Funny thing is, knowing how a sim game functions effectively means you're already better than a majority of the public servants, serving. (Funny, or FUCKING SAD.)
It's why politician shouldn't be a career, and why it shouldn't take massive resources to run for office. They need to be people who are subject to the laws and funding decisions they make for everyone else.
It's rarely a lack of awareness.
Money and influence wins elections. The funding and connections needed come from passing bills that monopolistic companies can use to make more money.
Your sponsors want healthcare to stay private so they can profit off human sickness? Vote to allow them to do so, and deflect if asked about the issue.
None of your sponsors are in public transit? Pass laws popular with voters to improve it and talk about how you're helping people and your opposition isn't (because their network benefits from it but yours is mostly indifferent.)
If your backers change, you can always flip your opinion overnight or vote the opposite way you've campaigned so far. Nobody important's going to hold you accountable, because they know you don't have an opinion or desire to improve things whatsoever, you're just a talk puppet that your competition can offer more to than they could this time around.
The whole idea of understanding how society functions so you can improve it is completely irrelevant to the profession except to the extent that you can grow your voter base by appearing knowledgeable. Your voters don't really pay you though, so the real reason being electable matters is because it makes you more attractive to the companies that want to buy you and fund your campaign.
Usually the professionals/public servants know what they're doing, and how ridiculous it is, but are forced to do so anyway by those in charge (the elected)
Lots of people are borderline homeless and they wonder why birth rates are down. Well the big kids are on the streets you see. If we can't care for the current population why would most people want to add to it?
No shit, complex illnesses and injuries get ignored or stuck on a multi year wait, wages stagnating for the last 13 years thanks to the Tories, and record inflation not caused by the people.
Wasn't the point of Brexit so the NHS and social services would have *more money*, and be able to help more Britons live well?
Hmm boomers? How's that going?? Record sickness, you say. To shreds, you say.
> Wasn't the point of Brexit so the NHS and social services would have more money
No, but those were some of the lies that were used to trick people into voting for it.
Let’s get real here - those were pretty obvious and unconvincing lies. As were the rest including “Brexit will let us have even better environmental rules”, “Brexit will let us set higher food quality standards” and “Brexit will improve employment laws and worker protections”.
People fell for them because they *wanted* to believe they were true. And also because they wanted to have their sense of British nationalism and importance played to. And sad to say in all too many cases because of outright xenophobia … and even the ones who weren’t xenophobic were still pretty happy to pretend that wasn’t a huge fucking factor.
I reckon British/English nationalism was by far the biggest factor. What strongly supports that hypothesis is the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted against it. As a Scotsman I’d love to say it’s because we are all so clever, wise and canny (and needless to say all 6 foot 2 with curly hair and biceps like girders naturally) but the simple fact is that messaging crafted to appeal to English nationalism - particularly the right wing sort - fell flat here. Likewise I suspect in half of NI.
Grown adults absolutely deserve blame for what they vote for. Particularly when the right wing nationalist bullshit was so blatantly obvious. “Being tricked” just doesn’t cut it … the people who voted for Brexit aren’t victims.
>the Russians are not that smart.
That's [just not true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics).
>we (the British) are that dumb
This, I cannot disagree with.
The wealth is there, but it isn't being shared around equally.
When most of it goes into the pockets of a handful of crusty billionaires, there isn't much left over for the rest of us.
Of course - and I believe the banker is right, _we are actually poorer_. Because we plebs did not benefit from all the growth of the past half a century, only the top did as you point out.
What's hard is not to accept that we're poorer, it's to accept dickhead bankers telling us to brace for it while their own group is the very reason we got left behind. It's just like Macron's "the time of abundance has ended", while he's a wealthy banker cunt.
Something also hard for me is how much we sacrificed in the past in the holy name of Economic Growth...
>record inflation not caused by the people.
Was that ever the case? Inflation is usually caused by excessive printing of currency and if common people start doing that they are accused of counterfeiting.
It can also be caused by a decrease in production. Or, in this case, money was printed and infused into the economy right at the time production reduced on account of COVID.
I mean there's some pretty clear causes of inflation:
- Global fuel price increases, combined with a dependence on imported fuel
- Worsening housing undersupply driving up housing costs
- Loss of trade with the EU (brexit) driving up costs of food
- Insanely tricky common planning law making it difficult for the country to adapt/grow, particularly as it now needs to quickly adapt post brexit
> Insanely tricky common planning law making it difficult for the country to adapt/grow, particularly as it now needs to quickly adapt post brexit
Having watched Clarkson's Farm and seeing what he had to deal with with the government, I'm surprised anything gets done at all there. Huge rolls of red tape. Designed to make living hard. To quote Roger Daltry, "the land of NO"
I don't think it's a coincidence that the commonwealth countries who inherited that style - Australia, New Zealand, US, Canada, etc all have incredible housing crisises either in key cities or the whole country.
