Life is getting tough in the UK

A few of us are from the UK live in the UK.

I saw this video on the challenges of living in the UK now.

It’s been 15 years since I left the UK so I’m not current with how things are. I know things were tough due to energy prices rising.

Does this story match your experience in the UK?

Cutting benefits and heat for old age pensioners whilst they have seemingly endless resources for every Tom, Dick and Hassan that washes upon their shores? Yeah, sounds about right.

He sounds like Nick Griffin. In a recent interview Nick said he had given up. Britain was done for. Too late now so he wasn’t bothering anymore.

I moved to Southampton as a postgraduate researcher having lived further up England. Fantastic weather, hardly needed heating as I was used to living up north.

I would recommend he moves to Bournemouth. Lots of jobs in Banking, credit card processing etc, probably what he does now. He can watch the immigrants coming over in boats and blog about that. Better weather than Southampton, he won’t need the heating at all.

Is that based on your personal experience or just what you’ve read in the papers?

Opinions are like er… nostrils… everyone has a few. Awful, pointless video. Plenty of stats out there… some are good for the UK, some are not. Like everywhere else. Oh, and yeah, Japan… the next Nirvana.

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I know nothing about the UK but I just giggled at the complaint of having to pay for a space to park the car in a city.

For this guy eating out is something aspirational. It can be seen as earnest. At the same time it’s like this message is tailored to people who have the same aspiration. A pattern is emerging here.

Finally, the grift, follow, subscribe and comment. So, just another guy who will make a living out of telling people “follow your heart”, “if you love what you do you won’t work another day in your life”. Now, everything makes sense. Every phrase to make the portrait of his life and dreams is just another piece of the grift.

Next chapters: I did it! You can do it too! Just listen to this, buy that and keep commenting.

I left in 2008 and since then they voted the Tories in for 3 successive terms, with a side helping of Brexit, and now they wonder why the country is forked.

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Standards certainly seem to be declining.

14 years of the Tories strangling the public purse didn’t help.

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Over the last Parliament then the Tories were in power, public spending has risen by 4.5%.

One of the fastest growth rates since WWII.

There is a lot of belief that the UK has never really recovered since the Global financial crisis of 2008.

I could add that Labour were in power then, and for two years afterwards but it would be churlish to blame everything wrong in the UK on the Tories.

You’re not teenagers anymore so perhaps better not to act like them.

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Post-industrial Britain is a tough place I hear from many friends and relations living there.

Energy costs rocketing, salaries not keeping pace with food and all other prices.

The rich are getting richer and the poor poorer. Britain is in decline and has been for the last 100 years, but is still living with expectations of improving standards.

It’s very sad - especially with 2½ million who can, but don’t work.

I left the UK in 1989 and am always shocked at prices when I go there, knowing the level of wages and salaries…

Debt to GDP was ~60% when the last Labour government left. It was at 100% when the Tories left in the summer. Growth and productivity were consistently low compared to the Labour years and NHS waiting lists were significantly higher over most of the Tory years compared to the decade before. A simple and conclusive comparison would be to look at the number of foodbanks springing up over the last 10 years and ask under whose watch that happened.

But still lower than France, Italy, Belgium, Spain, Portugal etc.

Are you blaming the Tories for these countries financial woes too?

This guy is a pessimist and I have no idea if he’s “right” or not.
A bit off topic: he said he was born in Scotland, out of curiosity, is this a Scottish accent? His English is very “clean” and pleasant to hear. (IMHO) I was traumatised by the Cockney accent :joy: and assumed the Scots too must have some incomprehensible local dialects.

Yes.

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The accent around Edinburgh is much softer than, say, around Glasgow.

My mum spent quite a few years of her childhood in Edinburgh and subconsciously slips into the accent whenever talking to another Scot. I’m sure they think she’s taking the Mickey.

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The Labour Health minister has just completed a public consultation to ask people how the NHS could be improved.

Answers included:

  • Putting a Wetherspoon’s Pub in every hospital to improve mental health.
  • Replacing ambulance sirens with healthy eating advice.
  • Have a maximum BMI for nurses as they should lead by example.
  • Incorporate Daleks into the NHS as they have a lot of experience with Doctors

Everyone blames successive governments for a country’s woes but how about people take a bit of responsibility themselves:

The NHS costs the economy 180 billion a year.
Obesity in the UK costs the economy around 80 billion a year.

Labour’s answer is to give people weight loss injections so they can get back to work.
Admirably, but costly compared with people eating less junk.

I know it’s believed to be totally wrong to mention the “fatties” word but it really is the elephant in the room.

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Perhaps importing large numbers of people from developing countries with lower standards of living may subsequently lead to a decline in your own country’s standard of living. Who knows?

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Another fun thing is that the guy calls the 1980s and 1990s the best of times.

It would be great to make a video with his parents answering a simple question: were the 1980s and 1990s the best of times?

I would agree on all those things. I hardly drink at all, but I do notice the price of alcohol in the UK is totally extortionate, yet everyone spends all their money on that if you believe the papers.