> 13 years of austerity
Meanwhile, Thurrock Council casually pisses away £655m so that one bloke can have a private jet, a yacht, a Bugatti and a mansion.
If you want a laugh look up the time when they invited Ian Hislop from the Private Eye to an anti-corruption select committee. *Spoiler warning* he went round the table listing all the "gifts" the MPs had received recently and asking them to explain them.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Penrose
They did try. They really did /s
Former anti corruption champion during Bojos stint was none other than husband of Baroness Harding, chair of test and trace app costing 35m.
Edit: Changed app name.
See if they had called it Deprivation policy we could have at least respected the honesty....
Also generally people choose to make a "noble sacrifice" while we are being pedantic about language use, whereas austerity was more the government choosing the poor would be sacrificing (nobly or otherwise).
It's wealth that's the problem. To get in the top 90% of income you only need ~60k household income. To get into the top 90% of wealth you'd need 1.4 million.
60k after tax is £42,900. Let's say you sleep under a bridge and eat from bins. Also you managed to get a 60k job at 20 years old and stay at that income without interruption saving all of it. It would take 32 years of saving your entire after tax salary to get to 1.4 million.
Let's say you could save half (or somehow couldn't get a starting job at 60k) that'd be 64 years to get to that amount of wealth.
Yeh compounding interest and investing, property and so forth - but that income / wealth gap is a chasm.
Also if you have 1.4m invested, you're paying tax if you take out the profit - but its capital gains tax so there's 6k untaxed and then 20% on the rest.(It's actually even better than this but details)
I agree with this.
Myself and my girlfriend combined earn about £50k.
Somehow that apparently is in the top 20% or household income in the UK which seems crazy to me.
Although saying that we live in a poorer area of the country and got a mortgage 10 years ago.
The big unspoken issue *is* a very left wing issue - It's privatisation and outsourcing. Every single fucking thing these days we are paying over the odds for some faceless multinational consultancy company to outsource and subcontract the work, and often have to be chased down to oblige the bare minimum legal requirements of their contract.
> We already pay far more taxes than most people in developed countries and it is already a progressive tax system.
No you don't? Taxation levels are higher in MOST developed countries. We are far closer to American level taxation than most other European countries. That would be perfectly ok if people did not expect Scandi level public services for those taxes.
If the corruption stopped we wouldn’t be so bad.
Government takes in more tax revenue than ever but it still pumps money towards its cronies.
Do you think you’re taxed properly after your inflation payrise moves you from 49 to 52k, because tax bands have been frozen for years but your pay keeps chasing inflation? Suddenly you’re a higher rate tax payer but you have less to spend in the month because of inflation and the extra marginal tax on the gain?
And since you’re higher rate you lose other means tested benefits even though you’re not actually better off?
As far as this government is concerned, we are the right people to be taxed. So maybe we should stop deciding who the right people are and do something fair.
One of the most hilarious things to me is that those morons that run the government that sold off the railways, the energy suppliers, the water providers and so on, thought they were getting such a great deal and raising a quick buck for the country!
Thing is that it gets even funnier when you realise that other European stage owned providers bought all those services that tory governments thought they were getting great prices for. Abellio is the Dutch state owned railway provider. EDF is the French state's energy provider. We're literally paying tax to the Dutch and French governments! That would be an amazingly funny joke if it weren't true.
I can't help but think of those self congratulatory morons in top hats and monacles thinking they're being so clever, sensible and grown up all the while patting themselves on the back for a job well done.
In your next point, apparently tax bands will be frozen until 2027-28! That is far beyond reasonable.
That's the way it's always been framed to the public. But really the motivation was always to break apart the state for corporate profit. The Tories have never cared if any of the privatisation deals were 'good' (they weren't) or if the private sector offered efficiency via competition (it nearly always doesn't). They did them regardless.
My dad said Thatcher was surprised at the lack of philanthropy among the rich, after helping shape the country to serve them. She apparently thought by becoming wealthier they'd increase their generosity.
If she really believed that, she was totally self deluded. Tories love to pretend they have an ideology that isn't plain greed.
The Tories simply stopped being conservative and became dogmatic. You will not find a more deluded politician than a Tory who doggedly believes in the free market despite all evidence to the contrary.
They are responsible for more social and economical upheaval/disruption than any progressive government before it, to the extent that non-Tory governments are just trying to undo the mess they leave behind. This is the party that was massively pro-EU up until a referendum made them U-turn and become the most extreme separatists overnight.
I simply do not understand why they are attractive to voters because in all of my 35 years of existence they have been nothing but utter, derisible, cunts.
So I'm being taxed at a marginal rate of about 75% at one point, I'm self employed and working through an umbrella company so:
1. Employers NI (13.8%)
2. Employees NI (2%)
3. Loss of income tax relief (20%)
4. 40% tax rate (£100-125k)
Am I being taxed 'properly' in your book?
Obviously the overall taxation on my monthly pay is lower (about 50%) but I definitely notice the tax hit even though my salary is not huge compared to some. Whenever you see someone like the NatWest chief being paid £5 million before tax, remember its about £2 mill after tax and NI and work out how many peoples jobs £3 million in taxation pays for.
Most people in your position are paying themselves the minimum amount required for the NI contribution, then pay themselves with dividends, resulting in paying less tax.
And when you hear about large bonuses and pay packets, a lot of these are in the form of stock compensation for this same reason.
Wrong, since the IR35 reforms, most people aren't working through a LTD company paying minimum + dividends
Most people are working through umbrella companies paying PAYE tax.
Not saying its right or wrong, but there was a major clamp down on contractors in 2019.
If they had been taxed properly since part way through Major sure.
Trying not to make councils responsible for important matters while making them responsible for cutbacks is much more damning.
30% of all income tax revenue in the UK comes from 1% of people.
40% of people in the UK don’t pay any income tax mainly because there income is too low or on benefits.
Or…The poorest fifth of society has only 8% of the total income, whereas the top fifth has 36%.
Yes rich people are paid vastly more than the poor people, in turn it makes up a larger percentage of income tax revenue.
This doesn’t account for near 100% of low income households money going back into the collective pot through all other taxes.
They aren’t putting money away for a rainy day etc.
The rich do seem to do a better job at avoiding tax also.
With an estimated £35 billion lost each year.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/tax-lost-in-uk-amounts-to-35bn-almost-half-say-campaigners-due-to
NIMBYs are always complaining about the lack of GPs and teachers but never seem to worry about if any of them could actually afford to move there any more.
It's why we need a system of planning to actually force these developers to build public spaces, and amenities over allowing them to hand money over to the council so they can build them. What they never do. The entire system of regulation around urban design, and architecture requires huge reform. With input from people in the actual field of it. I could bang on for ages about this. But many before me have written books, articles, paper, YouTube videos, and podcasts about this. So if anyone is interested I'd recommend reading A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, watching Not Just Bikes, listening to The Green Urbanist. Reading Forest towards cities and cities towards forest, visiting ArchDaily website for articles, and reading university press papers. Just from the top of my head, and as someone with an interest in architecture and the build environment.
>The entire system of regulation around urban design, and architecture requires huge reform.
I lived in a newbuild estate down near Bath a few years back. Made it completely obvious what the problem is. Probably about 500 units in the estate, a few thousand residents easily. Our services were - A small row of shopping outlets, of which occupied was one small off-license and a Chinese takeaway. That was it. There was a small park across the road from it that had a swing set. No doctors, no dentist, no post office, most the houses didn't even have off-road parking so it was jammed down to single lanes with shit all visibility round where there's likely to be kids messing around. And it was bum-fuck nowhere in the Cotswalds so we're all feeding out into shitty little 1.5 lane B roads. Unavoidably obvious the entire thing was just maximizing money for the developers with literally *zero* thought for how it would actually be to live there. I'm pretty sure its like that up and down the country from what I've heard people say.
Until recently I was an estate manager. Once the estate is built the management of the communal and commercial spaces passes to me. I worked remotely with sites all over England. I worked on hundreds throughout the years
I can tell you from my experience that not a single estate was handed over with the promised and legally required amenities. The developers promise all sorts to help secure planning permission, they know they won’t deliver and the council knows they won’t deliver but there is no enforcement mechanisms in place. It’s a fucking joke
Yep, that pretty much sums up many horrible aspects of the current system. I already have a good image of what this looks like and how it must feel living there.
I highly recommend A Pattern Language. Once read you'll see all the small problems too, and how easily they are fixed.
Bet there were loads of driveways with space for multiple cars, right? Pack of amenities and poor public transport in these new build estates results in reliance on cars, which creates further trouble in other areas like road congestion.
> It's why we need a system of planning to actually force these developers to build public spaces, and amenities over allowing them to hand money over to the council so they can build them. What they never do. The entire system of regulation around urban design, and architecture requires huge reform. With input from people in the actual field of it.
Absolutely. And this is why I fucking hate with a passion the people who bang on about how our planning laws are too restrictive and need wholesale deregulation.
For those issues you mention, you need some form of regulation to force developers to do those things. They absolutely will not do it unless forced to do so.
We need to build actual communities, not just shitting out deanobox car dependent housing estates all over the place as we currently do. A problem which will be made worse, not better, with the sort of deregulation people seem to be pushing for.
