AIBU to feel life in the UK has worsened since Covid?

[MerryAmberViper]

feel everything is just getting worse since covid

Im on a good salary of 32k live alone entitled to no benefits and lucky enough I can afford to put heating on in winter but have to be careful

crime everywhere with lenient punishment or sometimes no punishment at all
everyone seems entitled angry or depressed and no one seems to care about following the law
clear resentment and disagreement in country people on social media saying vote green or vote reform and if you dont you are terrible
divided country especially with brexit when inflation being caused by covid and the war brexit hasnt changed much
stagnant salaries if you can even get a job at all
everything expensive
people on great salaries of 100k+ moaning about the tax they pay because they are bad with managing their money even though they are on over double average salary when people like myself manage on much less
massive wealth inequality
NHS and public services run down
terrible government both tories and labour

Funny you should ask that.

Here’s just one of the impacts of Brexit on the NHS. I bet this isn’t what you thought you were voting for, but it decimated the NHS Trust I worked for. And then we had a second wave of exits after the appalling handling of Covid by the government - we lost loads of British staff, either to non-NHS jobs or they moved abroad where conditions are better.

Slow clap for you and your “£350m for the NHS” cronies who couldn’t spot a lie if it sat on your nose.

www.surrey.ac.uk/news/brexit-has-caused-1485-additional-deaths-year-due-eu-nurses-leaving-uk

Things being more expensive haven't affected me because I live within my means. I don't buy things I can't afford. Water bill has gone up, annoyingly, but like all bills, you find a way, right?Luckily. I haven't needed to use the NHS since Covid. I never said I'm better than anyone, so not sure where you got that from? Also, plebian? Are you OK??

So you voted Brexit OP and are now living the reality of what you voted for.

Indeed. I love the concept that you can just ignore the impact of such a monumental -clusterfuck- change to our constitution and blame all the troubles on other things.

But then quite a large proportion of people expected sunshine and rainbows and ignored/couldn’t understand any of the serious messages being shared on the downsides.

I can understand the higher earners of around £100,000 and the amount they lose to the grubby hands of the tax man because of cliff edges. They are probably people (like myself) who studied for many years to qualify in their profession. Each salary rise is worth far less becaue the system is corrupt and unfair. At my GP all the doctors work part time - and probaby pay large sums into their pension fund rather than having it filched from them.There is a temptation to drop your hours and find a cash in hand side hustle to beat the system. As a single pensioner I have put my share into the community and am still being exonomically raped to pay for services I do now want and cannot use.

Your Original Post is 100% negative and sounds like it's been 90% driven by social media and the constant drip, drip of negative articles in the media.

Get out in the world - travel by train, meet real people, see a million acts of kindness and generosity happen every day. Watch people move around London on efficient public transport - helping mums with prams on and off buses and standing up so older folk can sit down on the tube. See hundreds of thousands of people stand back to let people off first.

So many millions of people abiding the law, enjoying the free museums, safely having picnics with their families in parks, working to make our streets clean/safe/efficient, volunteering to put flowers in parks, donating to charity, litter picking, paying taxes and thinking that's the price you pay for society.

I've just traveled Britain extensively by public transport for six months. I have witnessed no crime, been taken everywhere by efficient buses and trains operated by polite, knowledgeable, kind, helpful staff. I've eaten fantastic local food and met thousands of interesting, fun, gentle people from overseas tourists to Indian waiters here to learn the language to policemen to old ladies on benches.

Not everyone is resentful, angry, entitled, lawbreaking or depressed and, if the people you meet in your day to day life are then change the people you meet.

Yes the economy is taking a nose dive for lots of reasons VERY MUCH INCLUDING BREXIT, yes some people will always be greedy, but there is SO MUCH GOOD.

Anyone who says Broken Britain is missing a lot of really good stuff that goes on right under their nose a million times every single day.

Not certain about that; was in Arnhem in the Netherlands last week and the place was filthy; I don't think they ever clean their 'intercity' trains tho the local ones weren't as bad. Basically the UK is a LOT cleaner then it was there and I'm grateful for that.

So you pay childcare and living costs for two/three other people on that?

Yeh it’s all shit. 2012 was the last decent year

You can't blame Labour really. They're trying to fix the mess after 14 years of a Conservative government, Covid and Brexit, all of which led to declines in physical and mental health, a huge growth in the wealth gap, decline in education provision and the growth of racism and misogyny.

So you don’t mind your water bills (a basic necessity) going up (exploited) to pay dividends to already very wealthy people (who aren’t even working to earn that money) and making you poorer?

I agree with a lot of what you've said. One thing I've noticed since Covid is a distinct decline in the services that you phone. You are lucky if you get to speak to an actual person nowadays. You just get directed to their website and FAQ (which NEVER has the answer to your question) or their chat service,which is run by robots who never understand what you are asking. A couple of days ago I asked a chatbot on Uber Eats 'How do I change the delivery address on my app?'. It came back 'Sorry,I don't understand the question'. FFS. How much plainer can I make it?! Bring back human beings!

I think things are much worse in the past five years, yes. I loathe that shoplifters have made it that you can’t get out of some supermarkets without a receipt and a turnstile, and there a big signs everywhere about shoplifting. I also loathe that there are barely any staff in supermarkets, it’s all self service. The human elenment to life feels massively compromised. Cyclists now cycle through red lights and on the pavement, being a pedestrian is less e joyanle and safe, an elderly lady killed on a crossing near me, she wasn’t fast enough, a car just mowed her down and didn’t stop. It’s horrible, even the park is full of Entitled groups playing their music loudly so that it’s not a peaceful retreat. Quality of life has plummeted.

I’m not on £100k plus but the cliff edge including no tax free childcare would put me working over that. It’s is very poor policy stopping people working more.

It’s not about being bad with money.

it’s about begrudging paying over 50% of my wages in tax and NI every month.

Why don’t you try handing over 50% of your earnings to the government and see how that makes you feel?

I don’t believe you. You will also have had many many many many many cancelled trains, rude elbowing louts, been unable to find staff to ask questions of, and had to listen to blaring crap music on tinny phone speakers. I travel around Britain all the time for work, and in london à huge amount. It’s taken a nose dive. Fact.

@ByPinkOP having children is your decision
your responsibility

i chose not to have children

No cancelled trains at all. Some delays but none more than 15 minutes.
No elbowing. No louts. No tinny music - I saw posters telling people to use earphones and that's all I saw, never any noise from them.

I imagine if you're the sort of person who calls complete strangers liars you tend to look for the negative side of life.

I do get that as the uk has a productivity problem

And the worst culprit was that shining beacon of integrity and truth, the prime minister. He certainly didn’t care about the greater good. The only thing he cared about was Boris Johnson.

That’s the case across the whole world, with very few exceptions (such as Lisbon and New York, both of which are going through a post-Covid mini golden age, IMO).

Basically, all the shit that people on MN endlessly moan about is absolutely not unique to the UK. Far from it.

yes I dont understand people who supported someone so disqusting

If people don’t have children there will be nobody to pay your state pension in years to come, no nurses or doctors to care for you when you’re old, etc etc. obviously it’s fine to choose not to have children, but everyone depends on the next generation existing, including those who don’t have children, such as yourself.

The wars and covid should have impacted every country in the world equally.

Of course there are indeed negative consequences worldwide, but if you think it's especially bad in the UK then the one thing the UK did to itself that no other country did was indeed Brexit...

So either Brexit is partly to blame, or your post is about the state of the world, not specifically the UK...