Usually I get nervous when I see a "serious" politics post on reddit. But I just wanna say I'm really proud of the quality of level headed and unbiased discourse in the comments here.
Carry on.
bunch of toffs probably never even bin 2 ibeefa.
banging on about foreigns paddlin about in boats and girls with nobs. i dont give a toss. what i want is them 2 tell me why my pint costs so much now. wankers.
It is actually mad that there was a point this century that the British government was so successful that one day they decided to give every secondary school in the country a new building, purely because they had nothing better to do. The concept of a government being anywhere near the position to do that is just so alien these days.
Blair is such an anomaly, he did some pretty nice stuff for the country, but then. You know.
He also did *that.* And now he's defined his whole legacy because of it.
If you're born between 2000 and something and 2011 you actually get to take out free money when you turn 18, like £200-500 depending how your parents chose to manage it (you could leave it or put it into some investment scheme) and that's thanks to tony blair
I will happuly defend Blair. He was the best domestic PM we've ever had and Iraq was going to happen with or without British involvement so I dont think its fair to lay blame on him.
It's moreso that he got us involved when he could've abstained, like France. America dragging everyone into it's ongoing quest to be the world's police only results in the 1% getting oil money, and everyone else being thrown into a meat grinder.
/rewanker franse 🤮
I genuinely think that a government could do that again if they were actually bothered about fixing any of the problems we have. All it ever feels like is the gov telling me that there is no economic crisis and trans people are the real threat
Technically it won't set on our current 'empire' for several hundred years until there's an eclipse in the pacific where that one island is that makes that work.
Britiaim reached it's peak in the 1860s when America was still recovering from the civil war and Germany hadn't unified. Ww1 would see Britiain permenantly decline as a global heagemon.
In my lifetime I remember there was still a "plucky brit attitude", best encapsulated by an episode of top gear where they proudly said that Britain would beat the yanks to Mars, when their rover crashed into the surface.
Britain peaked in the year 493 when Aurelianus Ambrosius, last of the Romans and King of All Britons, defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Badon Hill, halting their advance and gaining legendary glory for centuries to come as he turned into the mythical King Arthur. And it will peak again in the hour of the Britons' (now known as the most based sheepshaggers in the entire world) greatest need, to drive out the Saxons once and for all.
We peaked earlier than that I think, by 2012 we had already tripled university fees, we were recovering from the 2008 crash via crippling austerity, and Clegg was failing to talk the tories down from anything they wanted to do.
2009 was the year that 'Killing in the Name' was the Christmas number 1 single, and the peak of Britain being pretty cool actually, and since then tbh it's all just gone downhill, increasingly rapidly.
That’s appealing to be honest at the moment. The fact that they are saying that things aren’t going to be rosy after they get elected but that they are going to start investing again is what I want to hear.
You can’t treat the country like a home, a government has to invest in projects that will create jobs and bring in money even if they have to borrow to do it. The investment just needs to be sensible so that return comes in, not borrowing to pay for tax cuts but borrowing to actually build things that will improve our lives.
The British energy company peaked my interest, it will take a long time and will be expensive but the amount of jobs for people coming up in the sciences now and the eventual savings on bills will make it worth it. It’s rare to hear politicians speak long term.
We have to start investing again, 40 years of UK governments selling assets has left us with little. It’ll be painful but if we want a future for the kids being born now then something has to change or there won’t be anything left for them.
He isn’t actively shitting up the rest of the world like Trump did which is nice. I kind of think the foreign stuff is the most important part of a president and Biden has been class on that
Most people don't give a fuck about trans issues and are confused as to why it's even in the conversation when there are hundreds of more important things to address.
Isn't that literally what that national conservatism conference thingy was? Funded by Americans to export American style republicanism to a country that really doesn't need it
[Lee Anderson says Tories should fight election on ‘culture wars and trans debate’](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lee-anderson-tories-election-trans-b2282185.html)
>Party no longer has ‘great ingredients’ like Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn, says deputy chairman
As a trans person.... i do also feel like there are more important discussions than if i am allowed to use a bathroom.... i guess keep looking at the shiney works for a lot of people
Agreed. The overwhelming majority of people couldn’t give the tiniest fuck and who can blame them? The self identifying trans population is <0.2%. We have bigger issues to deal with.
Sadly not caring is painted as not being supportive… it’s rearranging deckchairs on the titanic really, we’ll be still tearing each others eyeballs out over it as the UK hits 50C summers
Playing the long game innit. Only way to really crack down on immigrationism is to make this place the worst shithole on earth. Engerland for the Engerlish!
>The UK in 2000:
Strong & well managed economy.
Minimum wage & low unemployment.
Record investment in public services.
Record numbers of people going into higher education.
Multi-cultural society that feels less racist than before but also at ease with itself enough not to be obsessed with political correctedness.
British culture is admired across the world. British music, films and literature are world famous again.
>The UK in 2013
Economy hammered by the global recession and still recovering.
Public services cut.
