Is anyone else seriously baffled and concerned by the direction the country is going in?

[Almn0etd]

Reading the responses on many recent threads about the state of the country, something stands like out like a sore thumb.

That people are willing to accept ever lower standards of government and authority. The whataboutery regarding 14 years of Tories in power just doesn’t cut it. They were abysmal, that’s why they had their worst ever election result.

How anyone can defend this government and their short, yet shockingly poor record is baffling. We are 6 months in and this government has already managed to make the economy worse, make people even poorer, drive businesses away, illegal migration is worse than before and the people in charge are showing themselves to be utterly corrupt, incompetent - often both. How can annyone defend this? And then we wonder why Reform is on the up?

My AIBU is that our country’s mentality is now plagued by mediocrity and low standards. The frog has well and truly been boiled to the point of no return.

Welcome to MN. What are your solutions? How do you think Labour could have overturned 14 years of tory under investment, greed, fraud, corruption etc in 6 months?

You have been having a busy (first ?) day on MN, OP, stirring the pot on a few "interesting" topics...

Oh, yes 😁

How soon can they correct the corruption of the past 14 years?

I honestly thought this thread was going to be about people being hoodwinked by Farage, and how weird it is that people actually believe his lies…

There you go 🤦‍♀️

🥱

I am not here wondering where the country is going as I was during the latest tory times. I know where the country is going now and I have no less money in my pocket, neither I am poorer, neither I am giving less custom than before to UK business. Actually a bit more because I am no longer terrified.
I have come to realise that some MN posters do live in a very very alternative UK, though.

I don’t think any government in any country is able to make such drastic changes as you suggest in 6 months.

However, I was in England over the weekend (don’t live there anymore) and what shocks me every time I visit is the lack of anger and action by the population. People just seem to comply with whatever shitty policies the government throws at them.

A friend was justifying the airports not working properly with “oh we are so careful nowadays with safety, they’d rather cancel a lot of flights than risk it in this weather. Look at XYZ accidents recently”. This was on Friday - my trip had been delayed 36 hours by BA - sunny skies. BA themselves said there was an issue with staff availability and shortages of parts for repairs…

Another friend is ill but it’s a 6-8 week wait for a referral so he’s just suffering in silence instead of making himself “unbearable” and requesting he be seen sooner. I’m not saying people should abuse the staff, but you need to stand up for yourself. Keep calling every day. Write to everybody. Don’t just take “sorry it’ll be a year for your surgery” as an acceptable answer.

The GPs are a 3 week wait. The roads aren’t cleaned regularly. The buses get cancelled whenever they feel like it. People talk about it, complain on an online forum, but I don’t see much action.

Where I live, there are strikes every couple of months (no, not France). People loudly and actively protest when things aren’t going well. Nobody complains when there is a strike - you actively engage with the protests and do your best to claim better conditions for yourself and fellow citizens - be it talking to employers, feeding up to local government, etc etc. It’s a civil responsibility to fight for better services.

It’s not a dystopia where things work. But people don’t just calmly accept shit - they raise hell when something doesn’t work. Instead of adopting an attitude of “oh give them time it’s been 6 months” or saying “it is what it is, it won’t get better”. If we take shitty treatment, it won’t get better, no.

I wasn't exactly jumping for joy over the Conservatives. Haven't things gone impressively down the toilet under their supreme reign. All the things important to me have ( social care for the vulnerable, the NHS, SEN provision, every public sector service quite frankly. ) I haven't even considered the rest.

I'm no Starmer fan but just look at the last lot of absolute buffoons.

Concerned not baffled, I can see why we have got to where we are. Difference now is that this government have policies I don't agree with, the previous one it was about abilities and in some cases personal morals. I'd want to vote in a better government than this one, whereas there are several Tories who I think should face criminal charges, especially Boris Johnson.

@RobinHood19 this is so true. And when Governments suggest Bills and Policies relating to protest management - rather than thinking 'well good idea it won't impact me', people should be up in arms saying no bloody way. Myself included.

I always wonder what it is about us that makes us different to say France. Do they spend as much time watching reality TV and posting photos on-line for likes? I don't know.

I’m not saying that 6 months is long enough for tangible results. But tangible results come from the action taken. And the action taken (what little action there is) is disastrous. It’s clear to see where it’s taking us.

On top of that the more we learn about the people in the charge, the worse it looks. They appear to be a bunch of incompetents corrupt idiots.

Again, the whataboutery regarding the Tories doesn’t justify it. They have been punished by being pushed into electoral oblivion.

It’s the boiled frog syndrome

I don't know the answer or the solutions but after observing 14 years of Tory rule and very likely having a good idea of what was going on behind the scenes, i imagine all parties have a lot of inside information in this situation , then surely Labour had a blue print/plan of how they would go about tackling the most prominent issues if and when the came into power.
I get the impression that they are in chaos and that the right hand doesn't know what the left is doing.
I have previously voted Labour never Tory ,but at the moment i am worried about what is happening in this country i think we are rudderless and i think there is a great loss of trust ,winter fuel allowance being a prime example, how many more lies are yet to come?
So yes i to feel 'baffled and concerned' with what i am seeing in the 1st 6months.

Labour are liars. And corrupt. The Tories were weak. And corrupt. We don’t have any good leadership. What can you do?

@NotMyCircus99 I agree the tories were bad and Labour seem clueless. Talking down the economy at every opportunity, promising a fast growing economy and then slapping even more taxes on, killing any last hope of a growing economy. Now we're looking at recession...

No wonder the disillusioned are looking to vote Reform.

Oh and Starmer seems to have made illegal immigration even worse. Absolutely hopeless.

I don't really understand why people are surprised that Labour are not substantially improving upon the Tories' legacy, when Starmer and this iteration of his party were voted into power precisely on a platform of doing pretty much the same as the Tories, but with a bit less incompetence and corruption.

No big ideas. No radical change. Nothing that might imply that the Red Wall Brexiteers were mistaken in drinking the Tories' Kool Aid. Certainly nothng that could possibly be construed as "socialism" - heaven forbid.

All of this was said at the time. On this site and elsewhere. Virtually nobody was actively enthusiastic about Starmer, or could point to concrete reasons why he would make a difference to anything. It was simply "anyone but the Tories", "It couldn't possibly be worse" etc. etc. Starmer knew this, and campaigned on a platform of offering practically nothing so that nothing could be used against him.

So people got what they voted for. What's the problem, exactly?

This is a much deeper problem than the failure of the Tories or any other political party. It's a failure of capitalism, now being compounded - and made even more difficult to manage - by simultaneous failure of the ecological fantasy that you can keep extracting infinite resources from the Earth and turning them into an infinitely rising temperature, in pursuit of infinitely rising economic growth.

The human race is going to become much, much poorer. And this either means large parts of it starving while they vote for Trump and Farage to give sufficient tax breaks to the super rich that they can go and colonise Mars, or genuinely radical rethinking of how we all live together and distribute limited resources. Replacing blue tories with red ones to indulge the delusion that things can just carry on as they were is a sideshow.