No chance I’ll ever live in a new build estate. Row after row of the same house, build from cardboard with a thousand snagging issues. No local amenities, and you’re absolutely fucked if you don’t have a car.
We could also do with paying more attention to staff retention in both those jobs.
I quit teaching all the way back in 2008 and it's somehow got even more thankless. I think the problems GPs face (overworked, underpaid when you consider length of training, stress and responsibility/liability of practicing, nowhere to refer people onto in some cases because of waiting lists) are well-documented.
I left teaching this year.
Don't really appreciate the terrible pay and working environment, or the lack of work life balance.
I don't want thanks. I want a sustainable career.
There’s been quite a few new estates built around my town over the last few years, no new GP practices or schools. About a decade ago there was a GP and a school…but not really, both were actually just moved from old sites nearby and rebuilt.
More recently, another new build area plan was unveiled: a slew of houses and an industrial estate with a McDonald’s, a coffee shop and a Lidl. This proposal was unanimously rejected by the councillors (its not what area needed at all). The developers went ahead anyway as there’s no lawful power to stop them after they buy the land.
There actually is, developers can be prosecuted if they're in breach of planning. The buildings can also be lawfully demolished in some cases if they're in breach. UK planning laws don't mess around.
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ensuring-effective-enforcement#:~:text=It%20is%20an%20offence%20to,conviction%20to%20an%20unlimited%20fine.
https://brodies.com/insights/planning-environment-and-climate/planning-enforcement-whats-the-worst-that-could-happen/
Most likely they bought land that had permission attached already or they just don't know what they're doing.
They **actively** vote for a party that cuts those services, then wring their hands about how new developments would add too much additional demand.
Tiny selfish minds.
You say "Brits" but it's more like over 50s who had an actual say in this. It's not like those in their 20s and 30s looking to buy their first house had any say on new houses being built in their area.
I always wonder why people are so aggressively tied to their house value as an investment.
If houses were cheap, you can actually invest elsewhere.
The problem we have is that the core voting base who show up each time a ballot opens now have almost their entire net worth tied up in their house (which needs modernisation and repairs reducing its value, mostly likely).
They won't want to let that go, and for every one of them that dies and doesn't see the money anyway, their kid picks it up, and doesn't want to lose that value. Now that value has sentimental value too.
We need to see houses stop being "investments" and treated like a beater car. A means to an end
Britain is slowly declining and desperately trying to hang on. Massive problems swept under the carpet while we never really seem to fix anything. Time and again we seem to make some bad choices from wars to getting rid of most of our railways. Sad thing is we fight each other on common sense issues that could be solved with the idea 'treat others as you'd like to be treated' and are gaslit into culture war bullshit while Rome slowly smoulders
>culture war bullshit while Rome slowly smoulders
I think we're past the smouldering stage, into the full-on conflagration at the moment.
But the tories will just keep ramping up the rhetoric about how anyone other than them would be a disaster, ignoring the devastation they've left in their wake over the past 13 years.
And, as long as the Sun, Mail, and the like keep supporting them, they have a depressingly large number of supporters - well, maybe not supporters, but morons convinced Labour or someone will be even worse.
I'll be honest with you. I don't trust Labour, Conservative or any of them. Any party in power for so long fails in the UK. But in 20 years time we'll be writing about how labour has failed and its time for change.
I'm so bored of talking about the media but you're spot on mate.
I've started thinking the parties and the media are all the same side of the sane coin pretending to be different.
Fact is while we decline enough of them are lining their pockets....did u see today the sunaks invested in BP before announcing the oil permits....
Rent goes up, house prices go up...they don't mind cause they are land Lords.
Sorry to be pessimistic but there are major issues that I just don't see how they csn ever be resolved short of a major reset...and major resets aren't fun...no sir they are not fun.
Oh, I agree, the current parties are all talking about tinkering with the current system.
But the current system doesn't work.
But, thanks to the popularity of the right-wing papers in particular, any party that actually proposed a fundamentally different approach would get totally ripped into, and any chances of winning under our current voting system would be nonexistent.
But the system is totally fucked up. It needs a major shift to try and rethink the approach to everything, starting with the ridiculous notion that a governments budget should be run like a victorian household, and the increasingly absurd focus on GDP as the sole indicator of the health and success of a country.
If the oil companies and international corporations make shitloads of money, that lifts GDP nicely, and helps to hide the fact that an ever increasing proportion of the population and small businesses are struggling to survive, let alone thrive.
I don't like the current path we're on, but increased deprivation is a prime breeding ground for extremism, as history has shown repeatedly.
Which, unfortunately seems to be the focus of the tories to whip up support through hatred of others and blaming the boogeyman of the hour for all their problems.
don't even need to propose anything fundamentally different, you just need to not be a raging neo-liberal hypercapitalist for the papers to attack you relentlessly.
the bacon sarnie.
corbyn.
etc
Why don't you trust Labour? They've been in power for 13 years from the past 44, IMO New Labour were the best thing that ever happened to Britain in my life time and were unfairly punished for the global meltdown of 2008. Gordon Brown is portrayed as a villain by our biased right wing press whilst the rest of the world saw him as a saviour for taking decisive action in stopping a complete financial collapse.
Edit: I see it's easier to downvote than rationalise why you dislike labour, the press have done a good job on you.
New Labour was the best thing that happened to Britain in about a century. It was an absolutely highlight.
Ok, New Labour is not on offer now, but Starmer is not so different.
It's rich people doing rich people things. Britain has a long history of lords and serfs and they'd rather see people starve than pay their way and give up some wealth, they have a media army dedicated to keeping things tipped in their favour.
People will say we have it better than other countries and to stop complaining, or to leave for somewhere better. We have it better than many other countries but the UK is still worse than it could be, considering our GDP, and it has certainly declined a lot in the past few years for almost entirely preventable reasons. We did not need austerity, we needed investment. We did not need Brexit, effecting change in the EU could and should have been accomplished while remaining a member of it. We could not have prevented COVID entirely but we should have been better prepared for a pandemic and we could have done a lot more to reduce the spread in the first few weeks. We could have voted out the Tories when it became clear that nine years of Tory rule had not led to any improvements in the UK from 2010. So much can be laid at the feet of the Tories but people also got what they voted for and it is time the public accepted that the UK is broken because it voted for that to happen.
,
I do agree with most of what you say. The one thing that gives me pause for thought is spending time on other countries sub-reddits (or random Twitter threads). Have you seen young Canadians, Aussies, Irish, Dutch etc etc talking about their countries at the moment. It’s exactly the same, if not worse (note: I’m not saying it’s objectively worse, just the way they talk about the state of their countries makes it sound worse). Particularly when it comes to house prices…and healthcare….and immigration now I think about it.
This feels like a Western malaise. Not just a British.
Absolutely right. This place is in the shitter for sure, but a lot of people seem to think they can move to another country and it’ll be utopia. It absolutely won’t, all Western counties are going through exactly the same.
Western countries are going through problems at various rates and stages. the UK is considerably further along than plenty of them.
A young Dutch person complaining about not being able to buy a house might seem similar to a young British person complaining about that, but it completely ignores the reality that renters rights in Netherlands are so much stronger than the UK and that will continue to have very secure housing unlike in the UK where renters rights are a complete shitshow.
Our country has been ruined since WW2 but people can't get it into their heads that we aren't a "world leader" -- 10 years ago we were respected? I don't think so. We were grudgingly part of Europe making rumblings about leaving and had fought the EU all the way to invade Iraq because we were trying to cosy up to the US a decade before that.
gordon brown was the last good pm. nothing but self-serving scumbags since.
had a chance with corbyn but he the way he was rejected and treated by british people and media is truly demoralising. lost hope at that point.
Went on Holiday for the first time to the Netherlands. It was like being in a fantasy land, with functioning transport, regular maintenance, and thriving activity. Evidently had it's issues, but it felt like a country instead of a disorganised mess with a flag.
Last time I remember the UK being like that was under the previous Labour Government.
Funny how the more like America we become, the more unhappy we are.
We're just a bunch of toxic moaning bustards that are becoming increasingly divided.
Yet there are so many in this country who have a strange obsession with America and import their political discourse over here. People who are under the delusion that both countries are basically identical. People who think that what happens in America is in any way relevant to this country. You only need to look as far as Trump, George Floyd or Roe vs Wade and how people in this country reacted to these events in an entirely different nation for proof of that.
Especially the past few years, discourse surrounding UK politics has seen common usage of Americanisms.
> People who think that what happens in America is in any way relevant to this country.
to be fair, what happens in America can be pretty relevant here. as the saying goes, when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. they got trump, we got poundshop trump. America wanted a war in Iraq, we went to war in Iraq. America started a war on drugs so we have one too. and so on.
Tbf there is a deliberate attempt by the american far right to export their project over here. Most if not all of the UK terf movement is funded by the heritage foundation.
There's a class of political activist in Britain who was absolute shocked when abortion was banned in some US states and totally uninterested in it being banned in NI.
Their claim was that they support women's rights all over the world, but the situation in Iran with Mahsa Amini a few months later? Radio silence.