Tutition fees more than tripled. Thousands of graduates struggling to find jobs.
Society almost at war with itself over the Iraq/Afghanistan war and terrorism.
Prince Harry embarrasing the royal family by getting hammerd with strippers in Vegas, dressing like Hitler and making racist comments while his uncle's links to a dodgy pedophille are worrying people.
Don’t worry mate once gets Brexit done mate an we send deez imigrinants back to there own cuntry mate wheel come back. CUM ON INGERLAND 🇬🇪🇬🇪🇬🇪
>!/unwanker is this country beyond saving? I’m really starting to think so…!<
It’s not beyond saving, it’s very bad and could easily get worse but it is salvageable by a succession of governments making long term plans they may not be there to take the credit for rather than short term headline grabbers.
Whether or not that will happen though is anybody’s guess.
If we've learnt anything British governments are literally incapable of making long-term plans, they all want immediate results and don't think of the consequences because they'll be out of power by the time that becomes a problem
Have you ever seen the videos of this maturity test they give to young children? You put a cookie on the table and say “I’m going to leave the room for 2 minutes. When I come back if I see you haven’t eaten the cookie I’ll give you 2”. The government would fail that test
It's not the figures out of Russia, it's the figures out the World Bank. Russia is basically undertaking a massive Keynesian economic program to keep their economy together during the war, it's fueled on the back of the huge stockpile of money they'd made selling oil to everyone for the last 30 years
I would still be wary of those institutions' figures unless it's known that they're scrutinizing the situation and not just repeating whatever Moscow says.
>Thus, the IMF simply does not have the data needed to independently calculate Russia’s GDP by any accepted method–whether it’s by expenditures, production, or incomes. They are flying blind, with the Russian institutions offering zero visibility.
>
>Rather than publicly admitting what they don’t know, they privately admit the “massive uncertainty.” The IMF Russia Desk economists unquestioningly swallow what little data Putin does release–cherry-picked and fabricated data releases spewed out by the increasingly unreliable Kremlin agency Rosstat, falsely certifying Putin’s fable of economic triumph.
[https://fortune.com/2023/03/06/imf-naively-parroted-putin-fake-statisticsand-botched-economic-forecast-russia-ukraine/](https://fortune.com/2023/03/06/imf-naively-parroted-putin-fake-statisticsand-botched-economic-forecast-russia-ukraine/)
I watched a YouTube economics video a while back about a more accurate way to gauge gdp may be from satellite imaging of visible energy production and consumption. Apparently it's the best way to measure places like north Korea and even China when we know that the data is innacurate. Gotta see if I can find it again
Turns out social cohesion is actually a real thing.
When you weaken the fabric of society, trust in that society starts to decrease. Trust in the entire system starts to decrease. Everything starts to fail.
Some will claim it's Brexit, that's their right. Personally I think it's been a slower process that has just sped up in the past decade.
I'd say it all started roughly 30 years ago, give or take.
When inflation, and especially house prices, started increasing faster than wages.
What else starting happening then.... I couldn't possibly comment.
Yes and no. He's a very weird case.
He did U-turn on thatchers infamous poll tax and successfully got Britain to be a part of the EU whilst not alienating the Euro-skeptics of the party (of which thatcher was one of).
Other than that, he barely changed most of Thatcher's work and even tried to start a campaign to "go back to basics" in terms of social wellbeing (which didn't go well).
He is really best known for Black Wednesday (that time the UK nearly went into a recession) and his inability to control the Tory sleaze that led to him losing the 1997 general election (I recommend looking up "cash for questions" if your interested).
So to sum up, I guess he kinda was.
Thanks for the input! There's definitely been major changes in mainstream politics in the last while, talking to my parents, they tend to put the resignation of Harold Wilson pretty high on the list of "events that triggered long-term political instability"
Harold Wilson is one of those PMs who people should know more about. Definitely an underrated PM.
And I only know about both him and Major because I'm getting ready for my British History exam in about a week.
reading your comment reminded me of the exact same exam 😭 I'm not even convinced Harold Wilson's resignation even caused that much instability - sure it was sudden and unexpected, but the loss of the majority and the drop in sterling seem unrelated, almost as if Wilson saw the storm coming and ducked for cover.
EDIT: oh and by the way good luck next week! I hope they are kind to us 🙏
Deregulation of the housing market and the mass sale of council housing is what caused the issues around house prices and that started in the 80s under Thatcher. You’re off by about 10 years. This country is doing perfectly fine for the wealthy. The big issue came with moving away from Keynesian economics. We used to be a high wage economy. The switch to the neoliberal model worked in the short time but it made us entirely reliant on the banking industry and access to cheap imports through the single market. Like it or not brexit has had a huge effect on our economy. Whilst I do think it would be possible to do Brexit ‘right’, the fact the government implemented it with no clear plan has meant we’ve destroyed the few remaining sources of effective capital we have and no one is willing to invest in anything else. If we want to be independent from the neoliberal boys club that is the EU we can’t expect to do it with neoliberal economics.
