This country as gone into terminal decline

[Carmes]

I have 2 young children in school.

I am becoming more and more anxious about what sort of jobs / careers they will have open to them.

I work for very large company with 10,000s of employees.

20 years ago whe I started work here there would be 100s of entry level jobs at any given time. These are jobs that don't require experience or a degree, ideal for a school leaver, and I know dozens of people who started their career this way.

Now there are maybe 10 jobs that would fit the same criteria.so. All the jobs have been offshored.
Now are the vacancies are for very specific technical skill set or experience.

This doesn't bode well for someone who has left school at 18'or even university.

Much as I do 100% agree with you on that I actually think if they were forced to pay. A lot of them would go and get vasectomy at 18.
Particularly ones with the mental capacity to forward think and predict outcomes. I.e. the ones that we might potentially want to breed.
What’s that gonna do for the birth rate and supporting pensioners?

Lol, well Reeves has already reduced bonds to the same level as Truss did and that did for Truss.

Agree, my once lovely lively city while still being full of talent and decent people now looks horrible. Going out just depresses me, used to love a walk in the large green open space near me but have to pass fly tips, street drinkers, boarded up shops with rougn sleepers begging in the door ways to get there so I don't do it anymore. A trip to town was a treat, now it just makes me sad to see nothing but chicken shops, nail bars, vape shops and empty almost derelict buildings. We have quite a lot of knife crime too, I am not scared to go out because of it but it does add another layer of disquiet.

That some of them had jobs didn't mean they were 'just' getting on with it. Many of the ones I've known, including those who had been conscripted, didn't. They self medicated themselves with what they could get their hands on and made their pain everyone else's problem.

Exactly, alcohol consumption was much higher.

You understand wrong. He is more interested in the French style of healthcare. The NHS being free at the point of delivery to all, is unsustainable and unaffordable.

I was on the NHS waiting list for well over a year. I was waiting to see an ophthalmologist. I had an eye that was bright red and weeped constantly. I had been to the Gp and opticians repeatedly with no joy. I was on vacation in the states and I was so fed up with my eye, that I booked in to see an optician in Walmarts Anna Maria Island. She took a look, prescribed a combination steroid and antibiotics, removed this tiny milk spot from under my eye and sent me away with a $45 bill and $4 for the drops. 2 days later my problem was gone.

Back at home I received my Opthamology appointment. I phoned them to say I didn’t need it anymore that I had medicine from the states. They explained the condition could return so to come in anyway and bring the medicine. Ophthalmologist took a look, said it all looked great, looked at the drop and said ‘wow, these are good, I couldn’t have given you this’.

So personally, I’d prefer a system where I paid a contribution or an insurance and got care when I needed it, because the alternative is quite frankly rubbish.

"I don't think the UK is in terminal decline, but I do the UK and many other countries are going to have to make hard choices and shifts in perspectives and expectations to get through the population bulge as demographics switch."

@RamblingEclectic "hard choices and shifts in perspectives and expectations" - this sounds very much like dealing with decline. How are you understanding decline if its not preparing ourselves for live becoming harder in most ways?

The Australian system would be by far my preference those who can pay to pay and receive a rebate from the government. Those who can’t pay get the assistance they need.

They’ve never been in power. How have they had a chance?

Brexit wasn’t finished.

We don’t need Europe, they’re in as bad a state as us, if not worse:

I’d rather become closer to America, which is going to grow pretty quickly soon.

The gap between rich and poor in this country and the world over is where the problem lies
@allwillbe I agree with this. Wealth/power has a tendency to accumulate, exponential growth being an inherent property thereof. This is harmful to society as a whole and we should constantly take measures to mitigate.

I have no idea what I will die of, what a strange question to ask.

Why do you think that anyone over 60 should be expendable?

Can you outline those things please. It would be really helpful to know what they are.

No, I’m asking you what would be an acceptable outcome for you? What would you be Happy to die of? You don’t want to die of a stroke. You don’t want to die of a heart attack. Those are both naturally occurring things that would kill you.
So what are you hoping for lightning strike? Hit by a bus or did you want to just literally live forever?

Actually both my parents dropped dead in their 80s, DM had been getting ready to walk to the shops about a mile away and died while getting ready. Her freshly ironed trousers were hanging there to put on

@MyPithyPoster I am 64 and DH is 63. We both still work full-time contributing to society. Throughout our working lives, we have been net contributors. Our grandparents lived to their late 80s, early 90s. My mother last year had a life saving heart valve replacement at age 87. She still leads a very good life and continues to pay tax, as does MIL aged 88. We have contributed significantly to society and to have optimal treatment withheld at 60 or even 80 is plainly and simply age discrimination.