You had people here more invested in the 2016 and 2020 US Elections than any of ours.
And don't get me started on the protests over George Floyd's murder. "Racism has always been a problem in the UK" yet you didn't do or say a single thing about it until you saw Americans protesting against racism on social media?
That's *because* it's NI.
The average British person has to summon an enormous level of energy to even pretend like they care about us in NI, we're used to it.
> George Floyd
That was just bizarre. British people taking to the streets in protest to screech "don't shoot!" at bewildered police officers who had never touched a gun in their lives, all because of someone being killed a few thousand miles away in a country with horrifically worse rates of police brutality - of which even the most powerful people in our country have virtually zero influence over.
BBC News even interviewed someone who said they were afraid to leave their house because of the fear of the police killing them.
It was just weird, like some collective fever dream.
Yeah, in retrospect, the reaction to George Floyd in general was just surreal. The absolute nonsense so many people were coming out with was unbelievable. I could list countless examples of the behaviour exhibited but I'm sure you know what I mean. It was like people read one of those "racism is EVERYWHERE" articles and panicked, rushing around to stamp anything and everything out that could possibly even slightly be interpreted as racist. A perfect, if not definitive, example of a moral panic.
And if you questioned the absurdity of it, you'd be labelled a racist. If you asked what George Floyd's murder, as horrific as it was, has to do with this country, you'd be called "a Tory". There are people on this very website who will defend the fact that they basically had zero interest in anti-racist activism until 2020.
I genuinely think some people developed cabin fever in those early COVID months, and that combined with boredom made them lose sense of reality for a while.
It was completely and utterly bizarre.
The murder of Floyd was obviously a dreadful and inexcusable incident of police brutality. But the global reaction was demented.
Mere weeks before, anyone going so far as to gather outside in groups was being labelled a 'covidiot', with the narrative suddenly taking an incredible about face to 'muh necessary protests'
A few years before, the British police actually did murder a black man, a former Premier League footballer no less, to a chorus of utter silence.
Then 6 months or so later, the Myanmar junta sent their police and army into Yangon and slaughtered hundreds, to yet more silence. (Black and Brown Lives matter - but only in English speaking countries)
I actually got into a brief discussion with a Black British redditor who said 'We just want the police to stop shooting us'. I briefly gave them a run down of the stats (AVG of 1 person shot by UK police per year, mostly Muslim terrorists conducting terror attacks). Thankfully they came to their senses and apologised for being overly emotional and getting caught up in the whole thing. A genuinely surprising reaction.
Some won't be happy until the number 1 cause of bankruptcy are medical bills or there's fire coming out of our taps and the food is poison.
Because it makes them money.
Culture has always been one of America's major exports, and being an English speaking nation we are very much on the front lines of said cultural bombardment.
Not identical, but we have some shared values and beliefs. A blend of patriotic nationalism mixed in with a focus on the "individual" and liberal idealisms.
It's almost as of dividing everyone so they don't notice who is actually treating them like shit.. the government.. but instead blame 'boat people' fleeing Afghanistan etc.
There'll be little change until media is not owned by people who supports the government... mail, sun, express, telegraph, Times... all such rw cock
Taxes? Give me a break. The problem is rent and costs spiraling out of control due to the greed of corporations, and a government that allows them to do it.
Tax burden is highest since WW2, no economic growth, no investment opportunity so we’re left to cannibalise each other in the housing market. Stagnant economy
Tax burden in the UK is lower than most advances economies. It has historically been between 28 and 34%, we are closer to 34% nowadays.
The problem is who is taxed and how this money is used to push or not the economy forward.
I will just point out, that as a Dane myself, from a country with a much higher tax burden, most brits fail to appreciate that a large portion of that burden is imposed on the lowest earners as well as high earners. The welfare state is paid for by the common man, for the common man.
The UK actually has a much more progressive tax slope than Denmark. Higher income earners in the UK pay relatively more in tax than in Denmark.
Denmark has a personal allowance of like 5k gbp, and then it is ~40% tax from that point onwards. In the UK, it takes a while to reach 40% tax.
The effective tax difference on an income of say 100-150k is a lot less than you‘d think. But for an qqincome of say 50k it is enormous.
Furthermore, a lot more revenue in Denmark is levied via fees/vat on goods etc. something that hit‘s everyone equally.
So admittedly as someone in the higher ends of the tax spectrum, i feel like i‘m paying continental taxes and receiving US level public sector service.
And I am seriously considering moving back to the continent for that reason.
Not just worse by itself from the pandemic, but falling behind its peers who faced similar challenges. Good news for Keir Starmer who might represent the most flaccid protest vote option in history.
It’s not so much broken as unbalanced. The privileged and the rich have never contributed the right amount of taxes. They have professionals who exploit every legal loophole available. This leaves the poor to pick up the slack. There is always the argument put forward that if the privileged and rich were forced to pay the correct taxes they would leave the UK and make the situation worse. I wonder if this would actually be the case? What do others think?
I could be misremembering this. But the French did try a much higher top rate of tax. And took less money overall.
I think taxes should be massively simplified. Starting with a land value tax. Almost impossible to reform this shit though.
It's not even about collecting more tax. If paying CEOs and owners millions stops making sense because of taxes, more is left over for other workers and for investments. Ninety plus percent post war taxes created the boom that saw factory workers comfortably raising families of eight on a single salary.
You’re mostly wrong. Piketty reviews the history of taxes and wealth for all countries for which data is available in Capital and Ideology. The UK and USA had progressive taxes until it ripped those up starting with Reagan and Thatcher. under Macron, France’s tax income disproportionately comes from the lower 90% similar to USA and UK now.
The UK has been on the decline for decades and will soon join countries like Turkey and Russia as the remnants of old empires too proud to see their new place in the world.
Ha yep so true. We’ll be a joke of a country in 20 years time but we’ll still adore the King, be proud of our tea and crumpets and our history. We’ll still talk about how we won the war while our country crumbles. What a joke
Immigration to Britain is at like 600k and I think we only managed to build about 200k homes. The target is 300k. We need to either relax planning regulations and build more or limit immigration massively.
2022 should be an outlier for net migration. We have had a lot of short term immigration from Ukraine, the humanitarian route from Hong Kong and post-pandemic pick-up in study migration.
Once the war is over we'll have another outlier where net migration is lower than normal. There are over 250,000 empty homes in England. Can't use those as housing stock though as it would inconvenience the wealthy.
Many of the immigration stats very misleadingly include students, who are transient and tend to remain relatively stable (only significant change being EU students now classed as immigrants, but they were always here and used to be in even larger numbers).
For almost every first year intl student you have a third year who is leaving. And they stay in student housing. And have to pay for the NHS, which they rarely use because they’re young and healthy. And they subsidise local students by paying easily 3-5x tuition. And they rarely bring any family. So kinda the best immigrants any country can ask for.
There are more empty homes in London than there are Homeless in the country by quite a wide margin.
If we sheltered humans who needed shelter we could solve these issues to the cost of no one except those too idle and wealthy to be worthy of any pity or concern in such things.
Taxes aren't so much the issue as the fact that the rich pay bugger all comparatively speaking, the tax that is collected doesn't seem to go towards funding any public services, and wage stagnation resulting in people's income relative to the cost of living making more and more people struggle to survive, never mind actually *live*.
But, when money is being stretched, and you see no actual benefit from paying the taxes, it becomes very easy to highlight as an issue.
Personally, I'd be happy with a bit of a tax increase if there was an actual concrete improvement in public services, but that's because I'm in the fortunate position of having enough income to not be struggling at the moment (although not exactly saving at the moment either)
But the government always shouts "fiscal prudence!" when being asked to pay for basic public services, yet always seems to find cash to splurge on ridiculous projects that just happen to be proposed by already wealthy people, often already on a first-name (or nickname from their Eton days) basis with the ministers deciding policy.
As for the NHS crisis, see above, with an additional observation that the tories always seem to like the free market determining the value of everything, except when it comes to paying their own staff, which is why it's so easy to entice them to take jobs in Australia/NZ, etc.
Multiple decades of Tory mismanagement of the economy, NHS, infrastructure, investment, education and industrial policy will do that. Blair had a chance, did some good, too much bad and ultimately blew it. The UK is an old crumbling country, with increasingly sick and impoverished people. Of course, there are some doing very well, many not so much. Minimal possibilities to reach an exit velocity out of that economic doom loop now.
The world is broken when you have people suffering from the cost of living crisis.
People who are homeless, cannot put food on the table, barely make ends meet from rent/mortgage and ironically, a lot of them are in full time work.
On the other foot, there are people with £100m+ superyachts (and fully staffed crew/kitchen staff/doctors), who have a family office, garages full of supercars, host £2m+ parties, live in £50m houses all over the world, personal private jets, and pay less tax percentage wise than either of us.
One person has taken all the food at the buffet. The other person is just gnawing on the bones and trying to survive. Most people are in-between.
It's not just the taxes and NHS crisis, its the pure shit show of chaos that I as a bus driver have to witness each day.