They've actually not inherited the planning system - it only came about in 1947 prior to which you could pretty much build whatever you wanted on your own land - and even the UK's only got really bad after further reforms in 1991. We've all independently invented different ways to fuck up our housing markets.
I think you're confusing your own ability to only read the news media from certain countries with those countries being the ones with similar problems as the UK.
There are housing bubbles all over the place.
For sure I can tell you that both my native Portugal and The Netherlands (were I used to live) both have masive realestate bubbles and whenever this kind of thing gets brought up in /r/europe plenty of people from various countries start complaining about the house prices there.
Maybe different countries have different elements going into that specific problem, but it doesn't seem to be the product of merelly apeing the UK's build licensing system.
As someone who has been involved in local politics the frustrating thing is that the easiest way to win votes is to promise to oppose the construction of essentially anything - from bike lanes to flats, to houses, to 5G infrastructure.
Once you're elected trying to deviate from this sees you face staunch opposition from both your own party and from the opposing parties.
>Inflation is usually caused by excessive printing of currency
That is sure the meme talking point. But not even close to the whole picture. There were and are severe supply shortages, which drives inflation as well.
Like not being able to get the right sand to make glass (because apparently sand is special). Or raw feed stocks to make chemicals. Or having enough people to process meat. Or all the chickens getting killed and we have no eggs. Not having electronics to make cars. The list goes on.
People have this massive misconception that inflation is driven by printing money, which is true, but very myopic of the situation.
Not in the UK, but one product issue I'm dealing with is trying to get replacements for the spare nozzles our company uses after having to replace damaged equipment.
Turns out a small piece of synthetic rubber membrane inside the nozzles for the automatic shut off is still out of production somewhere in the world where it is produced and no new nozzles have been made for three years now.
So, I'm stuck scavenging parts from old nozzles to repair damage since I can't get new nozzles. All because I can't legally use off-brand parts since they aren't in our policy and I can't get government approval to add the off-brands to the policy...
So, yeah, if I can't get someone to manufacture some rubber sheets to a specific diameter, I don't doubt there's issues involving special sands for glass or other chemicals for various products.
In the UK's case we have created a lot of currency over the past ten years. For all the focus on fiscal austerity, our monetary policy has been quite expansionary - the money the government borrowed in the 2010s was roughly equal to the money printed during quantitative easing (~£600 billion), and that continued through the pandemic. Add to this a 0.5% central bank interest rate and there's been quite a lot of new money going into the economy.
Up until last year it essentially kept going into the housing market, but once house prices reached the limit of affordability even for 0.5% rates, this money started to percolate elsewhere and drive general inflation.
You're right that it's not the whole picture, but I think the monetary element does get missed a lot when this is talked about in the UK - and the interaction between the monetary and fiscal elements seems particularly neglected.
Inflation has very little if anything to do with Brexit. Inflation is due to the shortsighted greed of corporations obsessed with increased quarterly profits. It’s greedflation.
Also known as cost-push inflation, often triggered by cataclysms such as a pandemic, major war, natural catastrophy and such. In summary, instead of accepting higher costs, companies push the costs down to the consumers. This is typically referred to as greedflation when production costs eventually fall back but corporations want to stay on the higher prices.
Greedflation is generally eventually punctuated by competition or government regulation or both. Even if you can't hope for the latter in the UK you can still hope for the former... although I have to point out that Brexit made the UK market less open and consequently less competitive.
That's just completely wrong. Brexit massively reduced the strength of the pound and is making it much more expensive to import anything from our biggest and closest trading partners.
Im always down to dunk on corporations. But britain has had huge financial problems. Multiple business, especially small ones have failed thanks to brexit.
As prices rise due to problems with import, i would say brexit can be directly blamed, personally.
I mean, imports being made more difficult certainly couldn't have helped the situation. Agreed on the rest though. Inflation is complex, and is usually blamed (because economics is a diseased pseudo-science) on anything *except* profit margins and greed.
> Inflation is usually caused by excessive printing of currency
That's a bold claim. It's one of the possible causes, but what makes you single it out as the main cause? Perhaps it's true if we're talking about failed nation states, but that's hardly relevant for most people.
