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!

We’ve been living in Sydney for the past 16 years and came back to the U.K. this year for a “trial run”. There are lots of bits that are brilliant; the countryside, country pubs, national trust, the care taken of heritage places. Some infrastructure is great - we had a power cut yesterday and were receiving texts every 30 mins or so to keep us updated. Shame we have no phone signal so I had to drive 4 miles to pick up the text messages but still.
But yes, the high streets look very run down; litter, graffiti, so many people vaping, loads of shops boarded up (and this is in the affluent south). Equally, everything is insanely expensive: electricity, oil, council tax and eating out, clothes, everything.

Since we’ve been here we’ve travelled to Spain, Hungary, Italy and Greece and the only place that looked a bit run down were parts of Rome. Everywhere else looked prosperous and thriving.
I feel sad for the U.K., it has so much going for it: brilliant universities, an educated and law abiding workforce, kindness, general courtesy, beautiful countryside, interesting arts and science, amazing museums but it feels so let down by the appalling public transport and just generally failing infrastructure.

My kids both have said “England is brilliant for a holiday but living here day to day is much harder than in Sydney” and I tend to agree. Australia has its problems too, of course, but the general infrastructure that makes day to day life quite easy; transport, schools, healthcare, public services, utilities are just cheaper and better run.

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

we didn’t, low interest rates just masked a lot of it

If we want better public services, we have to pay higher taxes.

that’s the conundrum

It’s a nice point about volunteers but frankly I think it’s terrifying how much charities have to pick up the government slack. Litter picking is one thing but relying on (struggling , underfunded) charities to tackle addiction, homelessness, domestic violence, rehabilitation, mental health etc etc seems to be a key strategy of this government.

The train strikes/no overtime rule is awful atm trains are cancelled constantly. My young DC stranded late at night at stations also they haven't managed to get to work on time for days. I have never before seen train transport to be so abysmal.

its like shops and hospitality had to cope on skeleton staff during the pandemic and seem to have stuck to it , do they not want to increase there wage bill ? I went to Tescos on a Friday afternoon there was literally one till open the rest was self service , no one in sight even to ask to open another till

We do pay higher taxes in Australia (although when you take into account much higher council tax and utilities bills I suspect it’s closer than it looks) but people don’t mind as much as the services are well run. We seem to have hit the dilemma over here where they’re poorly run so people resent paying more.
Plus it just feels like a massive black hole that money goes into.

Well to be fair, in our minds most of us are still living in the olden times when we had governments who actually governed.

Until recently I wouldn't have believed it was possible for the government to be told in 2018 that 300-400 schools needed to be repaired or rebuilt every year because of a critical threat to life and for them to just ignore the situation and leave school children and hospital patients in danger.

Yet here we are.

The government have fixed 4 schools since 2018. 4!

In Britain we are paying higher taxes than ever. We are paying higher taxes than we did when public services were working well. That is not the issue.
Look at how much the government wastes. PPE that was unusable and had to be burnt, HS2, and now Rwanda. Millions and millions spent for nothing.

This is one of the strangest phenomena I’ve noticed as well.

Even in a COL crisis, every single attraction and bar/restaurant I go to is the busiest it has ever been seemingly. Tickets to concerts and festivals costing several hundred pounds each sell out in minutes. Theatre tickets if you want a view of the stage are now £100+ as standard but shows still sell out.

Are people just saving less than they used to? Have our priorities changed (experiences over material things)?

Why is everywhere so goddamn busy?!

Unfortunately, massive investment was needed in a lot of public services due to new legislation, H&S etc., which would have had to be paid for by government borrowings had those industries not been privatised.

Take trains. We used to have pretty cheap "rolling stock", i.e. carriages - cheap and simple, look at the pacers which were basically buses on train wheels! They were all non compliant with modern safety standards, modern H&S requirements, disability access requirements, etc. Hence the privatised railway companies (now mostly back in govt control) and a whole new industry in the leasing of "new" trains that cost millions per carriage! Over the past 20/30 literally every single carriage has been replaced and the average age of trains is now much lower and they're all no compliant. That's a massive improvement in the quality of the rolling stock, at least in terms of meeting the new laws and standards (we all know a lot of them are faulty, uncomfortable etc but that's another story).