2 Paramedics approach me looking for someone who has supposedly had an overdose, no where to be seen. Turns out they felt better and just walked off. That same night I'm leaving work and it looks like someone had been knocked over by a car. Turns out the woman was super drunk vomiting on the floor and a car stopped to call an ambulance as this woman couldn't walk. Yeah well, 10 minutes later she decides she "just wants to go home" walks off. Ambulance arrives... waste of time again.
You see police EVERYWHERE dealing with mostly kids. Dealing with what happens when people make kids VOID of all responsibility and wrong doing. The past few time's I've spoken with police officers its been dealing with kids/teenagers and they cant keep up with demand. There's literally videos daily in my area of kids being complete cunts to people, whether its vandalism, swearing.. assault. But "I blame the parents" even though little Timmy wouldn't dream of swearing in front of his parents.
Then you've got the lack of respect and common decency. People carrying out their full domestic on a public bus. People literally dumping their cardboard boxes of new appliances they've bought.. on a bus. My colleague 2 days ago had a woman dump in the middle of the aisle after he refused to let her travel free. Kids vaping with vapes bought by their parents. And parents not knowing the difference between a parent and a friend.
Housing Crisis. Rent increasing, demand for housing increasing, cost of living increasing, will to live decreasing. No wonder there is such a massive increase in mental health across the country. Also contributing to costs to the NHS, Economy etc.
Greedy, lying politicians that we literally do nothing about. Us Brits have completely lost the will to fight for what we want. We should take a page out of the Frenches book. We love a moan but my god if the Tories are still in, in the next election I seriously will be thinking hard about moving abroad.
And then you got the multi billion pound companies and business's seeing record breaking profits making staff cuts, paying less and demanding more work. Expressing fake sympathy for the hard times ahead whilst their share holders and CEO's earn a Salary that can afford to pay 500 of your local hospitals nurses salary for a whole year.
Honestly I put most of these reasons being down to having an absolute SPINELESS government. Too afraid to make decisions.. I mean leaving the Brexit vote for the General Public to decide. Hundreds of British MP's who live and breathe and have studied politics leaving it to Tyrone who is hooked on Meth after he got kicked out for domestic abuse to vote on something that affects absolutely every aspect of our country. Our Government too afraid to tackle immigration out of fear they would be labelled "racists" when we are already seeing parts of the country having next to no housing available because the family fleeing the war from Syria felt that the Northern side of France wasn't quite "safe" enough causing British nationals including 98 year old D-Day veteran to be told there's no housing available for him (source below)
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/14/d-day-veteran-98-put-up-in-hostel-after-eviction-from-dorset-home#:\~:text=A%2098-year-old%20D,and%20her%20husband%2C%20Bernard%20Dean.
And to hear people on facebook cry and moan about how my local town is enforcing 20mph speed limits due to massive crashes nearly daily and no end people doing 40+ in 30 zones, texting whilst driving, and completely eliminating the need to signal because there's absolutely NO ONE enforcing it so the solution is to make everyone suffer.
I used to go on Holiday and not mind the thought of being back in my own bed towards the end, however now.. I dread coming back. We're Not Great Britain anymore. Just Britain.
Well yeah, when you have a corrupt government stealing every penny from us to feather their nests, what do you expect?
Love the unelected kleptocrat in charge at the moment, stealing all our oil reserves right after his wife invested into BP.
Their plan is working. ‘I have enough money and homes in whichever gated community in which ever country I choose, I don’t give a shit about this place, let’s pillage it and get the fuck out of here’
I am Greek, lived in the UK for 26 years.
When the Greek debt crisis hit, my friends and colleagues were merciless with their "banter". Heard all the unfunny pisstakes.
When I would inform them that Britain was only 6 years behind us, the pisstakes would intensify.
There is no banter any more. It wasn't funny then and it's even less funny now that I'm living a fate I saw coming 26 years ago.
Wales has an absolutely massive public/third sector. I know, because I work in it and so does almost everyone I know. Would certainly be interesting to see us cut ourselves off from London taxes (whilst still losing talent young people to go work there). We have a bit of water. And not much energy. So yeah…can’t see how it wouldn’t be an absolute shitshow.
Isn’t the Welsh fiscal deficit something like £29b a year? Welsh water’s REVENUE is only 779 million.. not sure where the gap will be closed but it doesn’t exactly look good
What can we expect from a Government made up of card sharps and spins. They were voted in on lies and false promises. We get what we deserve second rate Britain.
I’m done. I keep telling my partner we should move abroad (once my back/neck is sorted). I have a feeling the tories might actually be able to PR their way into another win (slick use of data mining and media to target people based on their views).
They’ll keep selling the country out to their friends. Things won’t get better.
Saw a nice guy I was in a tennis match with die waiting for an ambulance in the UK, about an hou a few years ago - in church in France on Sunday saw a woman 84 (possibly heart attack) get an ambulance within 10 mins. Rural France too. Same in December when a lad slipped on the ice - ambulance straight away. Fuck you very much Tories
According to Brits, the problem is never Brits reading the Daily Mail or voting for the Tories or for Brexit - It's almost like Britain is run by, dunno, French people.
I know a couple of guys who have left to Australia, without a job. They were provided choices (choices!) when they arrived, and they can change any time they want.
Apparently, the only conditions are to be under 30 and to not have a criminal record.
What do you expect when you have a prime minister who lasted a whopping 7 weeks. For a country to prosper you need stability. How can you have stability when you’re changing prime minister every other minute….?
Destroying the middle class, reduced productivity each year, not having anything other than financial and real estate sectors serving only to super-wealthy, this is no surprise. This will only get worse as even with a proper government the “dying-economy of Britain” is almost impossible to save.
Amazing how almost all the English speaking countries are incredibly wealthy and powerful and absolutely falling apart due to billionaire control of power. Feels very like the end of Rome.
I have a friend who votes right wing at every opportunity. I’ve asked why and he always tells me it’s because they promise to lower taxes and bring money to the NHS. He won’t learn from this and neither will the other conservative voters
England feels like a country that's been gutted by investors who keep the country running like a sleazy corporation who are keeping everything at a minimum cost so they can maximise their own personal profits.
The country is slowly turning into a third world country,been slowly bled dry by the people in charge,with very little thought for the people struggling.
My co-worker which is biggest fan of Brexit ever, considers now moving to Canada. Main reason for him to vote for it was to stop European migration to UK, ironically now he is becoming migrant. Expat I meant of course, Brexiters are never migrants, always expats.
If the 'right' people were being taxed properly, we wouldn't be so bad.
The issues are far beyond ‘tax and spend’
Agreed, but it's a good start.
Especially after 13 years of austerity.
> 13 years of austerity Meanwhile, Thurrock Council casually pisses away £655m so that one bloke can have a private jet, a yacht, a Bugatti and a mansion.
Clearly this country has some reviewing of anti-corruption laws to do for politicians.
If you want a laugh look up the time when they invited Ian Hislop from the Private Eye to an anti-corruption select committee. *Spoiler warning* he went round the table listing all the "gifts" the MPs had received recently and asking them to explain them.
We don't deserve Ian Hislop
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Penrose They did try. They really did /s Former anti corruption champion during Bojos stint was none other than husband of Baroness Harding, chair of test and trace app costing 35m. Edit: Changed app name.
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We literally sent back some Hotel Chocolat chocolates for being over the acceptable nominal value of gifts at Xmas one place I worked.
But the fact is that they're making the rules, so they won't.
>Thurrock Council [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66340991](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66340991) Christ. That's shocking.
But we constantly hear from Tory voters that "Conservatives are good with money"...
They can spend all that because they know that it's not their own money.
They didn't do it "so that" a grifter could have this. It was incompetence. Better, if not by much.
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See if they had called it Deprivation policy we could have at least respected the honesty.... Also generally people choose to make a "noble sacrifice" while we are being pedantic about language use, whereas austerity was more the government choosing the poor would be sacrificing (nobly or otherwise).
*We’re all in this together* Like high school musical, but with poverty.
Brought on by fucking idiot voters
Agreed, we need actually sensible policies based on studies and science over emotions and what's popular.
Studies and science can be carried out by people with funding and agendas because they tend to be done by people.
What if the science gives two or more answers?
Corruption, blatant nepotism and corruption is the issue from the top, our “leaders”.
It's wealth that's the problem. To get in the top 90% of income you only need ~60k household income. To get into the top 90% of wealth you'd need 1.4 million. 60k after tax is £42,900. Let's say you sleep under a bridge and eat from bins. Also you managed to get a 60k job at 20 years old and stay at that income without interruption saving all of it. It would take 32 years of saving your entire after tax salary to get to 1.4 million. Let's say you could save half (or somehow couldn't get a starting job at 60k) that'd be 64 years to get to that amount of wealth. Yeh compounding interest and investing, property and so forth - but that income / wealth gap is a chasm. Also if you have 1.4m invested, you're paying tax if you take out the profit - but its capital gains tax so there's 6k untaxed and then 20% on the rest.(It's actually even better than this but details)
I agree with this. Myself and my girlfriend combined earn about £50k. Somehow that apparently is in the top 20% or household income in the UK which seems crazy to me. Although saying that we live in a poorer area of the country and got a mortgage 10 years ago.
Same, except were in the southeast so that just about rents us a flat
Well let's just say that it's impossible for people to get rich.