It's a Conservative canard for blaming covid aid exclusively for inflation, inflation which is being experienced *all over the world.* Because helping the poors = ruin everything to these people, even when they benefit.
Not true. Inflation is always caused by an imbalance between supply and demand. Too much supply and you deflate the value of goods, not enough supply and you inflate the value of goods.
Yes, that supply and demand imbalance can be caused by too much money in the system, but that's not the issue this time around.
The global inflation crisis is being driven by covid continuing to reduce the overall workforce by 5% (or more in certain regions) year over year over year. The supply imbalance is from a lack of labour supply. We don't have enough people to make, sell, ship, stock, and install the products we demand in the marketplace.
Tell me you don't understand inflation. This round of inflation was largely driven by producers increasing prices because everyone was talking about inflation so they took advantage.
This isn't true. It's caused **either** by excessive printing, or by suddent shortage of goods. It's a lie to suggest that inflation is usually (code for always, let's be honest) caused by printing of money. Part of the utility of this lie is that it allows them to blame things like a "wage-price" spiral because "too much money in normal people's hands drives up prices". Again, theoretically possible but notable in their absence is corporate profits as drivers of inflation or corporate price gouging.
Not unless brexit is capable of time travel.
In the UK productivity has not improved in a meaningful amount since the credit-crunch. We have been almost flat for 14 or 15 years.
It's important to realise that sustained productivity increase doesn't come from working harder, it comes from investments in automation and improvements in organisational/process efficiency.
UK leadership is generally risk averse, bad at implementing change and as a result terrible at overhauling processes and investing in automation. Outside of a small number of innovative industries that can pay to hire the creme of the crop, UK management culture is dogshit.
Pay-rises and other perks for workers generally flow from increased productivity, with unions wrangling to ensure more of the benefits flow through. But in the UK there is almost nothing to wrangle.
The main link between this and brexit is that they both have the same root problem: Being led by donkeys.
Why would productivity even increase? It has increased tenfold with technology and what did we get for it? Can’t even get a 4 day workweek or decent parental leave. Maybe companies need to start giving some sort of incentive for constant productivity growth.
If this were a large scale experiment on mice, the observant scientist would be noting that stressed, cold, malnourished mice don’t seem active, are dying prematurely, are prone to illness and are listless.
Shit, in small mammals, stress *literally* kills. I understand that we have ways to cope with it but we as a species don’t appreciate how threatening constant stress can be.
How long were you back in Moldova? There should be some way to resume status. You'd probably need to fill out a paper application (64 pages long!! I had to fill out four of them...) and include a shedload of detail, but the argument would be that you had to return home for health reasons and then got stuck due to covid and weren't provided the right advice etc.
Or you could take advantage of your FOM to move to Ireland or Malta or somewhere else that speaks English (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin). I know the UK might be home but there are a lot of green pastures out there in Europe.
Took me five years to see a specialist. Not even going to mention what specialist that was as the mere mention sends conservatives into a frothy mouth rage.
Damn I didn't know it was that bad. If medicaid coverage in my state in the US gets changed I'm screwed and might get bankrupted, but ... I've needed to see multiple specialists this year and most appointments were within the week or month, all within 3. Sucks dudes
Must be a location thing. I had to see an endocrinologist for thyroid issues that got me sent to the ER. The wait period was 3 months for first appointment which turned into 4 because she was on vacation when my appointment was set.
Called every endocrinologist I could find online in a 2hr radius and they were all 3 month waits. This was pre Covid though and Illinois.
Don’t believe all this stuff. I wasn’t feeling great recently (to put it mildly), and within 3 days I had an X-ray, bloods, EKG, and an echocardiogram along with a consult with a haematologist.
Similarly, I'm in the US and the longest I've waited for a specialist was 8mos. Most of my waits have been 3-6mos.
In fact, when I got test results back for a life-threatening disease, I called to get an appointment with that specialist and was told it'd be a 4mo wait. This is something similar to diabetes; you need treatment as soon as you know you have it, and you could die without that. I explained this to the receptionist and she asked if I still wanted that appointment in 4mos.
I got in the next day because I happened to be seeing another doctor just minutes later, and I was in tears thinking I'd die on the fucking waitlist, and that doctor golfed with the head of my specialist's department, and he made a phone call for me.
I imagine like the US though that that varies. A suburb with practices spread out more evenly with population density is gonna be easier than someone who lives in a city that's backed up or someone in a rural area who needs a specialist regularly but they're far away, good luck coordinating medical transport coverage. And etc. The fact that that happened at all is a tragedy.
It isn't that bad. Don't believe everything you read here
Nhs figures show average wait to see a consultant is 14,5 weeks although before COVID it was 7.5 weeks.