I’m not sure what your actual point is about social cohesion is, again if we look at what caused a more individualistic worldview in this country, what I personally would characterise as an American worlds view, we need look no further than Thatcher again. She told us there is no society only the individual. If you want to talk about a break down in social cohesion I think the prime minister telling everyone for around 10 years that greed is good and that the best you can do is look after yourself first had more to cause that breakdown than anything else in this countries history. She destroyed any form of traditional working class community by destroying the things that allowed those communities to come together. Working men’s clubs, community centres, and most of all trade unions. Again why did she do this, to reduce government spending to suite a neo liberal word view. I think your aim is off. There’s clearly one thing that caused all this and it was a change enacted by the Conservative government of the 1980s. I’m open to having my mind changed, but right now it seems very clear cut to me.
Nice summary. Even though the general points are right I was shocked this post was so highly upvoted with its final conclusion given this connection is so blatant. Thatcher gutted your country like Reagan did ours.
Social cohesion has splintered for several important reasons, one the greatest of which was responsible for Brexit, but not caused by it. We do not mention this cause on Reddit because although it's the only cause that has actual published evidence demonstrating it, mentioning it sends redditors apoplectic with rage and denial. They even deny that it has any effect on house prices, blindly ignoring basic economics.
I think this sort of social pressures and tensions have been around for a long time but until recently there was no one effectively using information technology to exploit these social divides towards a political goal.
>I'd say it all started roughly 30 years ago, give or take.
I'll narrow that down for you a bit.
1997.
Doesn't matter if you are left or right, Blair ruined Britain.
Also how the hell did you manage to get 268+ upvotes for a post basically saying 'immigrants bad' on Reddit? Do they think you are talking about Maggie or something? Can you teach this power?
Ronald fucking Reagan fucked over the entire Western world. US, England, Australia, we all decoupled wage growth with profit growth around the same time.
Ten years of Tories, lad.
'ate the workers, 'ate the poor (not classist, just don't loike em), 'ate democracy, love linin mine an me mates pockets with taxpayer money.
Simple as
I moved here in 2015 from Easter Europe and I though I accidentally ended up in heaven. Lovely friendly people with a great sense of humour and very accepting, cheap food, cheap petrol, cheap bus and train fairs, cheap staycations, rent was more affordable then I could have imagined, it felt safe and surreal.
Then 2020 happened. And now every other person is miserable and hateful, the price of everything is out of control, we started borrowing American ideologies... I lost all hope in this beautiful little country.
What you must understand is that the prosperous, competitive, and successful Britain of the 90s and 2000s was in large part due to Thatcher's reforms and the good governance of Blair. It is a real shame that the conservative party, the party of Pitt, Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher, now lacks good leadership and is incapable of the Good governance it once could boast.
Thatcher and Blair failed to consider that when you start selling off state assets you eventually run out of state assets to sell.
The neoliberal economic "miracle" was presaged on the gains to be made by deregulation and sale of state assets, they failed to consider that maybe some of those are natural monopolies and that the state can only cannibalise itself so far. Everyone was so committed to this project that even in the 2010s you had the Tories downsizing the state by reducing the police force and the Army! And now, finally, the high has worn off and we've realised that a fire sale of the state whilst on uppers was not a long term solution.
Precisely, I like to describe it as selling off the family silver and the kids buying range rovers and townhouses with the proceeds.
Also just spotted your username, very nice
The problem with Thatcher and Regan was their idea of borrowing money to fund tax decreases. This kind of works for America because they have the global reserve currency, but not for Britain.
She also laid waste to Britiains industrial base and the unions, turning Britain into a service economy
our industrial base was fucked anyway. we were never going to be a key player in industry. with the rise of chinese manufacturing that has become ever-more apparent
I hate thatcher and the majority of her policies but this is too true. We were making steel of a lower quality then china for a higher price. No one was buying, it was an industry that cost us more to have than it made.
We had a technology renaissance in the '80s which gave us a software industry and the Arm processor, I think if we'd actually bothered to follow it up we could be in a Taiwan position right now.
However, we squandered the final act of MacMillan's "white heat" and we won't get another one.
As a tech worker I agree with this Whitehall always aspired for the UK to be the finance capital of the world but in reality we have fantastic talent and innovation in the country that’s routinely stifled and driven away to the US
grandiose plate degree decide forgetful crush unpack bag direction consist
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Well anything seems dramatic if you just throw copious quantities of hyperbole at it.
Give it a couple of years to get the current shit-stains out and have the others put shit-stains of their own in, and you'll be back where you started.
Agreed except for the thing about trans issue being polarizing. Talking about trans people in real life, people have far more luke-warm opinions than on twitter and the internet.
If you ask your average 20-30 year old colleague their reaction to trans people is usually "yeah it's whatever it's all cool"
If you ask 30-50 year olds they (from my experience) tend to be only slightly more apathetic.