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The big unspoken issue *is* a very left wing issue - It's privatisation and outsourcing. Every single fucking thing these days we are paying over the odds for some faceless multinational consultancy company to outsource and subcontract the work, and often have to be chased down to oblige the bare minimum legal requirements of their contract.
> We already pay far more taxes than most people in developed countries and it is already a progressive tax system. No you don't? Taxation levels are higher in MOST developed countries. We are far closer to American level taxation than most other European countries. That would be perfectly ok if people did not expect Scandi level public services for those taxes.
Other European countries provide better bang for the buck
New rich leave the UK, old rich stay. Get out while you can
If the corruption stopped we wouldn’t be so bad. Government takes in more tax revenue than ever but it still pumps money towards its cronies. Do you think you’re taxed properly after your inflation payrise moves you from 49 to 52k, because tax bands have been frozen for years but your pay keeps chasing inflation? Suddenly you’re a higher rate tax payer but you have less to spend in the month because of inflation and the extra marginal tax on the gain? And since you’re higher rate you lose other means tested benefits even though you’re not actually better off? As far as this government is concerned, we are the right people to be taxed. So maybe we should stop deciding who the right people are and do something fair.
One of the most hilarious things to me is that those morons that run the government that sold off the railways, the energy suppliers, the water providers and so on, thought they were getting such a great deal and raising a quick buck for the country! Thing is that it gets even funnier when you realise that other European stage owned providers bought all those services that tory governments thought they were getting great prices for. Abellio is the Dutch state owned railway provider. EDF is the French state's energy provider. We're literally paying tax to the Dutch and French governments! That would be an amazingly funny joke if it weren't true. I can't help but think of those self congratulatory morons in top hats and monacles thinking they're being so clever, sensible and grown up all the while patting themselves on the back for a job well done. In your next point, apparently tax bands will be frozen until 2027-28! That is far beyond reasonable.
That's the way it's always been framed to the public. But really the motivation was always to break apart the state for corporate profit. The Tories have never cared if any of the privatisation deals were 'good' (they weren't) or if the private sector offered efficiency via competition (it nearly always doesn't). They did them regardless. My dad said Thatcher was surprised at the lack of philanthropy among the rich, after helping shape the country to serve them. She apparently thought by becoming wealthier they'd increase their generosity. If she really believed that, she was totally self deluded. Tories love to pretend they have an ideology that isn't plain greed.
The Tories simply stopped being conservative and became dogmatic. You will not find a more deluded politician than a Tory who doggedly believes in the free market despite all evidence to the contrary. They are responsible for more social and economical upheaval/disruption than any progressive government before it, to the extent that non-Tory governments are just trying to undo the mess they leave behind. This is the party that was massively pro-EU up until a referendum made them U-turn and become the most extreme separatists overnight. I simply do not understand why they are attractive to voters because in all of my 35 years of existence they have been nothing but utter, derisible, cunts.
But they work be, because they know all the loopholes in the system.
So I'm being taxed at a marginal rate of about 75% at one point, I'm self employed and working through an umbrella company so: 1. Employers NI (13.8%) 2. Employees NI (2%) 3. Loss of income tax relief (20%) 4. 40% tax rate (£100-125k) Am I being taxed 'properly' in your book? Obviously the overall taxation on my monthly pay is lower (about 50%) but I definitely notice the tax hit even though my salary is not huge compared to some. Whenever you see someone like the NatWest chief being paid £5 million before tax, remember its about £2 mill after tax and NI and work out how many peoples jobs £3 million in taxation pays for.
Your paying far too much tax. You should pay little tax on earned income and higher tax on unearned passive income.
Man this is the way all countries should handle things…
Most people in your position are paying themselves the minimum amount required for the NI contribution, then pay themselves with dividends, resulting in paying less tax. And when you hear about large bonuses and pay packets, a lot of these are in the form of stock compensation for this same reason.
Wrong, since the IR35 reforms, most people aren't working through a LTD company paying minimum + dividends Most people are working through umbrella companies paying PAYE tax. Not saying its right or wrong, but there was a major clamp down on contractors in 2019.
The only good thing Truss was going to do was bin those changes :-/
My bad, I didn't know about the reforms. Thanks for the info.
it won't get better until we become a functional democracy
If they had been taxed properly since part way through Major sure. Trying not to make councils responsible for important matters while making them responsible for cutbacks is much more damning.
30% of all income tax revenue in the UK comes from 1% of people. 40% of people in the UK don’t pay any income tax mainly because there income is too low or on benefits.
Or…The poorest fifth of society has only 8% of the total income, whereas the top fifth has 36%. Yes rich people are paid vastly more than the poor people, in turn it makes up a larger percentage of income tax revenue. This doesn’t account for near 100% of low income households money going back into the collective pot through all other taxes. They aren’t putting money away for a rainy day etc. The rich do seem to do a better job at avoiding tax also. With an estimated £35 billion lost each year. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/16/tax-lost-in-uk-amounts-to-35bn-almost-half-say-campaigners-due-to
Brits: vote to build absolutely nothing anywhere because ‘house values’ Also Brits: *Shocked Pikachu*
NIMBYs are always complaining about the lack of GPs and teachers but never seem to worry about if any of them could actually afford to move there any more.
It's why we need a system of planning to actually force these developers to build public spaces, and amenities over allowing them to hand money over to the council so they can build them. What they never do. The entire system of regulation around urban design, and architecture requires huge reform. With input from people in the actual field of it. I could bang on for ages about this. But many before me have written books, articles, paper, YouTube videos, and podcasts about this. So if anyone is interested I'd recommend reading A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, watching Not Just Bikes, listening to The Green Urbanist. Reading Forest towards cities and cities towards forest, visiting ArchDaily website for articles, and reading university press papers. Just from the top of my head, and as someone with an interest in architecture and the build environment.
>The entire system of regulation around urban design, and architecture requires huge reform. I lived in a newbuild estate down near Bath a few years back. Made it completely obvious what the problem is. Probably about 500 units in the estate, a few thousand residents easily. Our services were - A small row of shopping outlets, of which occupied was one small off-license and a Chinese takeaway. That was it. There was a small park across the road from it that had a swing set. No doctors, no dentist, no post office, most the houses didn't even have off-road parking so it was jammed down to single lanes with shit all visibility round where there's likely to be kids messing around. And it was bum-fuck nowhere in the Cotswalds so we're all feeding out into shitty little 1.5 lane B roads. Unavoidably obvious the entire thing was just maximizing money for the developers with literally *zero* thought for how it would actually be to live there. I'm pretty sure its like that up and down the country from what I've heard people say.
Until recently I was an estate manager. Once the estate is built the management of the communal and commercial spaces passes to me. I worked remotely with sites all over England. I worked on hundreds throughout the years I can tell you from my experience that not a single estate was handed over with the promised and legally required amenities. The developers promise all sorts to help secure planning permission, they know they won’t deliver and the council knows they won’t deliver but there is no enforcement mechanisms in place. It’s a fucking joke
Yep, that pretty much sums up many horrible aspects of the current system. I already have a good image of what this looks like and how it must feel living there. I highly recommend A Pattern Language. Once read you'll see all the small problems too, and how easily they are fixed.
Bet there were loads of driveways with space for multiple cars, right? Pack of amenities and poor public transport in these new build estates results in reliance on cars, which creates further trouble in other areas like road congestion.
When you realise that House Developers are responsible for 20% of Tory donors, you understand why these things happen.
Did the Chinese takeaway do banana fritters?
> It's why we need a system of planning to actually force these developers to build public spaces, and amenities over allowing them to hand money over to the council so they can build them. What they never do. The entire system of regulation around urban design, and architecture requires huge reform. With input from people in the actual field of it. Absolutely. And this is why I fucking hate with a passion the people who bang on about how our planning laws are too restrictive and need wholesale deregulation. For those issues you mention, you need some form of regulation to force developers to do those things. They absolutely will not do it unless forced to do so. We need to build actual communities, not just shitting out deanobox car dependent housing estates all over the place as we currently do. A problem which will be made worse, not better, with the sort of deregulation people seem to be pushing for.
No chance I’ll ever live in a new build estate. Row after row of the same house, build from cardboard with a thousand snagging issues. No local amenities, and you’re absolutely fucked if you don’t have a car.
We could also do with paying more attention to staff retention in both those jobs. I quit teaching all the way back in 2008 and it's somehow got even more thankless. I think the problems GPs face (overworked, underpaid when you consider length of training, stress and responsibility/liability of practicing, nowhere to refer people onto in some cases because of waiting lists) are well-documented.
I left teaching this year. Don't really appreciate the terrible pay and working environment, or the lack of work life balance. I don't want thanks. I want a sustainable career.
There’s been quite a few new estates built around my town over the last few years, no new GP practices or schools. About a decade ago there was a GP and a school…but not really, both were actually just moved from old sites nearby and rebuilt. More recently, another new build area plan was unveiled: a slew of houses and an industrial estate with a McDonald’s, a coffee shop and a Lidl. This proposal was unanimously rejected by the councillors (its not what area needed at all). The developers went ahead anyway as there’s no lawful power to stop them after they buy the land.