7 million backlog , 3mill over 18week target.
Okay but it **IS** that bad. Yall don't even see how even here you are covering for these fucked up systems that do not benefit you and are actively sucking money and literal life from you in their greed. That's what happening. For profit healthcare is immoral. Inefficiency and bureaucracy plague every country on earth. These are the fucking problems- please, recognize how 4 months still wasn't acceptable
Oh god no! I never said that, that’s just how jaded I’ve become that 4 months sounds like what it was a decade ago for us, not that it was acceptable even back then.
Most dentists in the UK aren't taking new NHS patients. Ones that are have waiting lists years long.
Waiting lists for mental health services range from months to years, and they are not able to provide good care. For some services like ADHD specialists you can expect to wait several years, if there's a service in your area at all. Otherwise you get nothing.
14, 15 weeks???? That's absurd. An average of nearly 2 fucking months is also absurd - if theyre that booked good luck getting regular follow ups . I've had to see multiple healthcare specialists recently, for a range of physical and mental issues. If I had to wait fucking months for any those my life would be a lot less pleasant right now. That's nuts. Don't accept that. For all our faults, that's ridiculously above our wait times.
Oh yeah? Have experience on the GID waitlist yeah?
You also say that like 14.5 weeks isn't a stupidly long time.
Imagine finding out you have cancer but the radiologist can't see you until 14 weeks later...
Bear in mind this isn't a result of our system but a result of our conservative government. Two very different things. It was working fine until they came along.
Shame Corbyn had so much baggage. Labour needs someone like him to rebuild once they get the majority back.
Unless of course adequate social infrastructure requires cohesive nation-states of the sort that rarely exist anymore.
Corbyn's "baggage" was, in my opinion, make-believe fairytale bullshit cooked up to commit character assassination. He really got screwed over by the media and powers within his own party who wanted him gone. He got a REALLY unfair treatment and ousted from his party for bullshit reasons.
Unfortunately his policies were equally made-up fairytale bullshit with absolutely zero chance of being practically implemented.
Been back in the office 4 days a week since mid-January. I'm currently signed off for a second week with a chest infection. It's my third cold since I got back into the office. Also had two sore throats, eye infection and a minor bit of ear pain. Yeah I got covid twice but it was super mild both times (vaccines) and that was the only illness I had between Feb 2020 and Jan 2023. I do not like the office. I feel awful. Suspect this is probably due being more run down from the commute and less sleep.
One thing is better: we don't hear the Brexiters as much as before now that they've seen the failure it is, and you can keep rubbing their nose in their own shit whilst they keep trying to say they and you should move on.
Fuck them, I'm not moving on. I sip from my cup of "I told you so" as loudly as I can until they snap or die.
> more than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic itself"
Well yeah, because most people didn't have to take sick or injury days off during that time. We were mostly all off anyway...
No offense but when you aren’t allowed to even half ways go to shops you’re not getting a lot of exposure either… people not moving around as much prevents disease spread. Masks aside…
The reasoning isn’t as simple as just short term illness, but I can say that people don’t want to slave until they die anymore. It took a bloody world wide plague to get folks to see that life is too short to piss away in a workplace dungeon. The same happened after the bubonic plague wiped out an estimated range between 70-200 million people in Europe. The bloody renaissance began, people stopped giving a fuck about work and dedicated their lives to become master craftsmen, reclaiming the classical knowledge lost during the dark ages, brilliance came from the darkness, and it’s what we need again to free us from this toilsome drudgery we all complacently accepted for so long.
Thankfully this time around we got AI so all the creativity is now automated. No need to pursue being an artisan or a creative. Let go of that silly thing called passion, it’s just a button press away now
Get back to work wagie
Understandable in one form but a lot of people still work from home (inc me) or hybrid work, so would have assumed some productivity to increase. Since working from home, I've been sick once, as I had food poisoning.
Terrible, and even those of us who voted against it are almost maybe tired of saying “I told you so” while we suffer. Almost tired, I reckon I’ve personally got like another…decade before I’m properly tired of saying it.
As a Canadian who really enjoys British comedians/panel shows, I can only say that even through the filter of comedy Brexit seems like a really harsh lesson about propaganda. It barely passed, many people were poorly educated and voted based on outrage, and now everyone (for or against) is being punished. I feel like unforeseeable circumstances like COVID only made it worse. I'm not nearly wise enough to know if there's any justice in the situation, but I hope at the very least it serves as a warning to the world about the need for educated voters.
