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 had a massive surge in population with no planning for how we will accommodate it (infrastructure, housing, services).
At the same time public services have been out into the hands of private businesses and individuals, who have asset stripped them. The money sits in the hands of a small number of individuals who control the media and governments and influence how we think and vote in order to maintain the status quo.

Or… rather than blame our plight on immigrants who we need to run public services .. how about we look at inflation rising without attendant wage rises. Unions weaker. Private companies asset stripping public services. Manufacturing industries shut or unsupported. Rail links to open up the north cancelled. Public transport costly and inefficient. Childcare prohibitively expensive. Health care on its knees. Poor investment in school infrastructure. Two parents working ft having to shop at food banks. Homelessness. Terrible social care. Wage gaps between those paid the lowest and those paid the highest getting increasongly wider. A scandalous number of children living below the poverty line.

I agree with you about corrupt governance though!

@Crushed23 @Ozgirl75 @EasternStandard

I can only assume that many people are just not really affected by inflation. It might too be a shift in demographics that spend in pubs/restaurants though. When I was at school 40 years ago we used to celebrate harvest festival and bring in tins of food for the old folk, nowadays they seem to be the ones with the spare cash to spend.

Since brexit and Covid everything has declined. The only good thing has been the Elizabeth line which is actually pretty good

I dont think we sleep walked into anything. People have been warning about this for a long time - it's just that people didn't listen.

I agree with this. The global south is getting smarter and richer and has a younger population than Europe/USA/Australia. There will necessarily be a distributive shift and it's started happening already.

However there are some things we've done that have made it worse for the UK - Brexit obviously, and quantitative easing means money is literally worth less. The only thing worth having are assets and successive governments have restricted supply one of our key assets (housing) while enabling it to be traded globally alongside key industry drivers like fuel and transport. So we aren't part of a trading bloc and the things we rely on day to day are expensive and difficult to get hold of.

Yep, totally agree.

Pics of some of Birmingham and Glasgow 1969-1971:

Below the poverty line: slum Britain in the 1960s – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian

We have declined as a country whilst the ruling classes have robbed our wealth in a way that was only slightly stealthier than Russian kleptocrats. Tory donors get yachts and private jets whist ordinary people cant get a doctors appointment or stay warm

Tories, Brexit, Covid. Even crazier Tories. Completely insane shameless Tories.

Below the poverty line: slum Britain in the 1960s – in pictures | Art and design | The Guardian

Mr and Mrs Gallagher lived with their four children in a ground floor tenement flat. Their bedroom was covered in pools of rainwater. At night they sleep with the light on to keep the rats away. One night they counted 16 rats in the room. Glasgow Maryhill, October 1970.

Mr and Mrs M and their four children lived in a council-owned house with no bathroom, no hot water, outside lavatory, inside walls running with damp. The children slept on sodden seat cushions covered by a couple of old ‘macs’, there was no heating in the room, the snow lay thick outside and the windows were broken. Birmingham, January 1969.

Mrs T and her family of five lived in a decaying terraced house owned by a steelworks. She had no gas, no electricity, no hot water, no bathroom. Her cooking was done on the fire in the living room. Sheffield, May 1969.

I was always a fan of privatisation - it made economic sense that companies would run things efficiently. I’ve totally changed my mind about this as I now see that private companies just run things for the benefit of shareholders. That’s fine for some things, but when it comes of utilities and services, you can’t successfully concentrate just on profit. Some things have to be unprofitable for the good of the service (like not very busy bus routes that are still vital for small villages etc)
When I see what big companies have done to things like the water companies I just can hardly believe it. How is it possible in a western nation in 2023 that rivers are regularly flooded with sewage? How do we accept this?
And trains - my god! We were promised an efficient system, and hey, maybe it would cost a little more but that’s ok if it’s better? And yet what we actually have is a system that is astoundingly expensive, and terrible. I’ve been up to London about 8 times in the past year and only on one of these journeys was my train actually on time - and on two occasions it was absolute chaos with trains cancelled or re routed.

How will this be studied in history gsce in the future?

