Is it too late to turn the uk around?

[Rememberwheneveryoneusedtosaywhatssssup]

Is it too far gone now?

Recognising and acting on this reality does not need to be the same thing as supporting Farage/Lowe etc.

Recognising it includes holding your 'own side' to account and spelling out why they are haemorrhaging support to Farage etc.

The reality is that Farage is able to gain traction because he offers a quick fix solution to a problem that has been ignored by other parties. Until these problems are acknowledged and alternative solutions which are more reputable and understand the problem are offered you have an issue. Denying the existence of these type of problems by fudging data or trying to discredit people talking about a problem they have first hand experience or visibility of, only fuels Farage.

Understanding why Farage is popular is not the same as supporting Farage. It does not legitimise him - he already is legit to others - it merely says yes this is a problem he is capitalising on and misrepresenting for his own gain. What's the alternative understanding of this legitimate problem and how do we address it better.

It looks at problems and rather following Farages narratives it works to create others.

The point is Farage is recognising a priority that is valued by a particular group. We don't get anywhere by ignoring how others have this value for something and working to de-prioritise it in our own minds. We have to understand why that's of value and importance to this group and listen to them.

The best era was late 90s early 2000s when Blair was first in power. I’d happily go back to pre-Brexit days.

Im not particularly affiliated to any party now but I hate that politics has become so polarised. Can’t bear either Reform or Green.

My local High Streets (I live in London so am near a few)) are full of dodgy barbers and vape shops - and these are decent areas with expensive housing. A couple are better than others, but they have gone downhill in the past few years too as ‘nice’ shops close and are replaced by barbers, vapes, charity shops, kebab shops. Just no!!
I’m also Jewish and that’s a whole other level of worry. I don’t want to leave the UK, but the level of antisemitism is horrific.

We have the lowest growth possible. Poland has the highest. Maybe we could learn from Poland, that would help us.

No it’s bullshit. On cancer surgery day in the ward, the only patient sent home after waiting all day was the one that needed an interpreter. Forget GPs, can you imagine going to hospital at 7am for cancer surgery and having to wait until 7pm only to be told no surgery for you because your English is too poor for us to be sure you have really consented? And the staff didn’t lift a finger to get an interpreter so they were struggling to get one by themselves on their phone all day, only to be told hah hah it has to be an official NHS interpreter.

This is one incident I witnessed, as I was accompanying a relative for cancer surgery. By itself it is distressing enough because the staff acted like it was normal, nothing unusual, to send home a cancer patient and cancel their surgery because they didn’t like their English.

I know, AI just puts words together. It all depends on the information you give it.
But, if you have 1000 peer revised publications on the best way to build a particular type of battery, AI can put them together in a brief in seconds. And make sense!
So, if you are an expert in batteries, you must read the 1000 papers yourself. If you are just putting together a few words because you have used said battery, you can use AI and get an expert to just read it.
That is my view.
We should not use it to write an assay, or instructions for something new or that you are learning. But you can use it to shorten the time invested in finding information you need and that is well known to other, in the net. So well published and researched, for example.
It is more in use each day. Really, it translates to supercomputers that can piece together information in a few seconds.
But, if we are going to use it, why not making our own, secured with our own codes, rather than paying someone else, who will hold the codes and updates?

OP, you haven't put much of an opinion or a case forward for why you think things are so bad. Are you sure you're well informed enough to come to such a strong opinion? I think it might be worth you really testing out whether what you think is true. It would be a shame to hold such a negative position based on little deep thinking and reflection.

I think none of this will matter as we are at a great risk of running out of tap water. Since Margaret Thatcher privatised the water industry in 1989, there have been no completed reservoirs built. The UK population has increased approximately by 12.8 million since then.

Indeed, but even more recently than that, in my lifetime we had the miners strikes, 3 day week, IRA bombings, serious concern over nuclear war.

The NHS might be struggling, but go back say to the 1970s, if you were diagnosed with cancer, then your chances were a lot slimmer under the NHS then than the NHS now, and if you had mental health problems they popped you in the local mental hospital for a few weeks (my grandmother had depression in the late 70's, for her trouble got two weeks in the "bin" as it was called and they hooked her up to the mains, in her words, it put her off being depressed)

We have not had pretty much any big infrastructure building in well over thirty years.

The Blair/Brown government tried to get around borrowing by fudging it with PFI. PFI loaded the deck against the country for twentyfive years by providing what we needed at extortionate prices which crippled us for those 25 years. It was talked about at the time but no one wanted to listen. I read some of these proposal documents as part of my job and they were shocking.

We are now starting to come out the back of that and because we didn't invest and spend wisely on these big projects we face an infrastructure crisis over the coming years.