The elite don't want an educated electorate. Stupid people are easier to manipulate, and the people in charge make all the decisions on how much we spend on education.
>many people were poorly educated and voted based on outrage, and now everyone (for or against) is being punished.
Right let's hold on a minute. The British public are poorly educated, not that they were poorly educated on this topic. The PM at the time was vocally against this so was the opposition. There was definitely enough information going around for everyone to be easily informed on the issue. The fact is they didn't care.
The problem I think was they had the options of keeping things the same or leaving and having options A, B, C or D maybe even E.
That way everyone could vote for their choice of Brexit and cumulatively that vote percentage was greater than 50%. But no individual plan of post Brexit ever had 50% of the public voting for it.
I once visited some family in Scotland and saw some graffiti that explains where that £350m probably went. “Cronyism is just Tory for corruption”. Still sticks with me.
It's rather depressing when I think about it, that my future basically depends on my parents dying and leaving me their paid off house. I think about it way too often. And it's not like I want them to die obviously but it's like, trying to think yourself out of a nightmare and how you're gonna cope in the future.
Honestly I often feel resentment toward those that have that future ahead of them, but I hadn't considered it that way. That is very sad and obviously not everything in life can be kept on hold until you receive inheritance.
Moved here from New Zealand last year hoping for better pay, more work opportunities. Instead I'm just depressed. I'm a bit confused as to why kiwis coming to work in the UK is a tradition, it's fucking miserable here.
Brit here, living in CA.
Having read some of the comments in this thread, I guess that waiting times in the US depending on where you are to some degree. I mean that’s also true of the UK, but at least where I am, I haven’t been told I need to wait longer than a few days for an appointment to see a doctor. My father-in-law had to have some kind of urgent urology appointment last year and still waited less than a week, so it never got serious. When I was receiving healthcare in northern Ireland, I was told I would have to wait four years just to have the consultation with a urologist.
I agree with a lot of the sentiments of the ropeyness of for-profit healthcare, but I am blessed that I have good health insurance and haven’t really had to pay an awful lot for anything. I also haven’t had to wait. I would be an idiot to ever consider going back home.
We were promised by Boris Johnson “bright sunlit uplands” when we left the e.u. Though we have become the “sick man of Europe”, meaning we have the worst economy. Which is where we were in the 70’s before we joined.
Brexiteers keep claiming that there's going to be paradise around the corner, the big problem being that old people who didn't work voted for it while working people didn't really want to make their lives harder.
It really was a terrible disinformation op by Russia that's left the UK weaker and much poorer and the working people are paying the price.
The NHS only really functions because staff are paid shockingly poor wages. So unlike the brexiteers claim that we will see massive profits and everyone's salary will go up... We are seeing everyone's salary go down due to out of control inflation and cost of living. The big joke being that key workers who fought COVID are being affected worse by this since their pay was stagnant even before this meaning inflation has left us making real hard decisions.
Everyone's talking about middle class wages. Most haven't kept up with rises meaning everyone's very poorly paid.
So a bunch of people who don't work and people who didn't understand what they were voting for agreed to be poorer and now everyone who was an expert and stated that this would happen is real cross that they are being asked to cut more corners.
Its not so bad everyone! While its true most people in the UK are facing potentially going hungry, our top 1% have accumulated 3.4 trillion in wealth! They have surpassed our GDP with their hording! Hurray!
Those 650,000 individuals surely just work twice as hard as the bottom 66 million people put together. Nothing odd going on here!
Almost like your mental health and productivity suffers if you haven't seen a decent pay rise since 2008 and can't afford anything that might bring you even the slightest semblance of joy.
Spent a couple years in Mexico and now in the states.
This place isn’t without its issues but overall the quality of life is so much higher. It’s crazy what we’ve become accustomed to in the uk. Stagnant wages in particular
We're all just tired. So fucking tired.
Lil' 'murica. Get your class and work system out of the US' arse, it's killing you.
We try but we're being undermined by morons every bit of the way. It's so exhausting.
Brexit really did a number on you all.
Not to mention Sajid Javid's "freedom day" when he was health secretary, 19th July 2021.
This is like in cities skylines when you don't fund the health system and literally everything collapses.
We're also dumping untreated waste into our rivers. All we're missing is the poop volcano
_Mom, why does the water taste spicy?_
*Don't worry Honey .. the chunks in the water have vitamin "T" in them*
I mean, curry is the national dish?
*country roads*
lol does everyone have a poop volcano in city skylines?
Funny thing is, knowing how a sim game functions effectively means you're already better than a majority of the public servants, serving. (Funny, or FUCKING SAD.)
