AIBU to think we're all swerving talking about the effects big events have had on our lives?

[Heparit]

I bumped into an old primary school mum friend recently, exchanged pleasant chit chat etc, and talk got around to our kids who are 19 yo. She said her son had got disengaged from education during covid, I shared that mine had too and then it was like a floodgate opened, both of us saying how shit that whole time was with schools closed and us having to go out to work and all that. Also that her industry had been hammered by brexit as has mine. It just felt so cathartic to say this stuff out loud, in a supermarket where we're both paying at least 3x the price for our shopping than we were before. I dunno, it feels like we've all been through a lot but most of the time we don't talk about it. It felt good to talk about it.

Oh I moan about Brexit to anyone who will listen. It's not particularly cathartic, more just winds me up and upsets me more

You're not wrong, it feels like everyone is so keen to move on and put it behind us. I find it particularly hard that the government is complaining that too many people are sick off work - of course they are, many people who got COVID had complications, and since Brexit a lot of people can't get medication and the NHS lost staff. How can we solve these problems if nobody will talk about it?

Good for you @Confusedbythistreat ! Do other people talk about it with you though? I feel like I've just sort of adjusted my moan-ometer. Like, I kind of expect now that nothing really works and everything is shit and no one gets paid enough. If I encounter a situation that's significantly worse than that baseline I'll discuss it, but everything else I just shrug. As for covid, I don't give it hardly any headspace at all, but during that time when my son was at home bed-rotting and I was going out to work, waking up listening to the dead numbers, it utterly consumed me. It was horrible.

I quite often talk about the detrimental effects covid had on my 2 teenage (at the time) DSs with people who often say the same qbout their children (at all ages). They made choices that they would not have done had we not had lockdown etc and their lives would have been very different. It worked out in the end, but they both had a bumpy ride.

I think a lot of people in the U.K. are in a “boiling a frog” situation where you’re just used to things not working, being really really expensive and life just being a painful struggle.
It was when I moved back to Sydney and things were suddenly easier, better run etc that it made me realise just how far things have fallen in the U.K.

Going to Europe is the same. Stuff just ... works. You can get a hold of things. You can organise yourself. Schools don't have holes in the roofs. Ambulances arrive. Trains arrive! Sure it costs more than previous but it functions.

I don't feel like that, so I don't find myself doing the same, I don't think.

I was furloughed then made redundant during covid, found another job then diagnosed with cancer during second lockdown. Surgery, chemo, radio etc. DS was 12 when Covid started and at a new school so friendship groups were formed later. It was a struggle. I'm a single mum so doing it all on my own.

But I've not had issues with medication, no issues with the NHS who have been brilliant throughout. I don't think about Brexit, I just focus on getting me & ds through. We still travel where we want, and the cost of food hasn't risen here any more than it has in other countries, so I don't see that as anything to whinge about.

Trains still work for us.

I'll rage against Putin and pot holes for as long as you like though. 😡

Hey, so sorry to hear about your health difficulties. Looking at your other posts you do like to argue against whatever the thread subject is and minimise any concerns, across a wide variety of topics. Hope all goes well for you, with that.

I agree. Brexit, covid and years of Tories have been a triple whammy that have had long term negative effects. Food quality has plummeted while prices have shot up, public services are grossly underfunded, the NHS is on its knees. I know it's easy to blame government but in this case it's true. They brought about the Brexit referendum and campaigned to leave Europe, and managed covid with almost criminal negligence. Other countries would have a revolution for less.

No my friends and I talk about the 'big issues' all the time. What else do you talk about? Just now I've been talking to my dusters about the upcoming ejections here and in the US (they live there) and how it affects our day to day lives.
Brexit/Covid was hot topic a while ago - our kids same age as yours so definitely affected them in many ways and we shared that. Issues within marriages, alcohol abuse, financial problems- all topics we discuss. Sure not every get together is so serious and heavy, but we do not pretend things are all good when they aren't.

Not sure that's true of every European country.