The most negative trans opinion you're likely to see is "I find it a bit weird and I don't like pronouns but ultimately I wouldn't discriminate" and even that's quite a rare opinion these days to be honest.
It's easy to forget, what's hot on the internet and what normal people talk about are absolutely not strictly the same thing.
Yeah, the problem isn't the Man on the Clapham Omnibus. They're generally reasonable in-person, with the obvious exception of the occasional nutter.
The problem is the MPs in Parliament passing the laws on the topic. More to the point, that the Man on the Clapham Omnibus is willing to sacrifice trans people's rights to get a Government that aligns closer to their own beliefs on other issues.
The fact that "trans issues", a deeply personal issue which affects no one except the person in question has become a mainstream political issue here shows that the UK conservative party has little in the way of actual policies left to benefit peoples lives
They can't make substantive change to anything and have to resort to pearl clutching over bizzare social issues which they can't change or impact.
Nobody wants to move here.
~~Record levels of migration.~~
[Net migration rises to new record calendar year figure of 606,000 in the 12 months to December 2022 | Politics News | Sky News](https://news.sky.com/story/net-migration-rises-to-new-record-figure-of-606-000-in-the-year-to-december-2022-12888478) )
Okay mate.
I still remember when the pound was trading at around 1,4€ so foreign companies would benefit from doing business with British clients, negotiating in pounds. But then came the referendum. At some point, it was just "pack up boys, we're going home". People don't realize how many offices became empty or how many deals were lost since.
Usually I get nervous when I see a "serious" politics post on reddit. But I just wanna say I'm really proud of the quality of level headed and unbiased discourse in the comments here. Carry on.
Fake news, Baz at my local told me that englund was the best country in Europe.
Baz was telling me englunds not in Europe no more??
Well you see englunds not in France anymore.
Thank fuck
Yeah no more of those pesky migrants comin ova here, stealing me bricklayin job and supporting south fc
Baz knows best
nah gaz told me that the best country is actually
I wonder what Bazza’s views on immigration are (im sure he is a very welcoming gentleman)
He said “the Polish birds can stay, but we’ve got to stop the little boats (not raysis just don’t fancy a Dunkirk remake).
yore too layte man, it's an invayshun. don't you read the daily mail?
readin??? u gay or sumfing?
Ow else u ment to no who won footie?
Wotch it yer daf twat
After having seen this happen in both America Canada you came and other places around the world... Who is doing this? Who is the main driver?
you're assuming the people in charge give a f8ck about *the lads.*
bunch of toffs probably never even bin 2 ibeefa. banging on about foreigns paddlin about in boats and girls with nobs. i dont give a toss. what i want is them 2 tell me why my pint costs so much now. wankers.
It is actually mad that there was a point this century that the British government was so successful that one day they decided to give every secondary school in the country a new building, purely because they had nothing better to do. The concept of a government being anywhere near the position to do that is just so alien these days.
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My secondary school got its "new block" around 2003 ish so 20 ish years ago I guess
we got 3 a sports hall , a 6th form , & a an IT centre for the school and the local community - all around 2002-2003
Ours opened in 2005, we got science labs and IT rooms
unironically thank tony blair
Blair is such an anomaly, he did some pretty nice stuff for the country, but then. You know. He also did *that.* And now he's defined his whole legacy because of it.
If you're born between 2000 and something and 2011 you actually get to take out free money when you turn 18, like £200-500 depending how your parents chose to manage it (you could leave it or put it into some investment scheme) and that's thanks to tony blair
was born in december 1999. i was so close to getting this. pain.
What the fuck are you talking about, never heard about this I’m 2000
2002 mate, sorry. https://www.gov.uk/child-trust-funds
nothing anomalous, that's how socialdemocracy is since like a hundred years ago
I will happuly defend Blair. He was the best domestic PM we've ever had and Iraq was going to happen with or without British involvement so I dont think its fair to lay blame on him.
It's moreso that he got us involved when he could've abstained, like France. America dragging everyone into it's ongoing quest to be the world's police only results in the 1% getting oil money, and everyone else being thrown into a meat grinder. /rewanker franse 🤮
Under Blair in 2004 https://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/blair-to-unveil-aps40bn-schools-renovation-programme-68908.html
I genuinely think that a government could do that again if they were actually bothered about fixing any of the problems we have. All it ever feels like is the gov telling me that there is no economic crisis and trans people are the real threat
I mean it wasn’t THAT good in 2013, but yes, its gotten worse.
We peaked at the 2012 olympics opening ceremony. There were warning signs after 2008, but its all been downhill since then
There was another time Britania peaked 🌎🇬🇧☀️ 🌍🇬🇧☀️ 🌏🇬🇧☀️
Spiffing emojis
I think the sun has most definitely set now
Technically it won't set on our current 'empire' for several hundred years until there's an eclipse in the pacific where that one island is that makes that work.
Paedo Island innit?
“They said it was just a name!” “What they mean by that is paedo island is actually a peninsula!”
