Uk is in big trouble - what do you think will happen?

[hippysun]

Thames water on brink of collapse. All those CEOs getting fat bonuses. Water shortages and rising bills.

the cost of living is off the chart. Every bill has gone up. Pop in to Tesco for toothpaste, butter and chicken and it costs an insane amount for just a few items.

the government are crap and taxing the hell out of us.

my salary is stuck. I feel constantly poor now. 10 years ago when I earned significantly less, I felt ok money wise. Chatted today to a colleague about science graduate son who is stuck doing a minimum wage job as there are no jobs here. I’ve noticed this myself in my town. The council have a few, other companies outsourced to India years ago, the pharma company moved out years ago and the land will soon be a new housing estate.

the nhs is a total mess.

housing costs make me want to weep! No chance of moving. Feel bad for my kids. They just keep building expensive houses here all packed into poorly designed estates. Tiny gardens. But no infrastructure. The promised schools get cancelled and drs surgeries and hospitals are rammed with patients. My mortgage of course is up.

in my industry… everyone is obsessed with AI and I’m sad to say it has taken some jobs already. There is a huge push towards AI.

there seems to be underlying tension here re migrants. People getting increasingly annoyed.

this country feels like a right mess. Making rich people richer and poor people even poorer. The middle earners are getting squeezed. I hate it.

i don’t remember it being this bad ever before.

why is it so terrible? And what do you think will happen?

Best not to overthink it all and bring your mood down, there's always been problems worldwide, there always will be. Trying and focus on the good stuff, there is plenty if you look for it, we're just bombarded with negativity these days.

Because we are increasingly allowing an oligarchy of tech bros to systematically degrade the quality of our jobs. If you think this government is shit, wait until those who proactively serve the interests of billionaires get in. Who truly advocates for working people? No one.
Also Brexit was a historic mistake. Shame on the peddlers of lies and disinformation who saddled us with that shit. It's undermined our economic future and weakened Europe as a whole. But Putin is having a ball right now.

i don’t remember it being this bad ever before.

You would if you were old enough to remember the 1970s. It’s cyclical, we’ve had four decades of prosperity, now we’re in the downturn part of the cycle again.

POSSIBILITY:

Neither Labour nor Tories will be able to make changes that are palatable to electorate but put economy/debt on better paths. Reform will get in. They will fuck everything up. IMF will come in and force the changes that political parties can’t (pension/welfare/nhs). Scottish nationalism will raise its head again but realistically Scotland can’t pay for itself. Sinn Fein will seize opportunity for Irish border poll, which could become conditionally more appealing to NI electorate due to Ireland (republic) continuing to be doing well and awash with cash/eu membership/international good will.

GB will possibly have to go through seismic reimagining of itself and who it is and where it sits in main stage.

But lots of countries are going through similar things! Chinese and Russian populations are in slow motion collapse. US politics currently has Texan democrats doing a flight in the night and the president turning the national guard on homeless people.

Who knows what will happen over next 20 years!

I was born in the 80s so don’t know about the 70s. I guess I can’t see it getting better anytime soon. What do people predict? I see AI taking more and more jobs. It’s already happened at my company. My husbands business has also been affected (creative industry)

Maybe join in on this thread,?

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5389806-to-wonder-how-the-uk-will-look-in-3-years-time

Unfortunately the Tories pillaged the country, sticking their noses in the trough. Brexit was the final straw. No government will be able to save broken Britain plc. Get out if you can.

I think the world will keep turning, like it has through numerous disasters, financial crises, health catastrophes, wars…
On a personal level it’s frightening to contemplate, and hideous if you’re directly affected, but all we can do is plough on like the generations before us did, look for the good, and act to improve what we can, when we can. Plus ça change….