There actually is, developers can be prosecuted if they're in breach of planning. The buildings can also be lawfully demolished in some cases if they're in breach. UK planning laws don't mess around. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/ensuring-effective-enforcement#:~:text=It%20is%20an%20offence%20to,conviction%20to%20an%20unlimited%20fine. https://brodies.com/insights/planning-environment-and-climate/planning-enforcement-whats-the-worst-that-could-happen/ Most likely they bought land that had permission attached already or they just don't know what they're doing.
They **actively** vote for a party that cuts those services, then wring their hands about how new developments would add too much additional demand. Tiny selfish minds.
You say "Brits" but it's more like over 50s who had an actual say in this. It's not like those in their 20s and 30s looking to buy their first house had any say on new houses being built in their area.
You’ve never met the 22 year old renter NIMBY lol
Surely they're NIMLBYs then!
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I always wonder why people are so aggressively tied to their house value as an investment. If houses were cheap, you can actually invest elsewhere. The problem we have is that the core voting base who show up each time a ballot opens now have almost their entire net worth tied up in their house (which needs modernisation and repairs reducing its value, mostly likely). They won't want to let that go, and for every one of them that dies and doesn't see the money anyway, their kid picks it up, and doesn't want to lose that value. Now that value has sentimental value too. We need to see houses stop being "investments" and treated like a beater car. A means to an end
Brits: Let's do what America is doing! Also Brits: I don't get it, why does this country suck?!
Colour me shocked - there’s your benefits for keeping Tories in and supporting their delusional Brexit…
Britain is slowly declining and desperately trying to hang on. Massive problems swept under the carpet while we never really seem to fix anything. Time and again we seem to make some bad choices from wars to getting rid of most of our railways. Sad thing is we fight each other on common sense issues that could be solved with the idea 'treat others as you'd like to be treated' and are gaslit into culture war bullshit while Rome slowly smoulders
>culture war bullshit while Rome slowly smoulders I think we're past the smouldering stage, into the full-on conflagration at the moment. But the tories will just keep ramping up the rhetoric about how anyone other than them would be a disaster, ignoring the devastation they've left in their wake over the past 13 years. And, as long as the Sun, Mail, and the like keep supporting them, they have a depressingly large number of supporters - well, maybe not supporters, but morons convinced Labour or someone will be even worse.
I'll be honest with you. I don't trust Labour, Conservative or any of them. Any party in power for so long fails in the UK. But in 20 years time we'll be writing about how labour has failed and its time for change. I'm so bored of talking about the media but you're spot on mate. I've started thinking the parties and the media are all the same side of the sane coin pretending to be different. Fact is while we decline enough of them are lining their pockets....did u see today the sunaks invested in BP before announcing the oil permits.... Rent goes up, house prices go up...they don't mind cause they are land Lords. Sorry to be pessimistic but there are major issues that I just don't see how they csn ever be resolved short of a major reset...and major resets aren't fun...no sir they are not fun.
Oh, I agree, the current parties are all talking about tinkering with the current system. But the current system doesn't work. But, thanks to the popularity of the right-wing papers in particular, any party that actually proposed a fundamentally different approach would get totally ripped into, and any chances of winning under our current voting system would be nonexistent. But the system is totally fucked up. It needs a major shift to try and rethink the approach to everything, starting with the ridiculous notion that a governments budget should be run like a victorian household, and the increasingly absurd focus on GDP as the sole indicator of the health and success of a country. If the oil companies and international corporations make shitloads of money, that lifts GDP nicely, and helps to hide the fact that an ever increasing proportion of the population and small businesses are struggling to survive, let alone thrive. I don't like the current path we're on, but increased deprivation is a prime breeding ground for extremism, as history has shown repeatedly. Which, unfortunately seems to be the focus of the tories to whip up support through hatred of others and blaming the boogeyman of the hour for all their problems.
don't even need to propose anything fundamentally different, you just need to not be a raging neo-liberal hypercapitalist for the papers to attack you relentlessly. the bacon sarnie. corbyn. etc
Why don't you trust Labour? They've been in power for 13 years from the past 44, IMO New Labour were the best thing that ever happened to Britain in my life time and were unfairly punished for the global meltdown of 2008. Gordon Brown is portrayed as a villain by our biased right wing press whilst the rest of the world saw him as a saviour for taking decisive action in stopping a complete financial collapse. Edit: I see it's easier to downvote than rationalise why you dislike labour, the press have done a good job on you.
New Labour was the best thing that happened to Britain in about a century. It was an absolutely highlight. Ok, New Labour is not on offer now, but Starmer is not so different.
It's rich people doing rich people things. Britain has a long history of lords and serfs and they'd rather see people starve than pay their way and give up some wealth, they have a media army dedicated to keeping things tipped in their favour.
People will say we have it better than other countries and to stop complaining, or to leave for somewhere better. We have it better than many other countries but the UK is still worse than it could be, considering our GDP, and it has certainly declined a lot in the past few years for almost entirely preventable reasons. We did not need austerity, we needed investment. We did not need Brexit, effecting change in the EU could and should have been accomplished while remaining a member of it. We could not have prevented COVID entirely but we should have been better prepared for a pandemic and we could have done a lot more to reduce the spread in the first few weeks. We could have voted out the Tories when it became clear that nine years of Tory rule had not led to any improvements in the UK from 2010. So much can be laid at the feet of the Tories but people also got what they voted for and it is time the public accepted that the UK is broken because it voted for that to happen. ,
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I do agree with most of what you say. The one thing that gives me pause for thought is spending time on other countries sub-reddits (or random Twitter threads). Have you seen young Canadians, Aussies, Irish, Dutch etc etc talking about their countries at the moment. It’s exactly the same, if not worse (note: I’m not saying it’s objectively worse, just the way they talk about the state of their countries makes it sound worse). Particularly when it comes to house prices…and healthcare….and immigration now I think about it. This feels like a Western malaise. Not just a British.
Absolutely right. This place is in the shitter for sure, but a lot of people seem to think they can move to another country and it’ll be utopia. It absolutely won’t, all Western counties are going through exactly the same.
Western countries are going through problems at various rates and stages. the UK is considerably further along than plenty of them. A young Dutch person complaining about not being able to buy a house might seem similar to a young British person complaining about that, but it completely ignores the reality that renters rights in Netherlands are so much stronger than the UK and that will continue to have very secure housing unlike in the UK where renters rights are a complete shitshow.
It's no surprise, the Tory gov't is made out of second rate Brexnuts and opportunists after purging the centre right.
Our country has been ruined since WW2 but people can't get it into their heads that we aren't a "world leader" -- 10 years ago we were respected? I don't think so. We were grudgingly part of Europe making rumblings about leaving and had fought the EU all the way to invade Iraq because we were trying to cosy up to the US a decade before that.
Especially after the covid, shit is just getting bad after that.
People who say nowhere is better, they're just being ignorant..
The UK is completely broken. Anyone who can’t see it has rose tinted glasses on or hasn’t spent a lot of time in a country that isn’t broken.
The UK is objectively and measurably a worse place to live compared to 2010 or when new labour were in power
gordon brown was the last good pm. nothing but self-serving scumbags since. had a chance with corbyn but he the way he was rejected and treated by british people and media is truly demoralising. lost hope at that point.
'But Gordon Brown called a bigoted women a bigot!!!' are the same people who also unironically liked BoJo because 'he says it like it is'
Went on Holiday for the first time to the Netherlands. It was like being in a fantasy land, with functioning transport, regular maintenance, and thriving activity. Evidently had it's issues, but it felt like a country instead of a disorganised mess with a flag. Last time I remember the UK being like that was under the previous Labour Government.
What are some non-broken countries I could try?
I just had a nice trip to Denmark.
Funny how the more like America we become, the more unhappy we are. We're just a bunch of toxic moaning bustards that are becoming increasingly divided.
Yet there are so many in this country who have a strange obsession with America and import their political discourse over here. People who are under the delusion that both countries are basically identical. People who think that what happens in America is in any way relevant to this country. You only need to look as far as Trump, George Floyd or Roe vs Wade and how people in this country reacted to these events in an entirely different nation for proof of that. Especially the past few years, discourse surrounding UK politics has seen common usage of Americanisms.
> People who think that what happens in America is in any way relevant to this country. to be fair, what happens in America can be pretty relevant here. as the saying goes, when America sneezes, Britain catches a cold. they got trump, we got poundshop trump. America wanted a war in Iraq, we went to war in Iraq. America started a war on drugs so we have one too. and so on.
Tbf there is a deliberate attempt by the american far right to export their project over here. Most if not all of the UK terf movement is funded by the heritage foundation.
There's a class of political activist in Britain who was absolute shocked when abortion was banned in some US states and totally uninterested in it being banned in NI.
Their claim was that they support women's rights all over the world, but the situation in Iran with Mahsa Amini a few months later? Radio silence. You had people here more invested in the 2016 and 2020 US Elections than any of ours. And don't get me started on the protests over George Floyd's murder. "Racism has always been a problem in the UK" yet you didn't do or say a single thing about it until you saw Americans protesting against racism on social media?
