks & liars, owned by their backers in big oil, private healthcare etc when we had an alternative option, we won't have that option at the next election.

I could go on, but other people have said it more succinctly

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/other/the-new-tory-austerity-will-be-like-nothing-we-ve-seen-before-here-is-its-human-cost/ar-AA1lbtFt?cvid=3247780477e74b53914bb376d89ac34f&ei=44

We've been fortunate enough to have long weekends in Barcelona, Venice and Belgium this year. Trains plentiful, roomy, and double deckers too! People friendly, streets clean, great food, plentiful fresh fruit and veg in the supermarkets, public transport really good and on time. Thankfully, never had to test the healthcare systems.
The worst part? People genuinely care about us being part of Europe and it is all so obvious that the standards they have and ours are drifting ever more widely apart.
They pity us, and it's real and genuinely meant. Looking at the UK from outside is a real eye opener.

There's no doubt Labour funded more but that was during one of the greatest bull runs in history when tax takes were good.

There's a massive deficit now and the economy and global economy are in a far worse shape.

Labour if they get in can't spend in that manner again.

I've yet to be impressed by much of what they've put out.

I didn't vote for Jeremy Corbyn but this time around I'd chose him over Starmer.

Weird, that. But his policies are what we need now.

Local councils are now going bankrupt and many others are at risk. This means those councils will only provide basic statutory services. It is a disaster.

It’s awful, and so much is wrong in this country that I don’t know how it can be put right.

I’ll try and start, local councils are struggling to plug the gap in housing costs - central government base their funding on 2011 rental rates! It’s one of the reasons why councils are declaring bankruptcy and is impacting more and more areas, particularly where’s there’s a high level of homelessness and evictions.

Thanks to medical science we are living longer, but at huge cost to the NHS, social services etc. People working full time into their late 60’s mean that they cannot care for aging and/or poorly relatives. The cost of living is not supported by part-time employment.

The above two factors massively impact the monies available to maintain and improve our villages, towns and cities. I am staggered at the number of street lights that aren’t working, road markings that have worn away and now causing more accidents, overgrown footpaths and verges, little or no litter pickers and reliance upon the goodwill of residents. Not forgetting the loss of Sure Start centres, libraries, drop in centres etc, all of which provided excellent support for a broad section of society.

The feckless and work shy, who breed like rabbits and have very poor mental health which continues from generation to generation. Yet, it’s more and more expensive for the middle classes to have children, and many simply aren’t. The impact on society is horrifying.

A lack of ownership and responsibility, it’s endemic across all pockets of society and seemingly highly contagious. I am tired of those that won’t take responsibility for their actions, or those of their offspring.

The vacuous nature of social media, the criminal gangs, the insidious nature of drugs and the criminality it creates. The boys who want to emulate Andrew Tate, the girls who want to be ‘kept’ by the boys who emulate Andrew Tate, and are dropping out of school because their aspirations have disappeared. The parents who cannot/will not say no to their children.

There’s so much wrong, a new government won’t fix it, a war will make it worse… it’s very worrying