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?

Wow, you learn something new everyday. Never seen ETA mean anything other than Euskadi Ta Askatasuna before (except estimated time of arrival I suppose). Like the IRA, but you’d never ever get the two mixed up, hence my confusion.

My brain automatically read that title with a "dun, dun, DUNNN" after it.
Think EastEnders theme tune style 😁

Why are you blaming the old?

This is very different.

AI will bring all sorts of huge social changes.

I am not sure why you would say AI will alter society for the worst.

It's hard to tell what it will do.

It will have huge impacts, and somehow society will have to adjust to those impacts. But it will adjust, especially as it is likely to be a gradual impact rather than a step change.

But my guess is that the society that comes out of that will be the society that the majority want, or are willing to fight for.

I think a more fundamental problem is that our society at the moment depends on constant growth. It's easy to get that at the beginning, but as time goes on it gets so much harder, especially out of highly developed countries. At the moment there are opportunities for growth in less developed countries, but these will run out eventually. Then it is either space or bust.

Yeah, I was born in the late 60s but my sister is 20 years older than me.

In the early 70s she got married, bought a house, and drove a mini. She was a secretary and her husband was a painter and decorator. They could afford two kids. Fast forward to the 80s and they could afford two cars. Fast forward to the 90s and they could afford really nice clothes, golf club fees, loads of fancy stuff like trips to America, a big diamond ring, etc. Retired and moved abroad.

Thing is, she was always a secretary (an extremely good one) and he was always a painter and decorator (again, a very good one).

OK then.

I've never heard of what you said (can't see it in an edit). Estimated Time of Arrival would have been somewhat out of context.

Love the quote.

Also I earn over £50k a year and I feel poor. I have three kids. And food bills have doubled. I receive no payrise or bonus in recent years. I got made redundant a few years back too. My kids have never been on a plane (one is nearly a teen), we don’t go on holiday as we can’t afford. They don’t even have passports and never have. I can only dream of moving to next house above. I don’t do DIY and we can’t afford big purchases like carpet, new sofa do we make do. I sell my old used stuff on vinted and do surveys to make a bit of extra cash so I can pay for Christmas and birthdays etc.

were people really behaving like this in the 70s?

Like deindustrialisation did. The difference is that those who lose out to AI will be white collar workers.

Just in case you think moving countries will help, think again. It’s like this or much worse everywhere. Studying the Stoics helps a bit though. They had a shit time of it in Ancient Rome too. The problem is that a lot of us grew up believing life to be a box of chocolates - fuck you Gump. And that we could change any shit ones out anytime we felt slightly disappointed. It’s really not and never was.

The best most of us can hope for is a few moments of hope and pleasure now and then to savour, interspersed with mostly grind, shit going wrong and assholes being assholes all around us. It’s all about acceptance and only putting energy into things you can genuinely change. Forget the rest. History is going to do its thing - you are such a little blip in it.

I have friends and family across the world, in the US, Europe, Asia and the ME.
It's hard here, but it's pretty hard everywhere.

Some Asian economies are booming, but they have no social nets and development is very unequal. I agree many people fleeing are fleeing to unequal societies like the ME.

Yes, they really were. That’s exactly what life was like for millions of us then. The difference is expectations were lower.

But AI is only going to get "better and better". Its not going to be stuck at the current level for long.

I am not sure why you would say AI will alter society for the worst.
It's hard to tell what it will do.
It will have huge impacts, and somehow society will have to adjust to those impacts.

Likely said by someone old enough to have bought a house at a reasonable price and has now retired, so has no need to speculate about AI or future issues.

I am 51 years old and can say wholeheartedly that we have thrown the young in the trash.

And it will again in 2-3 years time given 2/3rd of the money Reeves is borrowing is going just to pay the interest on the UK debt mountain. Shameful!!

Because house building hasn’t kept up with population growth and demographic change, which has driven up demand and therefore prices. It’s the case all across the developed world, it isn’t unique to the U.K. Quite apart from widespread immigration over the past few decades, we just don’t live as we used to in the 1970s. Young people tend to move out of their parents’ home before marriage in a way which was far less common then, more single adults want to live alone, higher divorce rates have led to two homes being required where previously it would have only been one, young people at university require accommodation, our increasingly elderly population is living longer and largely wants to remain in its own home. All this places demand on available housing.

