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!

I count these as blessings, for which I am thankful not just for myself but for my precious family, friends and everyone else!

🙄

I don’t live in the UK but in another western economy, and feel that my quality of life is fantastic. It was when I lived in London too (up to 2024).

I think a lot of it is about reframing situations and leaning towards gratitude and finding joy in life, rather than towards victimhood and self-pity.

I agree, I’ve travelled a lot and think we have a pretty good deal in UK. The OP sounds like a half empty person.

I remember a cartoon, perhaps in 'Private Eye', shortly after the initial invasion of Ukraine. Two business/politician types in suits. One saying to the other "How soon do you think we can start blaming the energy price crisis on this war?"

Things aren't all magically better in the EU. They are having issues as well. We all do.

I like the Gulf states though. DH goes there for work, we got to visit there late last year. They have an economy built on making, building and doing.

It's not horrible here, just the government seems to want to punish hard workers.

I don’t think you’re being unreasonable op, but the fact is? No one is coming to save you. So focus on what you can do to improve your life, whatever that may be.

Depends how you look at it. Not sure is this name change or the previous shared how in my 20s used to work in a sales team for 1/3 of my manager's salary and described the kind of only one holiday I had by myself for the whole period in that country, in a mini tin can caravan with a block of communal toilets down the field......the heating in my rented accomodation was central town, a massive communal hot water boiler somewhere pumping hot water to the blocks around that area - never hot enough. My termostat was on 19C, the room was always 12.

comparing this to what I still have here in the UK, yes, I agree, even we went from 3 holidays per year to 1, but ....the gaz heating here do achieve the t I tell it. The food we eat is a lot and good quality. OK ...just for your rumination

Is that so? I thought most of western Europe was pretty much in the same boat as us.

ah...sorry, my ideas always pop up one after the other....here we are just outside London and our windows face massive hill with evergreens, all kinds of trees and few lovely villas here and there. And I live even in an mortgaged ex council flat! how that could be bad

Yes we do especially since COVID perhaps not where you live

yes and people walking, down physical work, some house cleaning, reading and other old world normal occupations. Everyone is brainwashed, lazy, confused, on mental health painkillers....what do you expect but complaining from civilization and that money is never enough. Money is never enough, that is for sure

exactly this. I'm only in my mid 30s but parents generation = left school at 16, didn't get indoor bathroom until early childhood, first time abroad was early 20s.

Generation before that = left school at 15, rationing still in place until early teens, grandfather had to do national service before working down the pit, other grandfather's mother died in childbirth when he was born, grandma didn't have an indoor bathroom until her mid 20s or even her own bed until she got married!

Generation before that = left school at 14, injured in WW1, as above 1 ggm died in childbirth, other raised multiple kids in a tiny terrace, heavy manual labour jobs, grandmother never left the country, 1st time she ate at a restaurant was at my grandmother's wedding (so would have been late 40s)

Before that they were itinerant labourers who never owned their own house.
Rose tinted glasses only work if your immediate ancestors were lucky enough to be middle class, able bodied, heterosexual and white, and even then there were significant struggles that most of us will/have never experienced.

Indeed. I'm now 67 and have a good quality of life. But I was born and brought up in poverty, in a tiny house (rented - my parents never earned enough to buy) with no central heating, coal fires downstairs and not even any plug sockets upstairs. I shared a room with first my older brother and then my younger on, until I was 16 and we moved to a 3 bed house - which had a bathroom, something I had never had before.

Standards of living these days are massively higher than they were in my youth and into my late 30s - anyone imagining any different is deluding themselves.

And house prices are the result of Thatcherism.

It annoys me so often. I don't think I will ever get over my rage at the stupidity of that vote. I don't even know if I believe in democracy anymore and I would only bother voting again if I believed my vote has any meaning, which it does not were I live. We will be reaping what was sown for a long time.

