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!

When my DDad was in ICU about 90% to 95% of the nurses were Filipino.

I don’t think it’s just the UK though Brexit has definitely had an effect. I live in mainland Europe- the country where I live has one of the highest tax rates anywhere. Roads are terrible, housing costs are huge and my kids will never get on the housing ladder here and the cost of living here is way more than the UK. The only saving grace is we are free to travel and work anywhere in the EU, unlike Brits now sadly. It sure is a depressing period in history and I think things will get worse before they get better.

I don't doubt that there are Filipino and people from Myanmar who are perfectly capable of being excellent doctors and nurses.

But the question is why is there a need to import nurses and doctors from developing countries? It's not as though the Philippines or Myanmar have run out of sick or injured people to treat.

The answer is because it's cheaper to do that rather than train UK citizens. The right and sustainable solution would be to increase the training and pay for the recruitment of UK home grown medical staff

The other issue is that by importing doctors and nurses from these developing countries then you are depriving them of much needed trained medical staff.

@Papyrophile
The current system doesn't seem to lend itself to recruiting and retaining the best talent at either level. Its just chance if you are a LA with a good leaders. Without whole scale change, I don't know what the solution is.

@willstarttomorrow I can see some benefits in centralising social care but without a local lens or the limited levers LA's have, it is unlikely to be any more efficient than the current system. A well run LA often seems to be more about the luck of having the right people in place than the system being well designed.

I agree with @Playingvideogames We have a tall poppy problem. There’s a strange attitude that people who work hard should be grateful for the bare minimum, whereas those who don’t work deserve the world and are entitled to complain about what they feel they should be getting.

Putting the failings of the current system aside, the social contract is due a 2026 revision. Alongside an incompetent government, Tall Poppies syndrome is one of the biggest blockers of progress to improving our quality of life in the UK. Ordinary tax payers are squeezed to pay for rising welfare, healthcare and education costs - it’s dressed up as 'taxing the wealthy' but most times it is just taxing the productive. Instead of always raising taxes, we should be able to talk honestly about personal responsibility and entitlement too. If people looked after their health more, and supported their kids properly at school, contributed to their communities, it would take huge pressure off the system and save a fortune. But the moment you raise it, people take offence rather than having a sensible conversation.

The government don't want extended families. If you add a granny annex to your home either by building one or adding a door/ creating a self contained unit that could have a door added you will incur a council tax charge with many councils.

@Lady1576 you are certainly right about that- unless you have a company relocation with a back up support team , do g it all yourself is quite exhausting -when we went to Denmark in 2020 , i knew English eas97% spoken , no problems on that front-what I hadn’t allowed for was’ call centres’ !!! Trying to get through the myriad of options of press1, press2 when setting up utilities and home insurance all in Danish wasn’t on my bingo card ! Next time if I was on that position I would get a PA in for a day or so to do it for me sat next to me.

Wasn’t there a lot of talk last year about newly trained nurses and Drs in the UK not being able to find jobs so surely they should be a priority

That must change.

Can I ask which country?

Yes, this is a good post. I also find it quite hypocritical when some people who speak of moving abroad because UK is crap (obviously not all, but some) also say that people coming here from far poorer, more corrupt and more war-torn countries should go back and 'work to improve their country'- yet they aren't willing to do that here, where we're in a much better position relative to them.

I don't agree with migration to UK either, it's the hypocrisy that annoys me.

I was mistaken. Just double checked what I was told to see if there were any changes. If the parent is of pension age or over there is no charge. But if they downsize and move into a granny annex on your house before state benefit retirement age then there is a charge but you may qualify for a discount.

My partner grew up as one of 6 kids. 2 boys 4 girls. They had a 4 bed house and grandad lived with them . Boys in one room, girls ( 2 sets of bunks) in another. Parents in one and grandad in box room. The house was rented not owned

Yes, I get people wanting kids to have own rooms and space but I think sharing can work. Especially as families tend to be smaller now anyway. Good point also re bunk beds.

Can't be that bad lots of people want to live here.

All the people crossing on the channel

Unfortunately, you can't fix stupid. Something so important shouldn't have been left in the hands of mostly dimwits.

Have you forgotten how many billionaires provide jobs etc . If Amazon left how many thousands would be left without work . How many more benefits do you think us taxpayers can support . Shouting tax the billions is a lazy old trope from people offering no other solutions . Since time immemorial we’ve had a capitalist society and it’s not going to change .

Yes - there are UK trained doctors and nurses who are unable to get jobs in the NHS and yes they should be given priority.

However it's cheaper to import doctors and nurses from developing countries.

How is it cheaper? If the UK doctors and nurses have finished their training, the costs should be the same or cheaper to employ British people.

And how the innovation and companies they create benefit our lives.

@hattie43 Amazon wouldn’t leave - UK is one of their biggest markets - they haven’t left other country’s that insist on them paying corporate tax on income created in that country. Of course they would rather not pay it - Alternative is stick a 3% trading premium ( payable to HMRC) on entities trading here, but not registered in UK for tax purposes.

Companies like Amazon generate huge sales in the UK and bring in significant revenue, but they use legal loopholes to minimise how much UK tax they pay by shifting profits to lower-tax countries, amongst other strategies.

The shortfall between the revenue the Government could have received from corporates like Amazon and actually receives has a real impact on what the government can spend on things like education, the NHS, infrastructure, welfare and social care, it makes it harder to reduce the national debt - the cost of servicing that debt is astronomical.

When less money comes in from billionaires like Jeff and his ilk someone still has to pick up the rising bill. Technically the government can borrow more, but we can all see where that’s led us... So it's over to ordinary taxpayers to make up the shortfall through higher taxes and/or reduced public services.

Have you forgotten how many billionaires provide jobs etc

Have you forgotten that Jeff/ Amazon and their ilk make billions from UK workers and customers, benefit from UK infrastructure, education system and/or the NHS and then use loopholes to dodge tax leaving ordinary tax payers to pick up the bill.

Since we're talking about the tax gap have you actually seen that illegal evasion dwarfs legal avoidance.

Illegal evasion is primarily driven by small businesses and tradesmen's.

Have you got a source for this?

Just a quick search says otherwise. The difference being in how tax avoidance is being measured - there is criticism that not all of the relevant data is captured.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/measuring-tax-gaps/1-tax-gaps-summary