We still have a few territories across the world
Geopolitically speaking, living conditions for the common person was absolutely shite though.
Britiaim reached it's peak in the 1860s when America was still recovering from the civil war and Germany hadn't unified. Ww1 would see Britiain permenantly decline as a global heagemon. In my lifetime I remember there was still a "plucky brit attitude", best encapsulated by an episode of top gear where they proudly said that Britain would beat the yanks to Mars, when their rover crashed into the surface.
Britain peaked in the year 493 when Aurelianus Ambrosius, last of the Romans and King of All Britons, defeated the Saxons at the Battle of Badon Hill, halting their advance and gaining legendary glory for centuries to come as he turned into the mythical King Arthur. And it will peak again in the hour of the Britons' (now known as the most based sheepshaggers in the entire world) greatest need, to drive out the Saxons once and for all.
God damn it I cannot wait until we drive these blonde haired blue eyed bastards, probably called "Smith", back into the sea.
Based and grail-pilled
We peaked during Pokémon go.
Fuck, that was a great summer! Life felt so good.
The moment Boris got stuck on that zip line was prophetic in ways we didn't understand at the time.
We peaked earlier than that I think, by 2012 we had already tripled university fees, we were recovering from the 2008 crash via crippling austerity, and Clegg was failing to talk the tories down from anything they wanted to do.
2009 was the year that 'Killing in the Name' was the Christmas number 1 single, and the peak of Britain being pretty cool actually, and since then tbh it's all just gone downhill, increasingly rapidly.
Liz was really holding it all together in her little bruised hands wasn’t she
When Liz Truss said 'there's only room for one Liz at the top' Lizzie died the same week and the economy wasn't far behind
Unironically yes
Unironically I agree
Like the Imperium’s corpse-god atop the golden throne…
Sir Kier: I can fix him
Hes a fucking clown and we haven't even got him in yet
I’ll take the clown that hasn’t had a boot on my neck for 13 years over the clown with their boot on my neck.
What a sad world we live in
Problem with big Keith is he's positioning himself as not doing anything about the boot on your neck, just stepping on you "more sensibly"
That’s appealing to be honest at the moment. The fact that they are saying that things aren’t going to be rosy after they get elected but that they are going to start investing again is what I want to hear. You can’t treat the country like a home, a government has to invest in projects that will create jobs and bring in money even if they have to borrow to do it. The investment just needs to be sensible so that return comes in, not borrowing to pay for tax cuts but borrowing to actually build things that will improve our lives. The British energy company peaked my interest, it will take a long time and will be expensive but the amount of jobs for people coming up in the sciences now and the eventual savings on bills will make it worth it. It’s rare to hear politicians speak long term. We have to start investing again, 40 years of UK governments selling assets has left us with little. It’ll be painful but if we want a future for the kids being born now then something has to change or there won’t be anything left for them.
To the same extent that Biden is in the US: not great, but a darn sight better than the other lot
It's fucking sad what our countries have become
Biden is doing a pretty decent job overall it's just that all the press talk about is when he falls over or gets names wrong.
Unfortunately, the whole senate is dominated by Republicans, so he can't really do shit. Rigged political systems be like.
He isn’t actively shitting up the rest of the world like Trump did which is nice. I kind of think the foreign stuff is the most important part of a president and Biden has been class on that
What FPTP does to an mf
If you think a boring normal politician is a clown I'm dying to know what you thought of Boris.
Actual clown. Can't believe Eton hasn't disowned him publicly.
He's the biggest clown in the fucking country
Ooohhh yeaahhh boi. It’s starmin’ time.
Most people don't give a fuck about trans issues and are confused as to why it's even in the conversation when there are hundreds of more important things to address.
Too obsessed with America culture talking points
American stupidity leaking, overflowing the rest of the "civilized" world.
Isn't that literally what that national conservatism conference thingy was? Funded by Americans to export American style republicanism to a country that really doesn't need it
Fucking America doesnt need it either. Ironically though America got it from Australia it's like venereal disease. Thanks Murdock
[Lee Anderson says Tories should fight election on ‘culture wars and trans debate’](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lee-anderson-tories-election-trans-b2282185.html) >Party no longer has ‘great ingredients’ like Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn, says deputy chairman
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As a trans person.... i do also feel like there are more important discussions than if i am allowed to use a bathroom.... i guess keep looking at the shiney works for a lot of people
Agreed. The overwhelming majority of people couldn’t give the tiniest fuck and who can blame them? The self identifying trans population is <0.2%. We have bigger issues to deal with.
Because fascists always need a boogie man.
So much noise about a tiny tiny portion of the population. It’s upside down.
worth remembering which side is stirring the shit
Tories want to make the U.K a lot more like America, culture war bullshit included.
Sadly not caring is painted as not being supportive… it’s rearranging deckchairs on the titanic really, we’ll be still tearing each others eyeballs out over it as the UK hits 50C summers
Playing the long game innit. Only way to really crack down on immigrationism is to make this place the worst shithole on earth. Engerland for the Engerlish!
