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?

I agree that the consumerism culture is one of the problems young people don't save money these days, just spend it as it comes. All the momey spent on trips to Spain every 3 months, take-aways, alcohol and 200 throw-away clothes could be saved up for a deposit after 10 years of saving.
A lot of people came to UK from my home country in the 2000s, worked hard in factories and saved up. Now many of them are back, they invested the money in the land and properties. I've heard that this country's GDP is supposed ot exceed the one of Britain in 10 years. I don't know anyone here going on holiday abroad except of one-in-a-lifetime honeymoon (and it's Tunesia, not Thailand). My hometown has grown so much over the years - new, big houses round every corner, new shops and businesses. Surprisingly, mental health or social media are not such big problems here or are not talked about - not sure why, maybe people are too busy working or prioritise something else (I see here teenagers scrolling on their phones, but not adults). However, everybody here works hard in 1 job, then come home and work hard in the garden or renovating their house. Life is family-centered, not centered around self.
You can apply this lifestyle in the UK, and you will still save a lot of money. It's still a good country to live, you just need to spend less on meaningless stuff. Food and house prices are high and a problem everywhere in Europe.

Current voting intention polls consistently say the opposite though ie today: Reform 28% Vs Labour 21%.
If Jezza takes votes away from Labour then there is a real possibility of a Reform overall win

Your parents may seem to be very well off now but that could very well turn a full 180 if one or both end up needing intensive residential care for a prolonged period. Those with less like yourself would get that care subsidised, or even completley covered - so is swings and roundabouts to some extent.

For me, my life would be so much better:

• spending my own money. We are careful, super careful and are saving for retirement. I fully expect it to be means tested, what is the point then? We would be 20k each worse off.
• if everyone contributed. Everyone pays tax so everyone has a stake in how money on spent. People will care more about society.
• if more people worked. There is clearly work to be done. Rubbish bins are overflowing at my local park. Litter needs collecting. Streets sweeping.

Someone needs to make the very hard, unpalatable decisions for the collective good and future of this country. Everyone's too scared of losing votes. They'd rather look good while driving us off a cliff. Which ironically is why the main parties are haemorrhaging votes.

Majority will just have to do what previous generations have had to do and get on with it the best they can. We'll get through it because we have no choice, the world is over due a reset button on a lot of things anyway.

I grew up in the 70s. My dad was an engineer, my mum stayed at home when I was young. Our house was a smallish modern house. We didn’t have much money, my mum made her own clothes. We had no credit cards and saved up for things we wanted. When I moved into my first home all the furniture was secondhand from relatives. I think things would seem very basic to young people today.

Things that were better in the 70s were that we had a family doctor we could see easily and my Dad could afford to pay the mortgage on only one salary!

This is nothing new, I felt the same when I was young in the 70s, the three day week, strikes all the time, no power frequently due to strikes, getting home from work with no heat, no light and no way to cook. Petrol shortages, queuing literally miles down the road if a garage had fuel (or if there was a rumour there was going to be a delivery) and only allowed a couple of gallons when you got to the front. Wages were very low, buying a house seemed like a distant dream, even buying a car or at one point even buying a tv was beyond us. The health service was basic and the private sector totally out of reach. Yes UNI was free tuition, but there were comparatively very few places and it was very difficult to get in and contrary to to believe a degree wasn't a guarantee of a good, well paid job, etc, etc. I don't know when this golden era was, a lot of rose tinted spectacles around I think, or it passed me by somewhere.

Exactly.

I don't agree that holidays are meaningless, though. Travelling, experiencing other cultures and seeing the world - that has a value. Even holidays to Spain, which I think we can be snobby about!

You could be dead in 10 years time, so what's the point in spending that saving and not actually enjoying and experiencing the world? There's definitely logic to that stance too.

That said, it's terrifying how easy it is to spend money these days - I am as guilty of it as anyone else. In the old days, when you actually had to go to the shops if you wanted/needed anything, it was much harder to spend money. If you couldn't get something at the shops, you did without it. Saved a fortune! They say 'a fool and his money are easily parted' and I am increasingly wondering if I am that fool!

This.

1970s - constant power cuts, 3 day week, rubbish piling up everywhere. Perfectly normal to live in a house with no heating upstairs, just a coal fire in the living room.

1980s - 12 week maternity leave. No paternity leave. No free nursery hours. Childcare just as expensive relative to income as it is now. No tax credit top ups.

1990s - mortgage interest rates (which were already far far higher than they have been for the last 20 or so years) going up to 15%

and before anyone says it - no, it’s not a race to the bottom. Life in the uk is pretty shit now but so it has been for a long long time

I think these are all valid things to do. Yesterday I picked up bag fulls of windfall apples from the green near us and loads of blackberries. No one else was bothering. We now have pan loads of stewed fruit and pies and crumbles galore. Probably 20 days worth of desserts.
Not that it's going to save the country!

Remember that all this screeching "everybody hates Labour, the country is doomed" is designed to affect you emotionally and hinder your capacity to reason.

Even if you're disappointed in Labour to suggest that they're mainly responsible for the state of the country now is absurd.