🙄

I 100% agree OP. It's absolutely depressing. However, I do think the importance of measuring house prices and inflation need to be clarified and talked about more. Until I moved house recently (downsized into my last home), on paper from what an Estate Agent's valuation comes in at, compared to what I bought at, you'd think 'wow'. More than doubled in price in nearly 18 years. Not so. You need to understand this:-

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_697fb18c37dc8191839f728a84c99d31

As for everything else, personally I blame politicians over the last 30 years. All parties. Compared to politicians of old, they lie, cheat us, look after number one, don't keep to their mandates (which with a few exceptions like a pandemic, should be made a legal undertaking in my opinion,) currently have zero policies, amd can be allowed in the House on the back benches, even after being caught out with tax avoidance. Angela Raynor should not be allowed anywhere near the public purse again. Too many are not experienced in the department they head - none of the current cabinet have owned their own business-and they are running the country. It's a joke. Open borders are now a joke and not really that funny. The population has gone from 55 million in the 80's, and is now nearer 70 million, with more people claiming benefits than the working people can provide for the future. Something has to change big time - a total rehash of our political system would be my first call. Get the corrupt liers out, and bring some morality back in. Oh and lastly, just anything to make the middle sector of society feel better off-just one.

But we’re not comparing our quality of life now to 60 years ago, we are comparing it to ‘comparable’ countries.

Every day I see something that disappoints.
Pot holes, street lighting out, scruffy shop fronts, empty shop units, women wearing pyjamas. We then read about the benefits bill. And I live in a supposedly affluent/village area.

Previous decades have been poor (70s anyone?) but I honestly think we hit our peak in the 90s/early 2000s and we have just dwindled since then.

My life is good, but the life around me is worsening.

the whole of Europe is still the best place to be.

You find it totally infuriating?
I find it totally infuriating that despite allegedly taking control of our boarders we have more and more undocumented men arriving here who are (some, not all ) committing heinous rapes/assaults and murders.

Im appalled that these men are being given private health care unlike the rest of us who just have to pay for it and sit on waiting lists.
Im furious that despite offering a referendum we are in this shit because politicians haven’t executed Brexit as it should have been. None of the ones in charge believed in it which is why it was so terribly cocked up.
Every politician is in it for themselves.

Yes @Playingvideogames I think it’s awful here in so many ways. I don’t go to ‘events’ any more because there are just too many people. Everywhere is crowded. The NHS is an utter disgrace because there is no accountability for its 1.125million members of staff.
Huge swathes of people are being forced to go to university and get into massive debt in order to have a career that doesn’t need educating to degree standard.
We expect our elderly relatives to live incredibly long lives but have no intention of looking after them. State Pensions will be non exsistant by the time my daughter retires- unless you are a civil servant of course when you will get a huge pension that the rest of us have to pay for. Even if you make a huge error (looking at you lying Midlands police chief) you can retire early without damaging your financial payoff.
I despair the way the country is headed.
People wearing masks parade through London in the ‘peace marches’ which anyone with a brain can see are hate marches - nazi salutes, death to the idf, terrifying Jews, costing us a fucking fortune, police turning a blind eye but god help you if you say anything about men dressing as women, or the danger of unwanted illegal immigrants as the left turn on you screaming ‘fascist, Nazi etc and try to get you sacked.
I hate Kier Starmer crawling on his belly to the Chinese - they must be laughing their heads off at us ‘Yes of course Mr Ping you can build your huge embassy in the middle of our capital city so you can better spy on us and fuck the country up further’.
Theft, shoplifting, assaults, rapes , bloody green taxes, pandering constantly to minority groups - but fuck the rest of us. Banged up for saying something on X but not investigated for raping children if you are a Muslim. Too many MPs who care deeply about Gaza but don’t call out raping gangs here on their doorsteps.

Our quality of life gets worse every year - we are just pawns in the government’s game.

So which country would you prefer to live in OP?
I reckon you’d probably turn up there and still be a bloody misery.

What countries?

yes ....you know....I have read today the heart breaking stories of what happened when communism came to families who owned industries, properties, etc in my ex communist countries....you guys never had that , on top of your mental national load.....

your country is still absolutely great