To feel our quality of life in the UK gets lower every year?

[Playingvideogames]

Off the back of another thread where I mentioned my childhood homes being bought by my parents for under 300k in the late 90s/early 2000s, and are now all selling for 700k+.

I feel like our quality of life just dwindles every year. Everything becomes more expensive. Housing is low quality, small and extortionate. The weather is awful 70% of the time. Everything feels so overcrowded with fewer green spaces and natural beauty as more housing estates go up. The roads are awful, choked with traffic and potholed. Constant roadworks here yet nothing ever seems to get solved. Customer service is a bit rubbish, nothing really works as intended. More and more rules about what you can and can’t do. People just seem stifled and stressed.

I’m sure people will rush along to say how wonderful the NHS is and similar, but I sometimes feel really envious of people living in places where (although not perfect) they have something reliable to enjoy - great weather, a nice big house, just more space and less overcrowding.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable but I wonder if you do!

And this is absolutely the case for the privileged. But we need to look at life experiences of the poorest, particularly the poorest children. They live in overcrowded, unsafe housing, their parents are working zero-hours contracts, they live in minoritised communities.

It's not good enough to say "well my life is lovely".

No I do agree completely. But my point is, when people stop realising what they've already got they vote and act in ways which make things worse for the people who aren't privileged. I am privileged to have a car and money for treats. But I'm only privileged because the NHS saved my life when I was born and my working class parents encouraged me to take advantage of the free state education that was mostly denied them (I'm old enough to have had a full grant at uni). So often people vote for the things that get us into a worse mess because they only see the bad and don't realise things can get a lot worse. Austerity came about because people thought the country was terrible and failed to realise that things like investment in libraries was actually really important - it's not just the rich that support these things.

The likes of Reform want the angry and disillusioned to believe life will be better - they're selling a dream. But if people think they have nothing to lose then of course they'll support them. I think it's good to remind people that it could still get so much worse (and very possibly will)

The last 200 years were an anomaly, this a regression to the mean, as more and more wealth is held by a smaller minority. The idea that every year things will get better and better, is a quite modern concept.

There's also nothing particularly privileged about going on a free walk with my kids, swimming at a council pool and making a meal from scratch - or there wouldn't have been a few years ago. And there shouldn't be now. My worry is that in 15 years' time none of those things will be available to anyone but the very rich (hidden behind their gated compounds). My life isn't particularly "lovely" - cancer and 2 family deaths - but I do think life would be worse if I couldn't go out alone because I was female or my kids couldn't go to school because it wasn't safe or another country was bombing parts of my country)

The NHS is a shit show. The UK is a shit show. I'd leave in a heartbeat, but my family (who I love) want to stay, so I shall have to just keep making the best of it.

I live on an island with a maritime climate and our weather is much nicer than the UK's.

Yes, for 95% of people! For the wealthiest 5% of the UK's population everything's coming up roses!

Yes all this -couldn’t agree more
in the west we are dripping with privilege compared to some of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, and in living memory for some of our grandparents.

On your lovely day out today- your family and number of kids you created was within your control and if you had wished for any of them, accidentally conceived, not to have been born you would have had control over this also. (Unlike my ex husbands Spanish DGM who had 14 children and died at 44 , 1 year after her last child- essentially from ‘los nervios’ -basically exhaustion)
Additionally, if your husband starts beating seven shades out of you this evening -just because he fancies doing so, you would be able to access immediate refuge and protection under your legal rights. The state will also financially support you should you rightly decide not to return to the scum bag and mechanism will be put in place for him to be obliged to finally support the children
Your lovely dog has rights also, should you decide to starve him and chain him up outside.
if you go to work tomorrow and have your backside slapped, boobs groped or are discriminated against for your race or religion to will also be able to seek redress.

As I said upthread - much of what I have said in this post was NOT the case for my own nan who is she were still alive would have been 98 in March

I honestly don’t think on the whole we have ever had it so good

I won’t say exactly where- but New Jersey

Its worse than that.

You can be unemployed your entire life and still get the same state pension as someone who has contributed for over 40 years and paid in millions.

Its become an expensive joke on the working taxpayer.

Thats the direction of travel now: managed decline.

Far too many people still believe that the UK is wealthy .

It is not.

I think as well peoples aren’t quite right when they say you have to have paid in for 35 years - if I remember correctly you get it covered off if not working and registered as unemployed or claiming child benefit- ?