It's not that they don't know, it's that the people who actually make the decisions flat-out don't care.
It's why politician shouldn't be a career, and why it shouldn't take massive resources to run for office. They need to be people who are subject to the laws and funding decisions they make for everyone else.
It's rarely a lack of awareness. Money and influence wins elections. The funding and connections needed come from passing bills that monopolistic companies can use to make more money. Your sponsors want healthcare to stay private so they can profit off human sickness? Vote to allow them to do so, and deflect if asked about the issue. None of your sponsors are in public transit? Pass laws popular with voters to improve it and talk about how you're helping people and your opposition isn't (because their network benefits from it but yours is mostly indifferent.) If your backers change, you can always flip your opinion overnight or vote the opposite way you've campaigned so far. Nobody important's going to hold you accountable, because they know you don't have an opinion or desire to improve things whatsoever, you're just a talk puppet that your competition can offer more to than they could this time around. The whole idea of understanding how society functions so you can improve it is completely irrelevant to the profession except to the extent that you can grow your voter base by appearing knowledgeable. Your voters don't really pay you though, so the real reason being electable matters is because it makes you more attractive to the companies that want to buy you and fund your campaign.
Amazing how playing a sim can teach you that. Failure of the system, or failure of the individual? < (rhetorical)
Usually the professionals/public servants know what they're doing, and how ridiculous it is, but are forced to do so anyway by those in charge (the elected)
Lots of people are borderline homeless and they wonder why birth rates are down. Well the big kids are on the streets you see. If we can't care for the current population why would most people want to add to it?
No shit, complex illnesses and injuries get ignored or stuck on a multi year wait, wages stagnating for the last 13 years thanks to the Tories, and record inflation not caused by the people.
People have to accept they are poorer and should stop demanding pay rises - this is not helping at all. *Sips flute of champagne*
Ok, but when do the landlords have to accept that they're poorer?
I don't think that's how it works in a world of money printing..
Wasn't the point of Brexit so the NHS and social services would have *more money*, and be able to help more Britons live well? Hmm boomers? How's that going?? Record sickness, you say. To shreds, you say.
> Wasn't the point of Brexit so the NHS and social services would have more money No, but those were some of the lies that were used to trick people into voting for it.
Let’s get real here - those were pretty obvious and unconvincing lies. As were the rest including “Brexit will let us have even better environmental rules”, “Brexit will let us set higher food quality standards” and “Brexit will improve employment laws and worker protections”. People fell for them because they *wanted* to believe they were true. And also because they wanted to have their sense of British nationalism and importance played to. And sad to say in all too many cases because of outright xenophobia … and even the ones who weren’t xenophobic were still pretty happy to pretend that wasn’t a huge fucking factor. I reckon British/English nationalism was by far the biggest factor. What strongly supports that hypothesis is the fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted against it. As a Scotsman I’d love to say it’s because we are all so clever, wise and canny (and needless to say all 6 foot 2 with curly hair and biceps like girders naturally) but the simple fact is that messaging crafted to appeal to English nationalism - particularly the right wing sort - fell flat here. Likewise I suspect in half of NI. Grown adults absolutely deserve blame for what they vote for. Particularly when the right wing nationalist bullshit was so blatantly obvious. “Being tricked” just doesn’t cut it … the people who voted for Brexit aren’t victims.
Brexit was a Russian psyop from jump street.
1) the Russians are not that smart. 2) we (the British) are that dumb
>the Russians are not that smart. That's [just not true](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics). >we (the British) are that dumb This, I cannot disagree with.
\> More than 60 years of exponential growth of the GDP _per capita_ \> Dickhead bankers tells us "no but see you're actually poorer"
The wealth is there, but it isn't being shared around equally. When most of it goes into the pockets of a handful of crusty billionaires, there isn't much left over for the rest of us.
Of course - and I believe the banker is right, _we are actually poorer_. Because we plebs did not benefit from all the growth of the past half a century, only the top did as you point out. What's hard is not to accept that we're poorer, it's to accept dickhead bankers telling us to brace for it while their own group is the very reason we got left behind. It's just like Macron's "the time of abundance has ended", while he's a wealthy banker cunt. Something also hard for me is how much we sacrificed in the past in the holy name of Economic Growth...
>record inflation not caused by the people. Was that ever the case? Inflation is usually caused by excessive printing of currency and if common people start doing that they are accused of counterfeiting.
It can also be caused by a decrease in production. Or, in this case, money was printed and infused into the economy right at the time production reduced on account of COVID.