YANBU there is a noticeable decline across public services and the state of some
of our cities is awful. The NHS, Roads, rail, water - dreadful. Public services will continue to decline due to bankrupt councils. The mood in the country is terrible, we desperately need an election and for something to change but I am not holding out much hope.

Nope, YANBU. We're on a downhill slide. Empty shops, lack of people for essential jobs because no one pays enough and I don't blame people for not wanting to do that work, shortages of the odd product in supermarkets that's going to get gradually more noticeable and frequent as climate change and global instability affects supply chains and so on. Happy days. 🙄

Im surprised people have only just started realising now to be honest. It's been going on for a while!

I think a lot of this is related to inequality though and poorly funded services. It's the outcome and contributor at the same time. So many people waiting for operations/mental health interventions. Wages not keeping up with inflation leads to poorer health. High housing costs lead to poorer health. Lack of funding for education My son is waiting for a special school place and took over a year to get diagnosed - his chances of contributing to society in some way despite his disabilities are slipping away without early intervention.

I think the biggest contributor to the state of the UK is our gullibility. We put the current useless incumbents in charge based on a sound bite pretty much. Then we fight amongst each other. Things won't get better unless we are smarter and stop accepting this shit. We think being downtrodden is somehow heroic, when it isn't.

I was just saying this yesterday!

@Flyhigher it wont!

I was looking at my nieces gcse history topics the other day. Hasn't changed since I did mine 15 years ago!

It makes sense. My parents have had no mortgage for about 20years (they’re in late 70s), plus have a good mortgage, extra payments for things like heating. They have felt the pinch of goods going up but they have savings and minimal costs.
Mind you even they have noticed how much their bills have gone up by.

”good pension”

The great shower of shit 😂

I think we are on the edge of sweeping change. It's the forest fire at the moment, hopefully we will see green shoots again.

We’re in the death throes of a declining civilisation. Look at the US and rise of Trump, the rise of the right wing in Italy and the Netherlands, civil unrest in France. We’re not alone in our issues and extreme political views are coming about as a result of people’s fear ( read the foreign press ~ the stories of rising prices and declining services are everywhere). We have come to expect things will always get better and now they’re not. It may take 100 years, it may take 50, but the West’s supremacy will be gone as we depend so heavily on China for manufactured goods and the Middle East and Russia for energy.

No one has a plan and everyone is just out for their own profit. I wish I could see any inspiration leaders who would tell the truth and ACT.

I live in London and I haven’t noticed the litter. Seems fine in central London. It’s is stupidly expensive though and the service in some shops these days is diabolical. Especially shops like Zara.

I did have amazing service in Space NK, Russell & Bromley and the smaller more boutique shops. Fast food shops are terrible and it’s all done on screens these days (I hate to think who touched them before me).

Eating out for a nice meal is so hit and miss. We’ve given up as it’s always so expensive. We once paid £160 for three hotdogs and potatoes (and drinks). I thought they would be gourmet hotdogs but nope! The ones you get in cans with normal buns. I was so shocked.

The dystopian movie "Children of Men" is set in 2027 UK which has fallen into economic ruin, partial lawlessness, and paints a picture whereby only a select few uber-wealthy have anything like a reasonable standard of living. The Government also rounds up migrants, refugees, and sundry undesirables, sticks them in ghettos and concentration camps, brutalises them, and although it's suggested they are to be "repatriated", the preamble also informs that the entirety of Europe has collapsed into complete anarchy, and the UK is still only partially functioning courtesy of the fact it is an island nation. So it's left to viewer interpretation, but it's strongly implied the most vulnerable are either murdered industrially, or simply left to decline and perish in the camps and ghettos.

If you haven't seen it, watch it, and tell me that it feels like this is still 20 years off as it was when the movie was actually made.

The good pensions that people are currently enjoying is the final fling imo. People under 60 won't have anything near as much cash when they reach retirement age - we can't afford it. Average age of a UK citizen is already over 40 and as that increases we'll have fewer workers relative to retirees able to keep the economy going.