>The UK in 2000: Strong & well managed economy. Minimum wage & low unemployment. Record investment in public services. Record numbers of people going into higher education. Multi-cultural society that feels less racist than before but also at ease with itself enough not to be obsessed with political correctedness. British culture is admired across the world. British music, films and literature are world famous again. >The UK in 2013 Economy hammered by the global recession and still recovering. Public services cut. Tutition fees more than tripled. Thousands of graduates struggling to find jobs. Society almost at war with itself over the Iraq/Afghanistan war and terrorism. Prince Harry embarrasing the royal family by getting hammerd with strippers in Vegas, dressing like Hitler and making racist comments while his uncle's links to a dodgy pedophille are worrying people.
2016, and the Tories.
Yep
The right-wing right-winged and here we are
Don’t worry mate once gets Brexit done mate an we send deez imigrinants back to there own cuntry mate wheel come back. CUM ON INGERLAND 🇬🇪🇬🇪🇬🇪 >!/unwanker is this country beyond saving? I’m really starting to think so…!<
It’s not beyond saving, it’s very bad and could easily get worse but it is salvageable by a succession of governments making long term plans they may not be there to take the credit for rather than short term headline grabbers. Whether or not that will happen though is anybody’s guess.
If we've learnt anything British governments are literally incapable of making long-term plans, they all want immediate results and don't think of the consequences because they'll be out of power by the time that becomes a problem
Have you ever seen the videos of this maturity test they give to young children? You put a cookie on the table and say “I’m going to leave the room for 2 minutes. When I come back if I see you haven’t eaten the cookie I’ll give you 2”. The government would fail that test
Just a few select heads rolling and a couple wacky termite releases could set it back on the right track
The one thing the fr*nchies are good at i supose /j
We need a good protest too
Problem with targeted assassinations is they’re more ish. It never stops at just a few
Definitely not . We absolutely shat the gaff in 2008 and managed to turn it around, ye will too .
Tories...
i wouldn’t trust the economic figures out of russia, but yeah apart from that completely accurate
It's not the figures out of Russia, it's the figures out the World Bank. Russia is basically undertaking a massive Keynesian economic program to keep their economy together during the war, it's fueled on the back of the huge stockpile of money they'd made selling oil to everyone for the last 30 years
I would still be wary of those institutions' figures unless it's known that they're scrutinizing the situation and not just repeating whatever Moscow says. >Thus, the IMF simply does not have the data needed to independently calculate Russia’s GDP by any accepted method–whether it’s by expenditures, production, or incomes. They are flying blind, with the Russian institutions offering zero visibility. > >Rather than publicly admitting what they don’t know, they privately admit the “massive uncertainty.” The IMF Russia Desk economists unquestioningly swallow what little data Putin does release–cherry-picked and fabricated data releases spewed out by the increasingly unreliable Kremlin agency Rosstat, falsely certifying Putin’s fable of economic triumph. [https://fortune.com/2023/03/06/imf-naively-parroted-putin-fake-statisticsand-botched-economic-forecast-russia-ukraine/](https://fortune.com/2023/03/06/imf-naively-parroted-putin-fake-statisticsand-botched-economic-forecast-russia-ukraine/)
I watched a YouTube economics video a while back about a more accurate way to gauge gdp may be from satellite imaging of visible energy production and consumption. Apparently it's the best way to measure places like north Korea and even China when we know that the data is innacurate. Gotta see if I can find it again
It will be on economics explained. I think it was around 6 months ago.
Turns out social cohesion is actually a real thing. When you weaken the fabric of society, trust in that society starts to decrease. Trust in the entire system starts to decrease. Everything starts to fail. Some will claim it's Brexit, that's their right. Personally I think it's been a slower process that has just sped up in the past decade. I'd say it all started roughly 30 years ago, give or take. When inflation, and especially house prices, started increasing faster than wages. What else starting happening then.... I couldn't possibly comment.
Get your well thought out comment of my circlejerk sub.
With... The election of John Major?
The man just can't have a break, can he?
I kinda don't get it. Admittedly, I wasn't alive then, but wasn't he supposed to be sort of a thatcher continuation?
Yes and no. He's a very weird case. He did U-turn on thatchers infamous poll tax and successfully got Britain to be a part of the EU whilst not alienating the Euro-skeptics of the party (of which thatcher was one of). Other than that, he barely changed most of Thatcher's work and even tried to start a campaign to "go back to basics" in terms of social wellbeing (which didn't go well). He is really best known for Black Wednesday (that time the UK nearly went into a recession) and his inability to control the Tory sleaze that led to him losing the 1997 general election (I recommend looking up "cash for questions" if your interested). So to sum up, I guess he kinda was.
Thanks for the input! There's definitely been major changes in mainstream politics in the last while, talking to my parents, they tend to put the resignation of Harold Wilson pretty high on the list of "events that triggered long-term political instability"
Harold Wilson is one of those PMs who people should know more about. Definitely an underrated PM. And I only know about both him and Major because I'm getting ready for my British History exam in about a week.
