To think the UK is in terminal decline

[ThisOchreBiscuit]

Jobs Civil service to cut thousands of jobs

Nothing positive is happening in this country. It’s just cuts, cuts and tax increases but these arent doing anything to scratch the surface.

The whole country is being propelled up by a massive Ponzi scheme: house prices and immigration. House prices make all home owners feel richer and immigration makes the GDP figures look better.

I suppose I shouldn’t complain as I am a child of immigrants. My parents came here in the 70s from India. They were virtually penniless but they have now been retired for 15 years, earning a state pension from 65 and still getting their final salary pension. They own their home in London and have thousands in savings. They were able to achieve this whilst working in low skilled factory jobs.

Now, professionals with university degrees would struggle to achieve their life style.

I think we are heading to a social mobility and quality of life that is closer to India and than the traditional western view, with wealth in the hands of a small number of landlords.

A has just purchased a completely nice family home near me for £500k and added a back and loft extension and turned it into a 6 bed HMO charging £800 per room.

They will make a 15% return on their £250k investment.

You sound very passive in the decline you describe. Be the change you want to see.

I don't think the Government realise that to get all these people off benefits they will need more DWP staff for Jobcentres to administer all the work coaching, benefit applications etc. They also say they want to cut down tax avoidance & fraud, HMRC have already got rid of so many staff & closed all local tax offices, who will be doing all the compliance work to bring in the money?

I feel sorry for ds generation, they will have next to no chance of ever owning their own home, getting social housing is getting so hard just for anyone in desperate need, let alone any young person who wants to leave home. The NHS is going down the plug hole, you can't get a doctor's appointment, A & E is on a par with a third world country with people dying on a trolley on corridors corridor, ambulances taking 8 hours even for urgent things like strokes & heart attacks, people are unable to work because they can't get a diagnosis, treatment or surgery. Social care is being cut to the bone, people are expected to manage with someone just going in, throwing a sandwich & their drugs at them & leaving, not getting them up & dressed until lunchtime & then being put to bed at teatime, only being allowed one bath or shower a fortnight, not getting equipment that would allow some independence. Councils aren't doing enough to enable anyone who is disabled to have suitable housing for their disabilities, they aren't making enough accommodation accessible, it can take 6 months to just get an assessment for aids & adaptations, then months to get the stuff installed if they actually agree to doing it.

The education system is failing so many kids, no SEN provision, kids are being set up to fail because there is no support for kids with special needs or who are less able, schools are just exam factories & statistics count for more than producing well rounded young people who are prepared to be in the world as adults, instead we have kids whose only knowledge is what they have drummed into them, nothing practical like how to write a letter, how to cook a meal, do simple repairs, manage finances etc. What use is algebra or knowing the King's & Queens of England when you need to apply for a mortgage or cook a meal?

I really had high hopes for Labour, thought they would put the country back together, but unfortunately we have ended up with Tory 2.0 & an even more broken Britain. I've ripped up my Labour membership card & will actively campaign for anyone who will get them out next election, I just hope we have a better choice than Reform.

Labour are never the answer. Done nothing for the country since the 1960s.

I can't quite see why this is a surprise. I know I'm about to set myself up for s raft of abusive responses, but you only have to look on here to understand why we are in " terminal decline" imo. It's does seem that a larger number if people want something for nothing (in many cases) and an expectation that the State will provide everything. We've had threads in here where people think it's fine to go to the cinema, swimming and other activities when they are supposed to be working from home. We have a generation that thinks it's okay not to work and rely on the State for income. And if or when something goes wrong, then it's always someone else's fault! The values and standards I was brought up with seem to have been replaced by a victim culture and a general lack of personal responsibility but increased personal rights. Yes, I think we are in terminal decline but we (generally) only have ourselves to blame.

These numbers are only going one way, people should take a look at the forecasts for the next 10/20 years.

@MyObservations
I disagree strongly that we only have ourselves to blame
The economic injustices we see come from the top .They are structural
We accept how dystopian the UK is becoming or we pressure parliament to do something about it
The 2 % tax on millionaires would be a start .
People put their shoulder to the grindstone when they have a stake in the future . Many young people no longer have this .

I noted two financial transactions in the news last week which , taken together , spoke (depressing ) volumes about the state of the uk .
There had been revelations about the money Charles and William take from the nhs, schools and charities etc via the Duchies, despite already taking half a billion a year from the tax payer . There was no response from the Windsors to the suggestions that the Windsors repay our crippled public services .
Yet Charles was so concerned that Camilla may be disturbed by noise that he bought 3 million house near Camilla’s house , just in case .
Meanwhile Michael Sheen took £100000 of his own money to write off the debt of 900 individuals in his home town . These debts would have ballooned to 1 million due to the profits debt companies make from debtors

Yes the UK is in decline - and our decline is faster and steeper than that of many other countries .
OP I don’t want to derail - this will be my only post on your thread but thanks for the discussion

@Ukisgaslit Thanks for your response, I'm very grateful. You make some good and valid points, particularly on the financial side although I must take issue with you regarding the Duchy of Cornwall which is a private estate and the Prince of Wales pays tax on it's profits. The further point you make is, I think, about the Sovereign Grant (previously the Civil List) which is provided by the Government from income from the Crown Estate to cover formal duties of the Monarch - the Head of State.

