4 ms·

The UK is in a downward spiral. For the past decades, the bottom 90% of people have become poorer. It’s so bad now that 45% of adults say they are struggling to

by pavlov 4y ago

The UK is in a downward spiral. For the past decades, the bottom 90% of people have become poorer. It’s so bad now that 45% of adults say they are struggling to keep up with at least one bill or credit commitment [1]. Almost a majority of households are constantly on the brink of financial collapse. The Conservative Party has been in power for 13 years and bears most of the responsibility. They’ve tried every trick in the right-wing playbook: cutting social services to the bone, blaming immigrants and Europeans, stoking internal divisions, and most recently Liz Truss’s record short-lived government tried to solve everything by cutting taxes for the rich. The country desperately needs new ideas and a complete purge of these clowns from government. [1] https://www.ft.com/content/524a7e1e-4ff0-48d6-b9b1-973a9dd4e8d9 https://www.ft.com/content/524a7e1e-4ff0-48d6-b9b1-973a9dd4e...

PaulHoule 4y ago
My content-based recommender shows me a lot of articles from The Guardian and I must admit I get a perverse pleasure out of watching a train that keeps crashing and crashing. In the US we had Jan 6 but Brexit was a much more serious wound to the UK than anything the Trump administration or congressional Republicans have ever done. I am just waiting for the strikebreaker's union to go on strike! Labor has some culpability in this in that Tony Blair stole Margaret Thatcher's playbook (just as Clinton did Reagan's) and then Labor was taken over by Jeremy Corbin who seemed to look to Cuba and Venezuela as role models. I like the current leader, Keir Starmer, who helped represent the defendants in the McLibel trial.
- rayiner 4y ago
  > In the US we had Jan 6 but Brexit was a much more serious wound to the UK than anything the Trump administration or congressional Republicans have ever done. Globalism is really a remarkable belief system. How can the U.K. leaving a trade union generate such strong feelings across the Atlantic?
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    (1) It is has contributed to a general economic crisis, (2) It has been destructive to farmers and many other businesses because they no longer have easy access to the large EU market, (3) the EU provided a convenient answer to the problem w/ the Northern Ireland border that could keep everybody happy (come and go as you please!) I know a lot of people in the finance biz in London which is particularly devastated. The UK pushed the EU into much more openness and transparency than they would have had on their own, "passporting" made it possible to sell financial services across the whole market. One reason why London leads the world in finance is the great talent it attracts and Brexit has sent many of those people packing.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      > I know a lot of people in the finance biz in London which is particularly devastated. Isn't that a good thing? At least in the long run?
      - chii 4y ago
        > Isn't that a good thing? At least in the long run? why is that? The move away from london didn't improve productivity, it's a pure cost. Brexit was an own-goal, and none of the troubles it caused needed to happen, and having achieved brexit brought zero good outcomes to Britain.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
        rayiner 4y ago
        > why is that? The move away from london didn't improve productivity, it's a pure cost. I mean good for the UK. If the cancer cells voluntarily leave your body for somewhere else isn’t that a good thing?
        Nextgrid 4y ago
lm28469 4y ago
> The UK is in a downward spiral. From "greatest" empire of the world to a small island no body cares besides for their funny politicians, in 100 years (speedun edition)
- asdadsdad 4y ago
  London is beautiful tho =)
  - PaulHoule 4y ago
    I think the UK ex. London is beautiful. I'm in no hurry to go back to London, which I think is like something Dickens warned you about. I grew up in New Hampshire and my understanding is that the geological structure the White Mountains is part of has the other part in Ireland and the UK and I would love to hike there someday. Also I am an admirer of many British Youtubers. Anyhow there is nothing unique about it being hard to get help for mental health in the UK. It's bad in the US too.
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Was. London no longer feels enjoyable to me since the pandemic. The high-street and hospitality/entertainment industry has been decimated, whatever's left is worse and more expensive. Transport is awful, even black cabs are hard to get nowadays where as before they used to be very reliable if you were happy to pay the price.
    - asdadsdad 4y ago
      true I guess. I think everything is just more commercialized than it used to be. Expensive and poor quality
- bloqs 4y ago
  You say it with spite as if a 1000 year reich is more desirable?
uhtred 4y ago
> The UK is in a downward spiral. For the past decades, the bottom 90% of people have become poorer. It’s so bad now that 45% of adults say they are struggling to keep up with at least one bill or credit commitment [1]. Almost a majority of households are constantly on the brink of financial collapse. This could describe many developed countries right now, especially the US. > The country desperately needs new ideas and a complete purge of these clowns from government. Problem is the slugs keep voting for salt.
rayiner 4y ago
> The Conservative Party has been in power for 13 years and bears most of the responsibility. UK's per-capita GDP displays the exact same pattern as France and Italy: growth until 2007, the bubble popping in 2008, and instead of a recovery, slow decline thereafter. An alternative hypothesis to yours is that all of Western Europe drank the Kool Aid of globalization and financialiazation in the past few decades, and that messed up the fundamentals of their economies. See: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=GB https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... (UK) and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... (France)
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  One thing to keep in mind is that even if all else being equal, being poor in the UK is much worse than in a southern country due to the climate and the energy requirement of heating. UK's awful building standards from back in the day don't help. Also, inflation and energy prices are worse in the UK than many European countries, compounding the problem.
valdiorn 4y ago
As much fun as it is to blame the Tories, this is global economics at work, not bad social policies. The UK no longer makes anything. We facilitate and service. But that type of work only works for certain people, with certain skills, in certain areas. The same goes for many other western economies.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >The UK no longer makes anything What about Bentley, Rolls Royce, submarines, jet engines and other aero parts, luxury goods, Dr. WHO, Top Gear, short term politicians and more? Also buckfast ;)
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    This would be a case where it's important to remember that in everyday conversations absolute statements should usually be interpreted as relative statements. >> The UK no longer makes anything ≈≈ The UK has a weak manufacturing sector OR ≈≈ The UK does not manufacture much.
- Oxidation 4y ago
  > The UK no longer makes anything. The Tories are almost exclusively responsible for that. With education and long-term industrial policy, there could have been an enormous high-tech manufacturing sector underpinned by an educated workforce to replace the older primary industries like coal mining and "low secondary" like bulk steel. These policies should have started in the early 80s, but instead at that time they started slashing and selling. Germany has a lot of faults policy-wise, but they somehow managed to keep manufacturing despite spending trillions on reunification right in middle.
  - ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    >Germany has a lot of faults policy-wise, but they somehow managed to keep manufacturing despite spending trillions on reunification right in middle. To be fair Germany's manufacturing sector has no secret sauce that Germany invented, but is a sector that managed to survive mostly due to cheap energy from Russian gas, which is now gone, and is highly dependent on a constant stream of mass migration keeping wages in manufacturing low and therefore the cost of German exports competitive.