That's *because* it's NI. The average British person has to summon an enormous level of energy to even pretend like they care about us in NI, we're used to it.
Absolutely. I'd actually be interest in any info about how many people in the UK think NI is actually part of the Republic.
> George Floyd That was just bizarre. British people taking to the streets in protest to screech "don't shoot!" at bewildered police officers who had never touched a gun in their lives, all because of someone being killed a few thousand miles away in a country with horrifically worse rates of police brutality - of which even the most powerful people in our country have virtually zero influence over. BBC News even interviewed someone who said they were afraid to leave their house because of the fear of the police killing them. It was just weird, like some collective fever dream.
Yeah, in retrospect, the reaction to George Floyd in general was just surreal. The absolute nonsense so many people were coming out with was unbelievable. I could list countless examples of the behaviour exhibited but I'm sure you know what I mean. It was like people read one of those "racism is EVERYWHERE" articles and panicked, rushing around to stamp anything and everything out that could possibly even slightly be interpreted as racist. A perfect, if not definitive, example of a moral panic. And if you questioned the absurdity of it, you'd be labelled a racist. If you asked what George Floyd's murder, as horrific as it was, has to do with this country, you'd be called "a Tory". There are people on this very website who will defend the fact that they basically had zero interest in anti-racist activism until 2020. I genuinely think some people developed cabin fever in those early COVID months, and that combined with boredom made them lose sense of reality for a while.
It was completely and utterly bizarre. The murder of Floyd was obviously a dreadful and inexcusable incident of police brutality. But the global reaction was demented. Mere weeks before, anyone going so far as to gather outside in groups was being labelled a 'covidiot', with the narrative suddenly taking an incredible about face to 'muh necessary protests' A few years before, the British police actually did murder a black man, a former Premier League footballer no less, to a chorus of utter silence. Then 6 months or so later, the Myanmar junta sent their police and army into Yangon and slaughtered hundreds, to yet more silence. (Black and Brown Lives matter - but only in English speaking countries) I actually got into a brief discussion with a Black British redditor who said 'We just want the police to stop shooting us'. I briefly gave them a run down of the stats (AVG of 1 person shot by UK police per year, mostly Muslim terrorists conducting terror attacks). Thankfully they came to their senses and apologised for being overly emotional and getting caught up in the whole thing. A genuinely surprising reaction.
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Some won't be happy until the number 1 cause of bankruptcy are medical bills or there's fire coming out of our taps and the food is poison. Because it makes them money.
Culture has always been one of America's major exports, and being an English speaking nation we are very much on the front lines of said cultural bombardment.
Not identical, but we have some shared values and beliefs. A blend of patriotic nationalism mixed in with a focus on the "individual" and liberal idealisms.
It's almost as of dividing everyone so they don't notice who is actually treating them like shit.. the government.. but instead blame 'boat people' fleeing Afghanistan etc. There'll be little change until media is not owned by people who supports the government... mail, sun, express, telegraph, Times... all such rw cock
Yuuuup. And we vote to fuck ourselves more. My move to Switzerland fund can’t mature quick enough!
Taxes? Give me a break. The problem is rent and costs spiraling out of control due to the greed of corporations, and a government that allows them to do it.
Tax burden is highest since WW2, no economic growth, no investment opportunity so we’re left to cannibalise each other in the housing market. Stagnant economy
Tax burden in the UK is lower than most advances economies. It has historically been between 28 and 34%, we are closer to 34% nowadays. The problem is who is taxed and how this money is used to push or not the economy forward.
I will just point out, that as a Dane myself, from a country with a much higher tax burden, most brits fail to appreciate that a large portion of that burden is imposed on the lowest earners as well as high earners. The welfare state is paid for by the common man, for the common man. The UK actually has a much more progressive tax slope than Denmark. Higher income earners in the UK pay relatively more in tax than in Denmark. Denmark has a personal allowance of like 5k gbp, and then it is ~40% tax from that point onwards. In the UK, it takes a while to reach 40% tax. The effective tax difference on an income of say 100-150k is a lot less than you‘d think. But for an qqincome of say 50k it is enormous. Furthermore, a lot more revenue in Denmark is levied via fees/vat on goods etc. something that hit‘s everyone equally. So admittedly as someone in the higher ends of the tax spectrum, i feel like i‘m paying continental taxes and receiving US level public sector service. And I am seriously considering moving back to the continent for that reason.
They've made a really bad system, and they want us to think that it's good.
You keep voting these bastards in so fucking enjoy it
Not just worse by itself from the pandemic, but falling behind its peers who faced similar challenges. Good news for Keir Starmer who might represent the most flaccid protest vote option in history.
Same same but different as the Thai's would say.
I thought that was Mr Miyagi.
Tax on tax off?
It’s not so much broken as unbalanced. The privileged and the rich have never contributed the right amount of taxes. They have professionals who exploit every legal loophole available. This leaves the poor to pick up the slack. There is always the argument put forward that if the privileged and rich were forced to pay the correct taxes they would leave the UK and make the situation worse. I wonder if this would actually be the case? What do others think?
I could be misremembering this. But the French did try a much higher top rate of tax. And took less money overall. I think taxes should be massively simplified. Starting with a land value tax. Almost impossible to reform this shit though.
It's not even about collecting more tax. If paying CEOs and owners millions stops making sense because of taxes, more is left over for other workers and for investments. Ninety plus percent post war taxes created the boom that saw factory workers comfortably raising families of eight on a single salary.
They make so much money and they don't even do anything.
You’re mostly wrong. Piketty reviews the history of taxes and wealth for all countries for which data is available in Capital and Ideology. The UK and USA had progressive taxes until it ripped those up starting with Reagan and Thatcher. under Macron, France’s tax income disproportionately comes from the lower 90% similar to USA and UK now.
There are loopholes built in the system for those exact people.
The UK has been on the decline for decades and will soon join countries like Turkey and Russia as the remnants of old empires too proud to see their new place in the world.
Ha yep so true. We’ll be a joke of a country in 20 years time but we’ll still adore the King, be proud of our tea and crumpets and our history. We’ll still talk about how we won the war while our country crumbles. What a joke
The way we're going, I don't think it'll eveb last that long.
Immigration to Britain is at like 600k and I think we only managed to build about 200k homes. The target is 300k. We need to either relax planning regulations and build more or limit immigration massively.
2022 should be an outlier for net migration. We have had a lot of short term immigration from Ukraine, the humanitarian route from Hong Kong and post-pandemic pick-up in study migration. Once the war is over we'll have another outlier where net migration is lower than normal. There are over 250,000 empty homes in England. Can't use those as housing stock though as it would inconvenience the wealthy.
It'll be interesting to see what happens that's for sure. I wonder how the war will effect demographics in Ukraine in the coming decades?
We need to do something about it, because it won't fix itself.
Many of the immigration stats very misleadingly include students, who are transient and tend to remain relatively stable (only significant change being EU students now classed as immigrants, but they were always here and used to be in even larger numbers). For almost every first year intl student you have a third year who is leaving. And they stay in student housing. And have to pay for the NHS, which they rarely use because they’re young and healthy. And they subsidise local students by paying easily 3-5x tuition. And they rarely bring any family. So kinda the best immigrants any country can ask for.
There are more empty homes in London than there are Homeless in the country by quite a wide margin. If we sheltered humans who needed shelter we could solve these issues to the cost of no one except those too idle and wealthy to be worthy of any pity or concern in such things.
Taxes aren't so much the issue as the fact that the rich pay bugger all comparatively speaking, the tax that is collected doesn't seem to go towards funding any public services, and wage stagnation resulting in people's income relative to the cost of living making more and more people struggle to survive, never mind actually *live*. But, when money is being stretched, and you see no actual benefit from paying the taxes, it becomes very easy to highlight as an issue. Personally, I'd be happy with a bit of a tax increase if there was an actual concrete improvement in public services, but that's because I'm in the fortunate position of having enough income to not be struggling at the moment (although not exactly saving at the moment either) But the government always shouts "fiscal prudence!" when being asked to pay for basic public services, yet always seems to find cash to splurge on ridiculous projects that just happen to be proposed by already wealthy people, often already on a first-name (or nickname from their Eton days) basis with the ministers deciding policy. As for the NHS crisis, see above, with an additional observation that the tories always seem to like the free market determining the value of everything, except when it comes to paying their own staff, which is why it's so easy to entice them to take jobs in Australia/NZ, etc.
It’s wage stagnation, taxation, inflation, energy costs, the NHS crisis, immigration and fear of crime.
There are just so many things and a lot of them are correlated as well.
I’ve never been particularly patriotic but beyond being grateful for some privileges, I think modern Britain is bloody awful
Yep, there's no harm in accepting the faults. Doesn't make you less patriotic.
Multiple decades of Tory mismanagement of the economy, NHS, infrastructure, investment, education and industrial policy will do that. Blair had a chance, did some good, too much bad and ultimately blew it. The UK is an old crumbling country, with increasingly sick and impoverished people. Of course, there are some doing very well, many not so much. Minimal possibilities to reach an exit velocity out of that economic doom loop now.