I do not entirely recognise the picture painted by this thread. Our DC aged 30 and 26, have good professional jobs, both in education, they made very few applications. Their partners are exactly the same.

Our local shops are great and in the last few months some that closed in Covid: Lakeland, White Stuff, House of Fraser have been replaced: Rituals, Oliver Bonas, Gail's, Pro-Cook. House prices have been flat for about 5 years so cyclical as incomes rise will become more affordable. Planning permission (green belt with which I am diametrically opposed) has been given for thousands of new homes. The same is taking place where my .other lives. This too shall increase housing supply and put the brakes on House prices.

Locally our NHS is poor, but we are not waiting three weeks for a GP appointment. There is no fly tipping and the streets are clean. Potholes have improved recently.

Reform needs to be sent packing and the rise of the far right in Europe concerns me and we must not let it happen here. For that reason I am rather glad to be out of Europe. I think Europe will fail more dramatically than the UK over the next ten years.

A correction in education is long overdue and it is right that some universities shoukd close or merge. Fundamentally, the UK needs to value technical and vocational education far more and the education system needs to value the vocational trades far more highly and remove the snobbishness about them.

There are no enclaves of immigrants here although I accept it is a problem elsewhere but that is due more to the Liberal left than anything else and the fact that in the UK we have allowed minority groups too much agency. However they have a right to be here but assimilation should have been more strongly encouraged.

The benefit system and indigenous attitudes are what has killed the UK. It is notable that for 30 years, I have been unable to employ a white Britisb cleaner. They will not do that work any more. Eastern Europeans will and do it willingly and well.

There’s always one isn’t there or in your case two. And that’s what I would wish for all of us. But the odds are low.

Sadly I think you are right.
It would appear that men who are capable of being decent fathers are in the minority, the rest are only willing to become fathers because they assume that is the woman who will take the hit and they can carry on life as normal.
If we came up with a system where all men had no choice but to bear an equal share of the burden of parenthood then a large number of them would make sure they only fired blanks.

You understand wrong. He is more interested in the French style of healthcare. The NHS being free at the point of delivery to all, is unsustainable and unaffordable.

I like the French system (have French family, yes parents are immigrants 😱) but do you know how little we pay in vs the French model? Then there’s the other socio economic factors than make French people healthier than here.

The problem is that we all moan about the state of our towns but don't do anything about it. If we want shops to stay open we need to use them. We need to cut down on on line shopping. How many of us use Amazon, Temu or Shein?

Maybe we should organise community litter picks and take pride in the areas we live in.

As if we'll be doing anything with America that doesn't involve metaphorically bending over and being royally shafted!
We are not equal partners. Politicians can go on about ' special relationship' as much as they like, but it's largely one way. Americans love the UK as a quaint holiday destination where they can gawp at the Palaces and talk about how their ancestors were from Cornwall, but all we will be will be a place for them to dump their excess beef cattle, if there's enough room after Australia has got in first!

Reform came after Brexit?! Of course it didn't @Cheesencrumpets. Farage was absolutely instrumental in Brexit, whether or not you agree with it.
They simple reincarnated themselves into another populist offering.

The USA has one of the lowest rates of social mobility in the Western world and the same conversations here happen in the USA too.

I have known quite a few people with various cancers, some of which were terminal and they died horrible and distressing deaths. I have never known anyone who has been hit by a truck, let alone killed by one. I am at loss to understand the basis for your argument

Wealth/power has a tendency to accumulate, exponential growth being an inherent property thereof. This is harmful to society as a whole and we should constantly take measures to mitigate.

But any change to tax particularly if it’s targeted at wealth is considered outrageous, look at all the threads on private school & VAT. Many forget they are closer to the unemployed scrounger than the billionaire so see it as an attack of them & their aspirations.

The offshoring of jobs is a huge issue. I'm surprised that it doesn't get more political attention. I used to work for one of the UK's biggest companies, and it's clear that you can't rely on patriotism anymore to keep/create jobs in the UK. Many of the decision makers were not born here, and even if they were, offshoring is an easy/lazy way for them to be seen to save the company money.

They do indeed. The US growth is debt based 'growth' rather than actual, organic growth. Admittedly, they have far more economic advantages overall compared to the UK but don't be fooled into thinking they have great growth.