Of course, it's not all roses. But the taxpayer couldn't have financed such a massive changeover of the old stock into new. It's basically PFI for trains rather than hospitals! All to keep the debt off the government's balance sheet!

The rapid decline started after the recession, which was followed by Brexit, COVID then COL. Seems impossible to catch a break.

What surprises me is how people seem to have ‘given up’ - swinging between lack of care and anger.

Services are lacking, but people also seem to have no pride at all. Throwing litter out of cars, Spitting everywhere, standing and just dropping shit next to them, yards looking like rubbish piles or mini forests (not the people folks usually complain about here).

Even personal appearance has diminished- people just look like they haven’t the time nor inclination to look after themselves. Life is so busy and stressful- roll out bed and go /crushed and smelly is the new.order.

Sad state of affairs.

@Crushed23 I am worried that things are going to get worse. So we are very much living for today.

It has always been this way, it's not just a facet of this particular government.

I think it's partly because putting money into things which the public might not perceive as "high value" activities is a hard-sell electorally, but also because if you acknowledge the full extent of some of these problems, you are simultaneously highlighting and drawing attention to your own failings as a government and a society.

I work for a tiny Mental Health charity, and I can remember killing myself laughing at Theresa May making a big fanfare about "an extra 1.5 million pounds for mental health". That is a drop in the ocean, but it highlights just how pitifully this sort of thing is resourced in the first place if politicians genuinely believe an extra 1.5million is a big song and dance.

Totally agree! Everywhere you go it’s rammed! Even when we go out for dinner and gasp at the price, the places are full.
I was at a national trust recently and the shop was chockas with £300 throws and £30 candles which I assume someone is buying.

I live in a beautiful small town in Cornwall.Very clean road sweeper every day,leaves cleared from paths.Great pride in planting,decorating always going on.Depends where you live and the community.Sure there are plenty of towns like this in the UK.But pot holes galore as the rest of the country.Residents are very vocal re issues in the town which is one of the reasons why it is like this.

Yes agree with this and train fares have never been so extortionate!

Everything we’ve gone to has been packed, theatre etc at really high prices

This is all true enough, but the point remains that privatisation simply has not delivered on the promises which were originally pitched, namely, a massive increase in quality of provision and choice, with no detriment to level of service.

We were sold a turkey, and we've now left ourselves wide open to the nonsense of out of control profiteering for providing basic, life-essential services like utilities, and almost essential services like public transport, while the government shows little interest in regulating these industries to suit public interest, and the initial financial boons to public funds are long since gone.

This 100%

in the guardian yesterday there was an article saying that a European Commission had decided that public services and infrastructure in the uk was worse than in East Germany.
wether that’s factually correct I don’t know, but since covid/lockdown everting seems to have deteriorated from public services to individual behaviour.

Me too!

My longterm goals have been shot to shit so I’m living for the moment much more.

Yes, I’ve been thinking for years that the standard of living in the UK is now below most other western countries, and definitely below most of the EU.

Things rarely run properly or on time, you have to wait ages for any kind of service, there is a lack of efficiency.

On my way to work there’s a smashed up car on the side of the road that I see every day that’s obviously been involved in an accident. There’s police tape around it. It’s been there for about 2 months, I guess they haven’t got round to clearing it away yet. In the European country where I used to live, this would have been removed within a couple of days, if not on the day. Just an example of a lack of efficiency and underfunded/understaffed services.

It's been shit for 13 years at least. The difference now is that the corruption is in plain sight. What isn't different is that some people still can't see it and blame each other over trivial things rather than the huge failures of our government and their strategic incompetence and greed.

The lot of them and their buddies need to be ejected into space. I despise them. I'm glad they look like utter narcisstic freaks and thick as shit to most people now because they truly are.

Really wouldn't be a surprise.

There is little value in any argument along the lines of "we should be more like DDR and less like ourselves", because the DDR is not an example anyone should be striving to emulate, but still, it's amusing purely from an anecdotal perspective.

100% employment and basically being free to chose your career path, education, and vocation within reason? Great. Not sure I want a Totalitarian government and all the apparatus of state that comes along with that though.

Curious that there are still some older former citizens who opine the demise of the DDR, but I suspect those weren't the ones on the receiving end of the Stasi's hospitality.