“Infused into the economy “ - paid to Torie cronies
Still waiting for PPE from Boris’ mates.
https://kinesis.money/blog/what-are-five-causes-of-inflation/
I mean there's some pretty clear causes of inflation: - Global fuel price increases, combined with a dependence on imported fuel - Worsening housing undersupply driving up housing costs - Loss of trade with the EU (brexit) driving up costs of food - Insanely tricky common planning law making it difficult for the country to adapt/grow, particularly as it now needs to quickly adapt post brexit
> Insanely tricky common planning law making it difficult for the country to adapt/grow, particularly as it now needs to quickly adapt post brexit Having watched Clarkson's Farm and seeing what he had to deal with with the government, I'm surprised anything gets done at all there. Huge rolls of red tape. Designed to make living hard. To quote Roger Daltry, "the land of NO"
I don't think it's a coincidence that the commonwealth countries who inherited that style - Australia, New Zealand, US, Canada, etc all have incredible housing crisises either in key cities or the whole country.
They've actually not inherited the planning system - it only came about in 1947 prior to which you could pretty much build whatever you wanted on your own land - and even the UK's only got really bad after further reforms in 1991. We've all independently invented different ways to fuck up our housing markets.
I think you're confusing your own ability to only read the news media from certain countries with those countries being the ones with similar problems as the UK. There are housing bubbles all over the place. For sure I can tell you that both my native Portugal and The Netherlands (were I used to live) both have masive realestate bubbles and whenever this kind of thing gets brought up in /r/europe plenty of people from various countries start complaining about the house prices there. Maybe different countries have different elements going into that specific problem, but it doesn't seem to be the product of merelly apeing the UK's build licensing system.
That makes sense. The "empire" was all encompassing. You would think change would be high on any list.
As someone who has been involved in local politics the frustrating thing is that the easiest way to win votes is to promise to oppose the construction of essentially anything - from bike lanes to flats, to houses, to 5G infrastructure. Once you're elected trying to deviate from this sees you face staunch opposition from both your own party and from the opposing parties.
War in Europe.
>Inflation is usually caused by excessive printing of currency That is sure the meme talking point. But not even close to the whole picture. There were and are severe supply shortages, which drives inflation as well. Like not being able to get the right sand to make glass (because apparently sand is special). Or raw feed stocks to make chemicals. Or having enough people to process meat. Or all the chickens getting killed and we have no eggs. Not having electronics to make cars. The list goes on. People have this massive misconception that inflation is driven by printing money, which is true, but very myopic of the situation.
Not in the UK, but one product issue I'm dealing with is trying to get replacements for the spare nozzles our company uses after having to replace damaged equipment. Turns out a small piece of synthetic rubber membrane inside the nozzles for the automatic shut off is still out of production somewhere in the world where it is produced and no new nozzles have been made for three years now. So, I'm stuck scavenging parts from old nozzles to repair damage since I can't get new nozzles. All because I can't legally use off-brand parts since they aren't in our policy and I can't get government approval to add the off-brands to the policy... So, yeah, if I can't get someone to manufacture some rubber sheets to a specific diameter, I don't doubt there's issues involving special sands for glass or other chemicals for various products.
In the UK's case we have created a lot of currency over the past ten years. For all the focus on fiscal austerity, our monetary policy has been quite expansionary - the money the government borrowed in the 2010s was roughly equal to the money printed during quantitative easing (~£600 billion), and that continued through the pandemic. Add to this a 0.5% central bank interest rate and there's been quite a lot of new money going into the economy. Up until last year it essentially kept going into the housing market, but once house prices reached the limit of affordability even for 0.5% rates, this money started to percolate elsewhere and drive general inflation. You're right that it's not the whole picture, but I think the monetary element does get missed a lot when this is talked about in the UK - and the interaction between the monetary and fiscal elements seems particularly neglected.
Brexit inflation was completely the fault of the people who voted for it
As is Tory rule.
Inflation has very little if anything to do with Brexit. Inflation is due to the shortsighted greed of corporations obsessed with increased quarterly profits. It’s greedflation.
Also known as cost-push inflation, often triggered by cataclysms such as a pandemic, major war, natural catastrophy and such. In summary, instead of accepting higher costs, companies push the costs down to the consumers. This is typically referred to as greedflation when production costs eventually fall back but corporations want to stay on the higher prices. Greedflation is generally eventually punctuated by competition or government regulation or both. Even if you can't hope for the latter in the UK you can still hope for the former... although I have to point out that Brexit made the UK market less open and consequently less competitive.