I think you skate over the points I make though about our decline and the lack of a work ethic, the victim culture and lack of personal responsibility. Interestingly, my daughter teaches in a state school. Her major complaint is there is almost no parental engagement; parent/teacher meetings are very lonely affairs for the teachers. There was a thread on here the other day where someone thought it unreasonable when a school phoned the parents because their beloved child needed their nappy changing! What have we become when children go to school in nappies, parents take no interest in their off-springs' education and offer violence to the teachers who criticise them? The notion that the country owes people a living and deciding not to work is a reasonable approach to life because the State will provide the necessary support are all part of the problem. I appreciate these are generalisations but, imo, certainly factors in our national decline.
Anyhow, thanks for the interaction, I appreciate it.

Part of the problem is that we are dominated by headlines from the USA - which has crazy stuff going on, problems but not the same as ours- they are a big rich country with oil,gas,coal and huge tech companies. We are completely different and if we concentrated on goings on here and in European countries the world would seem a better place.

Did Labour want to and expect their policies would halve growth?

No abuse from me. You summarise perfectly why the UK is dysfuntional and in rapid decline. I can see a time within 10 years when all benefits will be abolished.

@Spicyfruity Thank you for your response.

I can see a time within 10 years when all benefits will be abolished.

Including the state pension?

State pension is a contentious point as even though it has only recently been classed as a benefit people pay into it to qualify. People pay for missing years. If state pension was abolished people's contributions would need to be reimbursed.

Yes pension credit could be abolished.

But people are paying in now and won't necessarily get one, the age keeps moving out for one.

And many people didn't pay enough particularly when you look at healthcare costs

If state pension was stopped it would need to be a long phased out process. E.g 40 year old who have paid in for 20 years would get a pro rata state pension. Going forward, their current state pension contribution would go directly to their private pension. Youngsters starting out would have an increased personal pension contribution (gov and personal). This way they don't lose out.

The age will have to keep rising, the demographics don't work.

If state pension is amalgamated with private pension you won't need a fixed retirement age. It will be up to a person to take it when they have sufficient funds. I.e taking personal responsibility for their own financial situation.

Normal NIC is just another tax, so no, that wouldn't need to be refunded.

However, the voluntary class 3 contributions people pay for missing years, with it being voluntary, then morally, yes that would have to be refunded, but the figures involved are miniscule. But there's still doubt there too, as class 3 voluntary NIC contributions can also count towards jobseeker's allowance, so there's an argument that payees "could have" benefitted other than by state pension, and like any "insurance" scheme, you don't get refunds just because you didn't need to claim.

We've already had compulsory workplace pension schemes for a few years, so we're well on the way to phasing out the state pension when our current young workforce start approaching retirement age.

We don’t need the unskilled and the ones who need social housing and benefits to survive

it is like a vicious circle

Same with UK births. We need the "right" people to be having children - those who are more likely to have kids who will go on to be workers, in professions and trades. What we don't need is the "underclass" to keep breeding and bringing more "underclass" into future benefit claimants.

Yes you are probably right but there is nothing stopping the underclass from doing this whereas professionals would tend to limit their families as they can’t afford not to.

Yes, this. So what are Gen X and millennials going to do to change things? It's all in their hands now.

FWIW I think that as long as you've got migrants arriving here every day, illegally, the knock on effect is that everyone else thinks, why do we bother? Why do we bother to work and pay tax? There is no pride anymore. No personal responsibility. And I don't actually think that's any generation's fault, it is the result of globalisation, social media extolling what a soft touch the UK is, and an NHS that worked for a smaller population but doesn't work for a larger, mentally less resilient, population.

Also everything in life is cyclical. The Western world may be on its way down now but it will rise again. But probably not in the life time of most people alive today. AI may well save us.

Of course it's in decline. Massively.
Everything is going to pot literally. So many problems.

Adam Brooks claims (I don't know if his figures are reliable? But ...) the money will run out.
£7.5 billion for UC for migrants.
£3.5 billion for public spending services for migrants.
£6.6 billion for asylum seekers hotels and support.
How can we afford this for much longer he says?

No one wants to be accused of being racist or non welcoming to anyone who needs help. But his point is valid if the uk can't afford to fund it.