Reform is not destined to win the next election - it's four years away and much can happen before then. Boris Johnson was supposed to be in power for ten years, according to experts back in 2019.

@hippysun Your posts really struck a chord.

I haven't lived in UK for about 16 years now. Two weeks ago I went back to the North West to visit my mum. I haven't been there since I left. (Mum has visited me! I haven't abandoned her, she just wanted to have lots of lovely holidays and she loved travelling). But I could I have written your post. So many fields and green spaces taken over with poorly planned housing estates, needlessly giant cars, 3 and 4 to a driveway, no front gardens, no parking, cars everywhere. Zero infrastructure to support the boom in population.

Unfortunately mum had a fall and we had to go to a and e. She had needed a CT scan and many stitches in her head. Bearing in mind she is also in end stage heart failure, she was "streamed" and 4pm on a Monday and she first saw a doctor at 5.30am on Tuesday morning. She was left in a wheelchair with a bleeding head wound for that long. Luckily I was with her. But for those older people alone, it was left to other patients who were waiting to advocate for them, support them going to the bathroom, finding water to drink or supporting them.

I was very homesick before I visited and was thinking "possibly it's time to think about moving back", but I was so shocked. This wasn't home and not at all what I remembered. I just felt sad to be honest. I've no idea how people are coping.

You are likely to inherit their house though

Your parents were born during the luckiest time to be born in the UK and things maxed out for them - that’s just life luck of the draw

The UK needs to stop being house obsessed. They are things to live in, a big beautiful house doesn’t make you a better person.

You have a home OP
with people in it you love
a job with some pension
and a body that works

we aren’t going to make money on this house to downsize - bit like you it’s the only house we have ever owned - but that’s ok - if this house shot up in price our teens would have to live here forever and we don’t want that neither do they

there’s little money to be made on houses now if you mean buying living in one, selling moving into another, the housing market yes, personal housing not so much, we need to rid that from our national consciousness

Some of this generation and their parents need to wake up and get a grip.
The current shit isn't new and we had the threat of the cold war nuking us as we slept.

That's current voting intention. That does not mean that a Reform government is a certainty in 2029.

I did this last year and still have a freezer full of last year's blackberries and apples which I haven't got round to using!

This is true.

But, there been population growth, due to better healthcare, new medicines, bigger families and waves of immigration.

Due to advances in technology, there are fewer basic factory work opportunities, a wider variety of products to buy and higher expectations of what we should have in our homes.

Due to TV/media, we can all see what others have, creating more demand and supply for more and more local and globally. Basically, people are expecting and higher standards of living everywhere.

As a result of all the developments, the innovators and manufacturers make money, the suppliers make money. But, short-sighted Thatcher encouraged people to focus on and enrich themselves. This focus on profit-making and big Capitalism has broken our public services, public spaces, social housing provision and attitudes to society and money.

Now, we are focused on owning homes as opposed to living somewhere. People want a lifestyle, whatever the cost to themselves and society.

So, inequality abounds, business profiteering is now a thing - the governments just ignore it, more people are happy to commit crime as they feel society owes them or a lack of compassion for others, and education has been reduced to a product.

While, some of our public services are hanging in there, and the NHS is just about managing.

All this has affected our attitude to life and emotional well-being as the stress never ends.

Especially, with the shifting job market, when people are not being made redundant, they are being forced to work past 66, meaning less job opportunities for the younger people,. For many, what they earn doesn't even cover the constant upward Cost of living changes, so more unwanted pressure just to live somewhere and pay their bills.

But, it's alright. Because, humans keep going and trying despite the odds, wherever you are there's always someone worse off. Although, some of us may need help and support to do so. Whilst, others may need to move to make it.

If only, the leaders would stop the wars. We could all focus on what matters, getting through life.

It's the economy that's the problem we're talking about though, not the individuals. That's been debunked for about 15 years (the "avocado toast" theory). There will always be spendthrifts in every generation but that's not the wider issue. The economy was very different 20 years ago but nice to hear that people from your country apparently exported a load of money that should have been in our economy. Bragging about it is an own goal because it paves the way for Reform who claim to plan to put a stop to it all.

Umm I walk the streets on my own all the time. I live alone and don't own a car so don't have much choice - it's walk or never leave my home. I do avoid dodgy looking alleys, and would probably avoid waking in sketchy areas really late at night, but I've done that my whole adult life. The UK being not a safe country is from my experience not true.

And it's four years to the next election and as they say 'a week is a long time in politics.' Things could be very different in four years (which Labour are counting on, I'd imagine.)

We’re not ‘in trouble.’ Are we a war zone? No. Is there famine or drought? No. We have politics - it will always be a mess and there will always be people unhappy with the ‘system.’
we have an amazing setup compared to so many other countries, and just thank god you’re not in America where they are legalising child marriage and outlawing abortions. We have free healthcare, a benefit system for those that need it and no one is really left without help for housing, food etc. A water company int he take and dodgy politicians aren’t the end of the world.

"Not safe to walk the streets anymore" is obvious bollocks, along with "not safe to go to London anymore" which I've also seen, and is also bollocks.

I also completely blame labour and the farm tax for my new Reform council who I didn't vote for