Tax rises for middle income earners coming meaning this country’s position is now firmly a socialist one, while the top rate taxpayers are leaving the country in their hundreds of thousands.

A recession is imminent. We are already in a GDP per capita recession now so people in this country are already decidedly poorer.

Government spending is out of control and will get worse as the benefits train is already derailed and hurtling towards disaster.

Illegal migration numbers already at record highs and will get worse causing civil unrest. While legal migration will put even more strain on infrastructure.

Borrowing costs will continue to go higher under this shitshow of a government.

IMF will step in to complete the story of road to ruin. Then the freebies will need to stop. Government largesse will need to stop, benefits will need to be pulled back. Unfortunately growth will not return because this government, like the last one, would struggle to even spell the word growth, let alone deliver it.

But after all, if you voted for this bunch of idiots into power, you asked for this. Good luck.

Another goady thread.

This is what 14 unnecessary years of Tory austerity and Brexit has resulted in.

When people feel their money goes further and they can see improvement they will feel better.

It takes a moment to destroy everything and a lifetime to build back.

Labour have only had a year. By the end of 2026, renters won’t be able to be kicked out because the landlord wants to increase the rent, workers will have greater rights from day one, and public services will work better. But it feels shit right now and will still feel shit for some time.

Yes. If I look back at childhood photos in relatives’ and friends’ homes, the sort of household decor I see in them which nowadays would be considered dated and shabby was just the norm. We weren’t poor, but we didn’t have a lot of new stuff, or expect it. Likewise, cars. I grew up in a fairly affluent city in a mixed area, but when I think back to the cars driven by my parents and relatives and friends’ parents, most of them were getting on for 20 years old. A brand new car made you a cut above. For all the MNers who claim to drive an old banger, how often do you glance around the car park and see a 20-year-old or older car as anything but an exception nowadays, in a sea of shiny cars barely a few years old?

It wasn’t all bad. We had Spangles, David Cassidy, The Wombles, and clackers.

But generally, yes, the 1970s were fucking dire.

I well remember TV drama being relentlessly bleak about Britain. In those days of course it was all in the aid of left-wingery: Play for Today and the like. I’m glad we have the choice to watch Below Deck and Love Island nowadays.

What was sclerotic about Britain then was that it had become ungovernable. I fear we’re heading back to that.

Yeah and taking their cash with them.

What socialists say? ‘The rich can fuck off’.

Well guess what, they are doing exactly that. Which means the socialists now have to leech off each other. We all know how that ends.

This. The economy is too broken for Labour to be able to fix it, without huge tax hikes - which isn't a solution either, as the Tories also destroyed the job market but keeping salaries (other than executive pay) flatlined for over a decade. We haven't had the salary growth that other EU companies (and the USA) have experienced, and the job market itself is flat at the moment with an increase in layoffs and redundancies. A massive retired population supported by a shrinking working population, the ticking pensions' time bomb, AI taking jobs, the Brexit fallout, local councils going bankrupt, not enough homes or infrastructure to cope with the needs of the population, influx of immigrants due to the current global instability - it's a perfect storm of shit.

I think Reform will get in at the next GE and completely fuck everything up , but maybe that could be the reset we need as the government after that would be able to rebuild on the scorched earth Reform leave in their wake. And the rest of the UK would realise how grim a hard-right government that only cares about making life more shit for people whose lives are already shit and giving money to rich people actually is. If you think Labour - and even the Tories - are incompetent, you ain't seen nothing yet.

Taxpayers and employers leaving is deeply worrying.

I feel very sorry that you can't have a holiday at all - that's totally unfair and depressing - but the amount of foreign travel now is crazy and we devalue it. I didn't have foreign holidays for most of my childhood. It just wasn't really affordable for most ordinary people. We had great times in Scotland. Now, folks go to fucking Mexico then don't even leave the hotel.

The main difference, however, is that people now are crippled by housing costs, whether they rent or are fortunate enough to be able to manage a mortgage. Insecurity in housing is a national crisis and can only cause genuine mental despair. So I can certainly understand you feeling poor with a 50k salary.