People saying the Blair years were the best fail to understand how they were set up on the back of these appalling decisions. They benefitted in the short term but the lack of accountability back then is now coming back to haunt us. As was predicted.

It all comes down to the Economy, and our ability to create and sustain economic growth, as an Independent nation .. and that, as the past 10 years has shown us, is spectacularly hard.

Poverty sits at the route of lots of Division, Reform focus on the division, not the cause of the division, as they were the one campaigning for Brexit, and making (unfounded) claims as to what life would be like afterwards.

We lost our biggest trading partner overnight, and (as was warned at the time) it will take generations to sort this out.

We also have a predominately right-wing media, who enjoy stoking division, firstly because they want a government that protect the personal wealth of the super-rich, and bad news sells papers. Lies are amplified by uncontrolled Social Media, and peoples unwillingness to spend more than a nano-second researching any issues, means that lies become truths.

Since leaving Europe our economic resilience has dropped. For example, we had Economic Growth in early 2026 (hurray), then it all went to pot in the Middle East (thanks Donald) so we take a hit.

Until the Economy gets under control, and we have sustained growth, that we can use within Education, healthcare etc, we are a bit stuck

We need to get rid of the Triple Lock on Pensions, it’s crippling us, and we have a Demographic that can’t support it.

It’s not hard to put in some RO desalination plants along the shoreline. We don’t need to have reservoirs of fresh water when we are surrounded by ocean.

How many times has Reform been mentioned now when it's a Labour government in power? That's the problem though, instead of looking at the here and now, it's always looking back to the Tories or what would happen under Reform. 3 more years OP to turn the country back round? No chance. More of the same if Burnham wins Makefield.

It’s not going back to where it was, but it can be much better than it is.

Need some radical economic policies that will get growth. We need a government who have a vision and see a big picture and who don’t focus group everything and end up watered down.

Make it easy to hire and fire but make benefits high on a sliding scale based on what you have paid in NI. Control the triple lock, slash out of work benefits for ling term unemployed. Reform planning, review natural england to stop bat tunnels etc.

I agree with your post!! Without water, which every living things needs to survive, we will all die.

James Bond's Quantum of Solace had great foresight!

But fiction is so often built on reality.

Definitely!!! Like George Orwell’s 1984!!

We don’t desperately need more immigrants, that’s nonsense, what we need is a government that manages the economy well, focuses on growth and investment, and create a society where young people are able to settle down and have children. The birth rate is decreasing at a frightening speed, young people are struggling with stagnant wages, unemployment, huge student debt, shortages of affordable rented accommodation and unaffordable house prices. I’m in my early 60’s and my generation and my parents generation had it good. Affordable property, free university education, good pensions, rising house prices, families could manage on a single wage. That’s all gone now. I just heard on the radio that many graduates are still not earning the living wage five years after graduating. I have no idea how we can rebalance all this, but bringing more people here from abroad (unless they are highly skilled and educated) isn’t the answer.

But why do we need to pay for interpreting services? , especially for people who live here. As a previous poster said it’s not usually the case in most European countries. We spend around £75 million a year, that’s a huge amount that could be used elsewhere. If we don’t provide these free services then there is more of an incentive for people who do settle here to learn our language. I can’t imagine living in France if I wasn’t able to speak basic French.

I agree with everything you say, @StarDolphins. I was born in the 70's, child of the 80's and a teen in the 90's. It was a great time to be alive. It makes me sad that my own teen isn't growing up in a world like mine was. I'm approaching 50 now, and though I can pay my bills, I certainly have to be careful with money, whereas I remember my dad (who earned considerably less, even taking into account inflation) being comfortable enough to afford 2 or 3 holidays abroad each year at my age. Life just isn't what I thought it would be. Many of us are living just to work, too exhausted or poor to enjoy what little time we have at home.

Do you feel the same about sign language?

The UK does this but uses very little. It’s incredibly expensive, uses vast amounts of energy and has a huge environmental impact.

Oh I didn't realise deaf people could learn to hear

🙄

No, BSL interpretation is required due to a disability, being deaf isn’t something you can do anything about. Not being able to speak the language of the nation you live in is a choice, not a disability.

It's insane to propose desalination plants when we have and will continue to have (although at different times) an abundance of this free shit called 'rain' due to living in this thing called 'an island'

If we were a continental nation maybe a different approach would be appropriate however since the mechanics of the water cycle and geographical features are not going to change even with climate change, I'm inclined to say reservoirs are difficult to beat as a solution for the UK.

Are you serious. Comparing disability to not taking making the effort to learn the language of the country you choose to move to.

this is why people are turned off by woke. Because wokery leads to ridiculousness like this.