I think it’s fair to say too there’s plenty of women over 65 ( and I’m 64 ) who haven’t contributed in terms of paying NI for a lot of years and yet fully expect pensions WFA etc - I don’t have an issue with that but I do get very annoyed when they bring out the moaning about benefits card’ especially to those working hard with young kids struggling to pay private rents etc and yet fully expect to claim PIP or attendance allowance etc -

I just read an interesting article in Financial Times magazine. It said that people seem to rate their own happiness quite high, but rate others happiness as much lower. Likewise, they will say their family is doing ok, but that the country to going to poo. I'm guilty of this too! I feel like I'm getting by, but spend so much time worrying about the rest of the country. How is everyone on this thread actually doing? Are you in poverty, barely making it from day to day, or are you mpre worried that others are struggling?

The UK has a significant problem with excessive pensioner welfare.

Every year it increases due to demographics, the more that spending crowds out productive investment.

And its that lack of productive investment that is making the country poorer every year.

Good luck getting the grey haired brigade to understand this as they all think there is still a magic money tree in the UK.

WASPI women were a perfect example of this attitude.

Thats not entire irrational because the direction of travel (of the country) will eventually impact you in your day to day life (infrastructure, public services, trains etc) even if your own personal situation is ok.

YANBU. The country has gone to the dogs. We are an over populated island and we are drowning in our own shit. I genuinely believe that we can no longer sustain the amount of traffic on the roads, and the ever growing population. I used to be proud to be British but now I’m embarrassed. We have become a country of lazy entitled scroungers. I’m too old to emigrate but if I could I would. It’s very sad.

Im managing financially. I work full time - always have. But the wage I earn wouldn’t support a person starting out who needed a mortgage. I’m a civil servant.

it’s the state of the roads that bothers me. The permanent congestion and road rage. The pot holes. Main arterial roads like farm tracks. The constant building of houses wherever there’s a green space with no thought to infrastructure. The deteriorating high streets, the rows of garish vape shops and Turkish barbers and mini marts. They’re not even bothering to hide the fact they’re money laundering. And any “nice” shop goes under in 6 months because everyone is too idle to do anything other than buy off Amazon and fund Bezos’s lifestyle. Same with fast food. People sat on their arses ordering coffees from Deliveroo. What a nation we have become!

To the OP’s original post, this kind of thing is why many people despair at what the UK has become….

Britain’s welfare claimants are receiving more than £10bn in “hidden” benefits on top of Universal Credit payments of £100bn, a study has revealed.

The extra benefits range from free prescriptions, travel and school meals, to help with energy, water, broadband and holiday bills, and are automatically available to families and individuals receiving Universal Credit, according to the research by the think tank Onward.

However, Onward said the “bonus” benefit top-ups were handed out in “opaque” and “uneven” ways and undermined the philosophy of Universal Credit because they disincentivised claimants from moving into work and financial independence.

Onward said its research was the first to reveal the “vast shadow welfare system” of “passported” benefits, which are defined as free or subsidised goods and services automatically unlocked through a family’s or individual’s receipt of Universal Credit.

Many of the benefits are cross-subsidised by working families, who face higher taxes and council charges but also bigger energy bills, as utility companies do not receive government funding for some of the discounts and extra services they are legally required to provide benefit claimants.

Why is it that the people who get so upset about borders and Keir Starmer, always seem to struggle to spell the words 🤔😏

You began by talking g about house prices in this country a day your thread focuses on our quality of life getting lower in this country. I've lived for several years in a country with hot weather for much of the tear and there were considerable downsides to that, believe me!

But tell me - which other country do you think you'd have a better quality of life in?

We have had massive amounts of new builds surrounding our village and after last nights rain the village was under water because drains were full / broken and there’s no fields left for water to drain away . I think people are starting to get angry now .

@LunaDeBallona the crawling to Chinese has hugely come around due to Brexit - where else is the country going to get investment from- can’t be the EU and at the moment certainly not the USA. It has made the UK very vulnerable.

All the gangs stealing stuff and having vast criminal enterprises: can't they turn their energy into setting up a legal business not built on theft

Interesting a lot of people are mentioning everything feeling overcrowded, I feel exactly the same. I live in a village a few miles outside a small city, but due to constant building, there’s only a gap of a couple of minutes when driving before the village ends and the city begins. One more housing estate and we will be in the city.

The problem is even mentioning ‘overcrowding’ when we are objectively overcrowded, results in a highly charged argument about immigration and euthanising pensioners.