by pavlov 4y ago

PaulHoule 4y ago

My content-based recommender shows me a lot of articles from The Guardian and I must admit I get a perverse pleasure out of watching a train that keeps crashing and crashing. In the US we had Jan 6 but Brexit was a much more serious wound to the UK than anything the Trump administration or congressional Republicans have ever done. I am just waiting for the strikebreaker's union to go on strike! Labor has some culpability in this in that Tony Blair stole Margaret Thatcher's playbook (just as Clinton did Reagan's) and then Labor was taken over by Jeremy Corbin who seemed to look to Cuba and Venezuela as role models. I like the current leader, Keir Starmer, who helped represent the defendants in the McLibel trial.

rayiner 4y ago
> In the US we had Jan 6 but Brexit was a much more serious wound to the UK than anything the Trump administration or congressional Republicans have ever done. Globalism is really a remarkable belief system. How can the U.K. leaving a trade union generate such strong feelings across the Atlantic?
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  (1) It is has contributed to a general economic crisis, (2) It has been destructive to farmers and many other businesses because they no longer have easy access to the large EU market, (3) the EU provided a convenient answer to the problem w/ the Northern Ireland border that could keep everybody happy (come and go as you please!) I know a lot of people in the finance biz in London which is particularly devastated. The UK pushed the EU into much more openness and transparency than they would have had on their own, "passporting" made it possible to sell financial services across the whole market. One reason why London leads the world in finance is the great talent it attracts and Brexit has sent many of those people packing.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    > I know a lot of people in the finance biz in London which is particularly devastated. Isn't that a good thing? At least in the long run?
    - chii 4y ago
      > Isn't that a good thing? At least in the long run? why is that? The move away from london didn't improve productivity, it's a pure cost. Brexit was an own-goal, and none of the troubles it caused needed to happen, and having achieved brexit brought zero good outcomes to Britain.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - rayiner 4y ago
        > why is that? The move away from london didn't improve productivity, it's a pure cost. I mean good for the UK. If the cancer cells voluntarily leave your body for somewhere else isn’t that a good thing?
        Nextgrid 4y ago

