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?

What's that got to do with this thread?

And under Thatcher unemployment continued to rise to a peak of almost 12% in early 80s! Inflation was also rampant in 70s-80s.

Absolutely this,

I do understand the sentiment and principles behind your warning.

But I can’t help thinking that this sort of technical progress is generally a very good thing. Military imperatives drive fantastic advances with excellent civil uses. The internet was a military technology originally.

Plus, although we don’t want armed conflict, we can’t pick our threats and attackers and fighting is better done by robots than humans.

EDIT: Not sure why I quoted this post.

Blair's benefits for all destroyed the working ethos of too many. Until that changes we are in decline but now that more than half of people are reliant on the state it won't because it would be like turkey's voting for Christmas.

Don't be obtuse, they're all human rights issues.

The takeaway message I gave to the sixth formers at that school... Don't focus on one particular career but choose a field that you want to work in and be flexible in your learning so that there are a multiplude of options in one's chosen path. That way, one is not just restricted to one particular job, but gives one multiple options to apply for with relevant skills, which show the core skills are there and refinement may be necessary for the particular role.
Just my opinion and open to criticism as long as it's constructive criticism.
Affiliate people set their goals on being role a, and or role b, but meeting the industry criteria is going to be fundamental in the future.
IMHO.
I've had 30 jobs since 17 looking for nirvana.

Is the hot weather taking its toll on you?

OK.

And also: I live very near one of the migrant routes ref refugees who end up here on the boats. They don't rape and do so much annoyance as these here. England, you ate targeted for some reason....do you know what could it be ????

And New Labour wouldn’t have needed to spend a shit ton on public services if the Tories hadn’t left it all in a wreck by the mid90s.

And Starmer wouldn’t be struggling like he is if the Tories hadn’t pursued idiotic austerity, Brexit, and a PM merry go round for 14 years.

If we play the blame game you need to apply it to both sides.

I am not talking about pro or anti Labour. I am talking about Reform. Farage has got a really excellent grasp on SM and how to use it for his own ends. I am not on tik toc, but he has, I think, a massive following.

Anyway, it's just my observations over the past few months.

Eta: I only wish Labour was as good with SM, but as with other comms it is abysmal rn.

😂😂

Pyschotic!

It's like living in a Charlie Brooker Black mirror episode.
But I've seen the tech and it's all there.
I'm not religious but God help us all if it's ever hacked or turned against us.

Which country in Europe/World is perfect in every way? None I'd imagine.

But which countries seem to be doing well, have an optimistic outlook, and a citizenship that's more or less happy with the way their country is run - in general I mean, since every place/regime/political system has it's pluses and minuses.

When you think you've found such countries, ask why it is that they are functioning well with a generally satisfied population.

The answer for the UK is in there somewhere.

Hint, it's not the weather, although moaning about heat, cold, rain and changing of the clocks is perennial in the UK and maybe feeds other discontents whether real or imagined. Other countries have crap weather too, but seem to be doing OK.

That was when I was young and it was truly dire, the were incidences of people ending their lives because they could not get work. There were also government schemes where you did work that needed to be performed but you only got your dole plus another £10. It was called ET which stood for Employment and Training but it was known as Extra Tenner.

14 years of Tory shit - Brexit (estimated £100bn bonfire every year to the UK economy), wreckless austerity etc - and all is fine and dandy.

Starmer in power 12 months doing … not a lot different really (to the disappointment of most on the left), and all of a sudden the UK is in “meltdown”.

Yes, it’s sensationalism whipped up by the dominant right wing press - angry that the public had the temerity to not vote solid right wing (when that was clearly working so well for everyone).

But that’s the point.

Both sides are rarely blamed. On MN the Tories record is terrible and cruel but Labour have been saintly geniuses horribly brought down by the right wing press.

You need to accept that yes things are shit and you need to ride the wave. I earn £55k but am a widowed solo mum of two teens. I have credit card debt and think the car that im still paying off is a write off. I should be in tears but I long ago realised that monetary wise it’s just not going to be like it was.

Some people say the internet was an early version of JANET. Joint academic network.
Some say it was DARPA. Advanced research development agency.
Some attribute it to Tim Burners Lee.
Whatever it is, in conjunction with mobile phones that collect data from every person that holds one, it's all information gathering.
I'm not going to talk about a certain company I worked for that was based in Cheltenham in a large round building.
Dyor.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I've worked in and seen what goes on that 98.9% of the population will never be aware of.
Disclaimer: this is purely to ask people to do their own fact checking.
Certainly don't look up the 77th brigade in armitage.

But the Tories have been in power for 14 of the last 15 years. That’s simply a fact. Not a fan of Starmer, but expecting him or anyone else to right the course of the Titanic in a matter of minutes isn’t realistic. If the country really is in as dire straits as people say, then the lions share of the blame for that simply has to fall on the Tories. They had FOURTEEN YEARS to set a decent course, and utterly failed. And if people think that the answer to fourteen years of failure is Another Tory party with a large side of racists (aka Reform) - well, good luck with that!

Labour is fucking up big time. After the local elections in May there were two paths for it to take. One was to win back its own core supporters. The other was to win over Reform supporters.

Labour chose the latter and it is one big mess right now.

I kind of know a bit (just from someone in research not nda stuff yet) and I get what you’re saying.

I was thinking similarly. We got married in 2014 and started trying for kids then (took a few years to actually conceive). Had we got married now in 2025 I'd be seriously considering not having them in all honesty. In 2014 I felt that I was easy to move around jobs, cars on finance, low mortgage rates etc. It all feels a bit harder ten years on.

Labour were in power for 13 years before that.

And Labour were in for 10 of the 15 years before Thatcher.

There hasn’t been a golden age under any party in my lifetime.

The only big change for the better - and this is an opinion that I realise you won’t share - was Thatcher making the country governable again.