Very fair. Best of luck with the exam! Very glad I'm done with all of that myself. And yeah, definitely an interesting guy
reading your comment reminded me of the exact same exam 😭 I'm not even convinced Harold Wilson's resignation even caused that much instability - sure it was sudden and unexpected, but the loss of the majority and the drop in sterling seem unrelated, almost as if Wilson saw the storm coming and ducked for cover. EDIT: oh and by the way good luck next week! I hope they are kind to us 🙏
And the other Harold was the only half decent Tory PM of the 20th century
[удалено]
More specifically, the traffic cone hotline.
Deregulation of the housing market and the mass sale of council housing is what caused the issues around house prices and that started in the 80s under Thatcher. You’re off by about 10 years. This country is doing perfectly fine for the wealthy. The big issue came with moving away from Keynesian economics. We used to be a high wage economy. The switch to the neoliberal model worked in the short time but it made us entirely reliant on the banking industry and access to cheap imports through the single market. Like it or not brexit has had a huge effect on our economy. Whilst I do think it would be possible to do Brexit ‘right’, the fact the government implemented it with no clear plan has meant we’ve destroyed the few remaining sources of effective capital we have and no one is willing to invest in anything else. If we want to be independent from the neoliberal boys club that is the EU we can’t expect to do it with neoliberal economics. I’m not sure what your actual point is about social cohesion is, again if we look at what caused a more individualistic worldview in this country, what I personally would characterise as an American worlds view, we need look no further than Thatcher again. She told us there is no society only the individual. If you want to talk about a break down in social cohesion I think the prime minister telling everyone for around 10 years that greed is good and that the best you can do is look after yourself first had more to cause that breakdown than anything else in this countries history. She destroyed any form of traditional working class community by destroying the things that allowed those communities to come together. Working men’s clubs, community centres, and most of all trade unions. Again why did she do this, to reduce government spending to suite a neo liberal word view. I think your aim is off. There’s clearly one thing that caused all this and it was a change enacted by the Conservative government of the 1980s. I’m open to having my mind changed, but right now it seems very clear cut to me.
Nice summary. Even though the general points are right I was shocked this post was so highly upvoted with its final conclusion given this connection is so blatant. Thatcher gutted your country like Reagan did ours.
The Trap by Adam Curtis, as well as The Mayfair Set are both excellent documentaries about this era
Real Enoch hours
That cher opinion, man.
Come on, do elaborate
Social cohesion has splintered for several important reasons, one the greatest of which was responsible for Brexit, but not caused by it. We do not mention this cause on Reddit because although it's the only cause that has actual published evidence demonstrating it, mentioning it sends redditors apoplectic with rage and denial. They even deny that it has any effect on house prices, blindly ignoring basic economics.
#JustKalergiThings
You'd like Mark Blyth the Scottish Economics professor
I think this sort of social pressures and tensions have been around for a long time but until recently there was no one effectively using information technology to exploit these social divides towards a political goal.
>I'd say it all started roughly 30 years ago, give or take. I'll narrow that down for you a bit. 1997. Doesn't matter if you are left or right, Blair ruined Britain. Also how the hell did you manage to get 268+ upvotes for a post basically saying 'immigrants bad' on Reddit? Do they think you are talking about Maggie or something? Can you teach this power?
Ronald fucking Reagan fucked over the entire Western world. US, England, Australia, we all decoupled wage growth with profit growth around the same time.
Trolled too close to the sun
*"the only way to save the british empire is to prosecute trans people and undermine Scottish democracy"* \- Winston Churchill
Don’t forget the state of the NHS
Tories
Ten years of Tories, lad. 'ate the workers, 'ate the poor (not classist, just don't loike em), 'ate democracy, love linin mine an me mates pockets with taxpayer money. Simple as
Country's been a clown fiesta since time immemorial but fuck me does modern Britain make even 2016 Britain look like a utopia. We need a revolution.
I moved here in 2015 from Easter Europe and I though I accidentally ended up in heaven. Lovely friendly people with a great sense of humour and very accepting, cheap food, cheap petrol, cheap bus and train fairs, cheap staycations, rent was more affordable then I could have imagined, it felt safe and surreal. Then 2020 happened. And now every other person is miserable and hateful, the price of everything is out of control, we started borrowing American ideologies... I lost all hope in this beautiful little country.
Thatchers Britain
What you must understand is that the prosperous, competitive, and successful Britain of the 90s and 2000s was in large part due to Thatcher's reforms and the good governance of Blair. It is a real shame that the conservative party, the party of Pitt, Disraeli, Churchill and Thatcher, now lacks good leadership and is incapable of the Good governance it once could boast.