Having spent a fair amount of time "playing" with AI yesterday and this morning - different bots as well - there are some things that it just cannot do.
There will always be a need for an experienced human to check the results.
It is a bit like using a calculator to do maths, you need to have a rough idea of the answers.
This morning I asked Meta (which is akin to Chat GPT's younger, slightly more dense sibling) to recommend me somewhere to go for lunch today.
I gave it an exact location and a budget. The answers it came up with were ludicrous, including:

1. Places not open at lunchtime.
2. Places than no longer exist.
3. Places well outside the budget.
4. Places located 100s of km away.

If you challenge it or point out the errors, it goes all smarmy - which is annoying in itself.
I also asked it to suggest some coastal locations on an island I know and stipulated that the accommodation must have a sea view. One of its suggestions was about as inland as you can get.
I rest my case.

Things are objectively worse in terms of inequality than they were in the 1970s.
Also in terms of job security, public services and social housing.
While it’s true that capitalism has booms and slumps and always has, this is different in the sense that this has been basically the result of 40 years of looting.

Collapse house prices.

You cannot lower energy costs.
You cannot lower food costs.
You cannot lower import costs (just about everything).
You cannot lower tax (at least you can't if you want the services).

You can lower house prices. Collapsing these would :

Lower rents, so renters have more money.
Stimulate movement as more people could afford houses.
Allow the government to lower public sector wages because living costs would be less.
Lower mortgage costs for new entrants giving them more money to tax/spend.
Plus probably a whole load of other things I haven't thought of.

It would of course screw over anyone who owns a house. But this is the wealthiest section of society anyway and the money has to come from somewhere.

At the end of the day the middle class are going to be the ones that pay for this, it's just a matter of how you take the money.

I actually feel sick when I think of how bad things are here and they only seem to be getting worse. I honestly struggle to see a way back for the uk and think if you can't get out, it's time to go.

Its also sad that the uk really doesn't feel like a safe country anymore. I'd never dream of walking the streets on my own anymore.

I was going to ask when you were born. I was a young child in the 70s but I do remember power cuts and huge queues at the supermarket to buy bread. The early 80s had very high unemployment and riots. Throughout the 80s there were disasters such as the King's Cross fire and IRA bombs going off everywhere. Recession, unemployment and high interest rates in the early 90s. The crash of 2008. These things are cyclical.

A lot of the issues you mention have been caused by historical decisions - privatisation of water and Brexit to name a couple.

Things will get better but it may take a while. No government can wave a magic wand and change things immediately. We are also affected by what is going on in other parts of the world.

Things will most definitely look different in the future but, again, changes have always happened.

Social housing is definitely worse but if you think job security and public services were better you’re misremembering. Unemployment was 8.75% in 1975, hence the Tory election campaign slogan.

Exactly what I was going to say. That and the very real threat of nuclear war in the early 80s.

ETA bombs going off on the UK mainland in the 70s and early 80s.

Want to bet how long it will take before the bingo card is full

Bread, sugar and toilet roll shortages in the 70s.

I was born in the late '50's.

The '70's were absolutely SHITE. Much worse than now, honestly.

It's pretty much global. Nothing stays the same forever, you'll see.

That was one of the great advertising campaigns for sure but there is no doubt that job security was better, I’ll try and find the stats.
And public services were undoubtedly better than the private ones we have now- for a start the water, trains, utilities but also things like the libraries- on the council estate where I lived (nice houses with big gardens probably now being sold for 500K+) the library van came round every week, it was magical.

Well aren’t you a ray of sunshine?! 😀Seriously, all generations could have provided a list of what’s wrong with this country and yet we’ve survived. There’s lots to be proud of too. I’m no PollyAnna but this sort of doom laden thinking does nobody any favours.

There was no minimum wage though

Magical! Take your rose coloured spectacles off. I’ve given you the stats - 8.75% of the working age population out of work, that doesn’t smack of job security.

The entire mining industry was destroyed in the 80s. I'm not saying it isn't bad now I'm just saying it's not the worst it's ever been and things go up and down.

This is true, but the difference in pay between the lowest paid worker in a company and the highest was far smaller

I was referring to the library van. For a child on an estate that was absolutely magical