lm28469 4y ago

> The UK is in a downward spiral. From "greatest" empire of the world to a small island no body cares besides for their funny politicians, in 100 years (speedun edition)

asdadsdad 4y ago
London is beautiful tho =)
- PaulHoule 4y ago
  I think the UK ex. London is beautiful. I'm in no hurry to go back to London, which I think is like something Dickens warned you about. I grew up in New Hampshire and my understanding is that the geological structure the White Mountains is part of has the other part in Ireland and the UK and I would love to hike there someday. Also I am an admirer of many British Youtubers. Anyhow there is nothing unique about it being hard to get help for mental health in the UK. It's bad in the US too.
- Nextgrid 4y ago
  Was. London no longer feels enjoyable to me since the pandemic. The high-street and hospitality/entertainment industry has been decimated, whatever's left is worse and more expensive. Transport is awful, even black cabs are hard to get nowadays where as before they used to be very reliable if you were happy to pay the price.
  - asdadsdad 4y ago
    true I guess. I think everything is just more commercialized than it used to be. Expensive and poor quality
bloqs 4y ago
You say it with spite as if a 1000 year reich is more desirable?

uhtred 4y ago

> The UK is in a downward spiral. For the past decades, the bottom 90% of people have become poorer. It’s so bad now that 45% of adults say they are struggling to keep up with at least one bill or credit commitment [1]. Almost a majority of households are constantly on the brink of financial collapse. This could describe many developed countries right now, especially the US. > The country desperately needs new ideas and a complete purge of these clowns from government. Problem is the slugs keep voting for salt.

rayiner 4y ago

> The Conservative Party has been in power for 13 years and bears most of the responsibility. UK's per-capita GDP displays the exact same pattern as France and Italy: growth until 2007, the bubble popping in 2008, and instead of a recovery, slow decline thereafter. An alternative hypothesis to yours is that all of Western Europe drank the Kool Aid of globalization and financialiazation in the past few decades, and that messed up the fundamentals of their economies. See: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=GB https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... (UK) and https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=FR https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location... (France)

Nextgrid 4y ago
One thing to keep in mind is that even if all else being equal, being poor in the UK is much worse than in a southern country due to the climate and the energy requirement of heating. UK's awful building standards from back in the day don't help. Also, inflation and energy prices are worse in the UK than many European countries, compounding the problem.

valdiorn 4y ago

As much fun as it is to blame the Tories, this is global economics at work, not bad social policies. The UK no longer makes anything. We facilitate and service. But that type of work only works for certain people, with certain skills, in certain areas. The same goes for many other western economies.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>The UK no longer makes anything What about Bentley, Rolls Royce, submarines, jet engines and other aero parts, luxury goods, Dr. WHO, Top Gear, short term politicians and more? Also buckfast ;)
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  This would be a case where it's important to remember that in everyday conversations absolute statements should usually be interpreted as relative statements. >> The UK no longer makes anything ≈≈ The UK has a weak manufacturing sector OR ≈≈ The UK does not manufacture much.
Oxidation 4y ago
> The UK no longer makes anything. The Tories are almost exclusively responsible for that. With education and long-term industrial policy, there could have been an enormous high-tech manufacturing sector underpinned by an educated workforce to replace the older primary industries like coal mining and "low secondary" like bulk steel. These policies should have started in the early 80s, but instead at that time they started slashing and selling. Germany has a lot of faults policy-wise, but they somehow managed to keep manufacturing despite spending trillions on reunification right in middle.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >Germany has a lot of faults policy-wise, but they somehow managed to keep manufacturing despite spending trillions on reunification right in middle. To be fair Germany's manufacturing sector has no secret sauce that Germany invented, but is a sector that managed to survive mostly due to cheap energy from Russian gas, which is now gone, and is highly dependent on a constant stream of mass migration keeping wages in manufacturing low and therefore the cost of German exports competitive.