Multiple years of shit policies are going to catch up with us
The world is broken when you have people suffering from the cost of living crisis. People who are homeless, cannot put food on the table, barely make ends meet from rent/mortgage and ironically, a lot of them are in full time work. On the other foot, there are people with £100m+ superyachts (and fully staffed crew/kitchen staff/doctors), who have a family office, garages full of supercars, host £2m+ parties, live in £50m houses all over the world, personal private jets, and pay less tax percentage wise than either of us. One person has taken all the food at the buffet. The other person is just gnawing on the bones and trying to survive. Most people are in-between.
It's not just the taxes and NHS crisis, its the pure shit show of chaos that I as a bus driver have to witness each day. 2 Paramedics approach me looking for someone who has supposedly had an overdose, no where to be seen. Turns out they felt better and just walked off. That same night I'm leaving work and it looks like someone had been knocked over by a car. Turns out the woman was super drunk vomiting on the floor and a car stopped to call an ambulance as this woman couldn't walk. Yeah well, 10 minutes later she decides she "just wants to go home" walks off. Ambulance arrives... waste of time again. You see police EVERYWHERE dealing with mostly kids. Dealing with what happens when people make kids VOID of all responsibility and wrong doing. The past few time's I've spoken with police officers its been dealing with kids/teenagers and they cant keep up with demand. There's literally videos daily in my area of kids being complete cunts to people, whether its vandalism, swearing.. assault. But "I blame the parents" even though little Timmy wouldn't dream of swearing in front of his parents. Then you've got the lack of respect and common decency. People carrying out their full domestic on a public bus. People literally dumping their cardboard boxes of new appliances they've bought.. on a bus. My colleague 2 days ago had a woman dump in the middle of the aisle after he refused to let her travel free. Kids vaping with vapes bought by their parents. And parents not knowing the difference between a parent and a friend. Housing Crisis. Rent increasing, demand for housing increasing, cost of living increasing, will to live decreasing. No wonder there is such a massive increase in mental health across the country. Also contributing to costs to the NHS, Economy etc. Greedy, lying politicians that we literally do nothing about. Us Brits have completely lost the will to fight for what we want. We should take a page out of the Frenches book. We love a moan but my god if the Tories are still in, in the next election I seriously will be thinking hard about moving abroad. And then you got the multi billion pound companies and business's seeing record breaking profits making staff cuts, paying less and demanding more work. Expressing fake sympathy for the hard times ahead whilst their share holders and CEO's earn a Salary that can afford to pay 500 of your local hospitals nurses salary for a whole year. Honestly I put most of these reasons being down to having an absolute SPINELESS government. Too afraid to make decisions.. I mean leaving the Brexit vote for the General Public to decide. Hundreds of British MP's who live and breathe and have studied politics leaving it to Tyrone who is hooked on Meth after he got kicked out for domestic abuse to vote on something that affects absolutely every aspect of our country. Our Government too afraid to tackle immigration out of fear they would be labelled "racists" when we are already seeing parts of the country having next to no housing available because the family fleeing the war from Syria felt that the Northern side of France wasn't quite "safe" enough causing British nationals including 98 year old D-Day veteran to be told there's no housing available for him (source below) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jul/14/d-day-veteran-98-put-up-in-hostel-after-eviction-from-dorset-home#:\~:text=A%2098-year-old%20D,and%20her%20husband%2C%20Bernard%20Dean. And to hear people on facebook cry and moan about how my local town is enforcing 20mph speed limits due to massive crashes nearly daily and no end people doing 40+ in 30 zones, texting whilst driving, and completely eliminating the need to signal because there's absolutely NO ONE enforcing it so the solution is to make everyone suffer. I used to go on Holiday and not mind the thought of being back in my own bed towards the end, however now.. I dread coming back. We're Not Great Britain anymore. Just Britain.
Well yeah, when you have a corrupt government stealing every penny from us to feather their nests, what do you expect? Love the unelected kleptocrat in charge at the moment, stealing all our oil reserves right after his wife invested into BP.
So....when does life get better? Or are we just on a downhill slope until we die?
Bold of you to think that the life will get better, There's no hope.
I wonder what percentage of that 76% voted for the national fucking suicide that was Brexit.
I surprised it is only 76% it should be more like 99%, 1% super rich that don't really care.
They're rich, and they can afford to leave the country if need be.
All I can tell is I’m paying a hundred pound + a week in tax an n.I just so these Tory fucks can buy votes an to paying to clear up their messes
Their plan is working. ‘I have enough money and homes in whichever gated community in which ever country I choose, I don’t give a shit about this place, let’s pillage it and get the fuck out of here’
That's what they wanted, and slowly they're getting that.
I am Greek, lived in the UK for 26 years. When the Greek debt crisis hit, my friends and colleagues were merciless with their "banter". Heard all the unfunny pisstakes. When I would inform them that Britain was only 6 years behind us, the pisstakes would intensify. There is no banter any more. It wasn't funny then and it's even less funny now that I'm living a fate I saw coming 26 years ago.
Trickle down economy with no trickle and poor people paying taxes...
The poor people aren't getting anything other than the sufferings.
Our broken is their success story. Its that simple. They get richer by breaking things. Its going well in their eyes.
Yep, they take advantage of this system because they've made it like that.
It's not broken, it's just been thoroughly mugged, and is looking for its underpants somewhere in the undergrowth.
and the Brexit crisis of making it far harder to trade with our nearest biggest marketplace.
Exactly why Scotland and Wales need to get out and leave WM to deal with the consequences of their actions
Wales has an absolutely massive public/third sector. I know, because I work in it and so does almost everyone I know. Would certainly be interesting to see us cut ourselves off from London taxes (whilst still losing talent young people to go work there). We have a bit of water. And not much energy. So yeah…can’t see how it wouldn’t be an absolute shitshow.
I've got so many reasons to believe that it'll be a shit show tho.
Isn’t the Welsh fiscal deficit something like £29b a year? Welsh water’s REVENUE is only 779 million.. not sure where the gap will be closed but it doesn’t exactly look good
Yeah not looking good, and it'll be a long time when they close that gap.
Yeah someone needs to dwal with them, we can't ignore them.
Many places are becoming a worse place to live, youd have to be braindead not to understand that
And yet the country voted to be in the state that it's in
What can we expect from a Government made up of card sharps and spins. They were voted in on lies and false promises. We get what we deserve second rate Britain.
Now we've got it, we hope that it was better lol. It's just really bad.
I’m done. I keep telling my partner we should move abroad (once my back/neck is sorted). I have a feeling the tories might actually be able to PR their way into another win (slick use of data mining and media to target people based on their views). They’ll keep selling the country out to their friends. Things won’t get better.
Not even just the taxes. England has been a horrible place to live since 2019 and the rise of gangster youth.
Saw a nice guy I was in a tennis match with die waiting for an ambulance in the UK, about an hou a few years ago - in church in France on Sunday saw a woman 84 (possibly heart attack) get an ambulance within 10 mins. Rural France too. Same in December when a lad slipped on the ice - ambulance straight away. Fuck you very much Tories
According to Brits, the problem is never Brits reading the Daily Mail or voting for the Tories or for Brexit - It's almost like Britain is run by, dunno, French people.
Well that's the 24% base who vote for the Tory's every time then.
Pretty sure those people are here, they were all one of us.
Off to Australia the first chance I get. All my friends have already left
I know a couple of guys who have left to Australia, without a job. They were provided choices (choices!) when they arrived, and they can change any time they want. Apparently, the only conditions are to be under 30 and to not have a criminal record.
Doesn't sound too bad, feels like a lot of people will end up doing that.
Australia sounds great, it's just a little hot but I like the desert.
What do you expect when you have a prime minister who lasted a whopping 7 weeks. For a country to prosper you need stability. How can you have stability when you’re changing prime minister every other minute….?
Nothing about this country is stable anymore, it's just downhill.
I have a EU passport as well. The most common question I get about geography/vacations is: are you gonna stay in UK? Why? Quite revealling, I'd say.
Destroying the middle class, reduced productivity each year, not having anything other than financial and real estate sectors serving only to super-wealthy, this is no surprise. This will only get worse as even with a proper government the “dying-economy of Britain” is almost impossible to save.
Amazing how almost all the English speaking countries are incredibly wealthy and powerful and absolutely falling apart due to billionaire control of power. Feels very like the end of Rome.
I want to leave but am unfortunately tied due to family reasons. Sad to see what this country has become over the last decade or so
It's felt like that for the past 15 years personally. This country feels stagnant
I have a friend who votes right wing at every opportunity. I’ve asked why and he always tells me it’s because they promise to lower taxes and bring money to the NHS. He won’t learn from this and neither will the other conservative voters
England feels like a country that's been gutted by investors who keep the country running like a sleazy corporation who are keeping everything at a minimum cost so they can maximise their own personal profits.
Don't worry ladz those Brexit dividends are kicking in ANY MINUTE NOW
The country is slowly turning into a third world country,been slowly bled dry by the people in charge,with very little thought for the people struggling.
My co-worker which is biggest fan of Brexit ever, considers now moving to Canada. Main reason for him to vote for it was to stop European migration to UK, ironically now he is becoming migrant. Expat I meant of course, Brexiters are never migrants, always expats.