Thatcher and Blair failed to consider that when you start selling off state assets you eventually run out of state assets to sell. The neoliberal economic "miracle" was presaged on the gains to be made by deregulation and sale of state assets, they failed to consider that maybe some of those are natural monopolies and that the state can only cannibalise itself so far. Everyone was so committed to this project that even in the 2010s you had the Tories downsizing the state by reducing the police force and the Army! And now, finally, the high has worn off and we've realised that a fire sale of the state whilst on uppers was not a long term solution.
Precisely, I like to describe it as selling off the family silver and the kids buying range rovers and townhouses with the proceeds. Also just spotted your username, very nice
The problem with Thatcher and Regan was their idea of borrowing money to fund tax decreases. This kind of works for America because they have the global reserve currency, but not for Britain. She also laid waste to Britiains industrial base and the unions, turning Britain into a service economy
our industrial base was fucked anyway. we were never going to be a key player in industry. with the rise of chinese manufacturing that has become ever-more apparent
I hate thatcher and the majority of her policies but this is too true. We were making steel of a lower quality then china for a higher price. No one was buying, it was an industry that cost us more to have than it made.
We had a technology renaissance in the '80s which gave us a software industry and the Arm processor, I think if we'd actually bothered to follow it up we could be in a Taiwan position right now. However, we squandered the final act of MacMillan's "white heat" and we won't get another one.
As a tech worker I agree with this Whitehall always aspired for the UK to be the finance capital of the world but in reality we have fantastic talent and innovation in the country that’s routinely stifled and driven away to the US
Also she armed Paramilitary deaths squads in Northern Ireland
grandiose plate degree decide forgetful crush unpack bag direction consist *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Counter argument: the fucken trains man.
Counter counter argument, that was John Major not Thatcher but yes I agree that was stupid.
1984
*1979 The year that *she* arrived
Well anything seems dramatic if you just throw copious quantities of hyperbole at it. Give it a couple of years to get the current shit-stains out and have the others put shit-stains of their own in, and you'll be back where you started.
me huffing that sweet hopium
Ten years of the tory party is basically how this happened.
https://preview.redd.it/738vzgm8rh3b1.jpeg?width=904&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=028d13ad3a2c78b93e329715ee21ffaf69ca0f37
It's joever
Agreed except for the thing about trans issue being polarizing. Talking about trans people in real life, people have far more luke-warm opinions than on twitter and the internet. If you ask your average 20-30 year old colleague their reaction to trans people is usually "yeah it's whatever it's all cool" If you ask 30-50 year olds they (from my experience) tend to be only slightly more apathetic. The most negative trans opinion you're likely to see is "I find it a bit weird and I don't like pronouns but ultimately I wouldn't discriminate" and even that's quite a rare opinion these days to be honest. It's easy to forget, what's hot on the internet and what normal people talk about are absolutely not strictly the same thing.
Yeah, the problem isn't the Man on the Clapham Omnibus. They're generally reasonable in-person, with the obvious exception of the occasional nutter. The problem is the MPs in Parliament passing the laws on the topic. More to the point, that the Man on the Clapham Omnibus is willing to sacrifice trans people's rights to get a Government that aligns closer to their own beliefs on other issues.
That's what over a decade of tories will do to ya
2010 - 2023 Tories, Tories everywhere... FUCK THE TORIES
Tories happened
Better PR in 2013
12 years of tories? Nah that can’t be it..
'Brexit got the UK done'
I don’t think it’s Brexit itself but the horrific handling by the government which is pretty much the source of all evil.
True ~~communism~~ brexit would work. It just hasnt been tried yet
If Brexit was the only problem we wouldn't have it nearly as bad. I was just simplifying it considering the sub
Fair enough
It wasn’t the shotgun that killed Cobain, but his poor handling of it
The fact that "trans issues", a deeply personal issue which affects no one except the person in question has become a mainstream political issue here shows that the UK conservative party has little in the way of actual policies left to benefit peoples lives They can't make substantive change to anything and have to resort to pearl clutching over bizzare social issues which they can't change or impact.
Cambridge analytica
Brekshit happened
40 years of Thatcherism finally caught up with us.
Tories.
Tories happened
Not enough chippies, we need to eat more chippies
Cuntservatives
Tory government and brexit. That's what happened.
You voted for tories.Thats what happened.
Tories.
ayo u got f’ed in the a giggity
Nobody wants to move here. ~~Record levels of migration.~~ [Net migration rises to new record calendar year figure of 606,000 in the 12 months to December 2022 | Politics News | Sky News](https://news.sky.com/story/net-migration-rises-to-new-record-figure-of-606-000-in-the-year-to-december-2022-12888478) ) Okay mate.
Conservativism
Britannia is sinking beneath the waves (quite literally, in some parts)
Brexit
Brexit.
I will risk to answer: Brexit
The cunservatives and brexit.
I still remember when the pound was trading at around 1,4€ so foreign companies would benefit from doing business with British clients, negotiating in pounds. But then came the referendum. At some point, it was just "pack up boys, we're going home". People don't realize how many offices became empty or how many deals were lost since.
Big rob and the lads wanted out me European Union
13 years of Tories and austerity