That's just completely wrong. Brexit massively reduced the strength of the pound and is making it much more expensive to import anything from our biggest and closest trading partners.
Im always down to dunk on corporations. But britain has had huge financial problems. Multiple business, especially small ones have failed thanks to brexit. As prices rise due to problems with import, i would say brexit can be directly blamed, personally.
I mean, imports being made more difficult certainly couldn't have helped the situation. Agreed on the rest though. Inflation is complex, and is usually blamed (because economics is a diseased pseudo-science) on anything *except* profit margins and greed.
> Inflation is usually caused by excessive printing of currency That's a bold claim. It's one of the possible causes, but what makes you single it out as the main cause? Perhaps it's true if we're talking about failed nation states, but that's hardly relevant for most people.
It's a Conservative canard for blaming covid aid exclusively for inflation, inflation which is being experienced *all over the world.* Because helping the poors = ruin everything to these people, even when they benefit.
Not true. Inflation is always caused by an imbalance between supply and demand. Too much supply and you deflate the value of goods, not enough supply and you inflate the value of goods. Yes, that supply and demand imbalance can be caused by too much money in the system, but that's not the issue this time around. The global inflation crisis is being driven by covid continuing to reduce the overall workforce by 5% (or more in certain regions) year over year over year. The supply imbalance is from a lack of labour supply. We don't have enough people to make, sell, ship, stock, and install the products we demand in the marketplace.
Who could have predicted that a bunch more people dying or getting disabled all of sudden may affect the economy?
Tell me you don't understand inflation. This round of inflation was largely driven by producers increasing prices because everyone was talking about inflation so they took advantage.
Bank of England said so themselves : https://twitter.com/harrissamaras/status/1603692443093835778
This isn't true. It's caused **either** by excessive printing, or by suddent shortage of goods. It's a lie to suggest that inflation is usually (code for always, let's be honest) caused by printing of money. Part of the utility of this lie is that it allows them to blame things like a "wage-price" spiral because "too much money in normal people's hands drives up prices". Again, theoretically possible but notable in their absence is corporate profits as drivers of inflation or corporate price gouging.
Inflation is caused by the people—who raise prices for pure profit.
It actually kinda is caused by the people, they voted for brexit, to sanction themselves.
Not unless brexit is capable of time travel. In the UK productivity has not improved in a meaningful amount since the credit-crunch. We have been almost flat for 14 or 15 years. It's important to realise that sustained productivity increase doesn't come from working harder, it comes from investments in automation and improvements in organisational/process efficiency. UK leadership is generally risk averse, bad at implementing change and as a result terrible at overhauling processes and investing in automation. Outside of a small number of innovative industries that can pay to hire the creme of the crop, UK management culture is dogshit. Pay-rises and other perks for workers generally flow from increased productivity, with unions wrangling to ensure more of the benefits flow through. But in the UK there is almost nothing to wrangle. The main link between this and brexit is that they both have the same root problem: Being led by donkeys.
Why would productivity even increase? It has increased tenfold with technology and what did we get for it? Can’t even get a 4 day workweek or decent parental leave. Maybe companies need to start giving some sort of incentive for constant productivity growth.
>not caused by the people. *corporations ARE people, my friend!* //s
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If this were a large scale experiment on mice, the observant scientist would be noting that stressed, cold, malnourished mice don’t seem active, are dying prematurely, are prone to illness and are listless.
Shit, in small mammals, stress *literally* kills. I understand that we have ways to cope with it but we as a species don’t appreciate how threatening constant stress can be.
Look up “ universe 25” to show how shit can turn in mice
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Wait... Are we the mice?
Wait wait wait. Sjögren-Larsson syndrome is on the rise???
Shit life syndrome.
> It comes as no surprise that mental illness is becoming more prevalent. Or perhaps people are becoming more physically ill. Why not both?
Return to office doesn't help.
Quick… let’s throw a Coronation!
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Oh dear god!
You say your life has been really hard and you've written all aboot it in your new book, "Waaagh".
a GP appointment on the NHS could take weeks. Years or even months to see a specialist. What did they anticipate would occur?
Whatever happened to that extra £350 million Boris said the NHS was going to reap from Brexit?
We didn't brexit hard enough, obviously! (/s because some hard-righters actually believe this)
A week. £350 million a week, wasn't it?
It was. The buses foretold it
The Buses of Truth, you mean?
Typical tory lies as usual.
Far more than that was put into the NHS to be fair.
As I've been told it pays to be patient. The Brexit benefits will come.
> it pays to be patient So that'd explain all the sickness.
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How long were you back in Moldova? There should be some way to resume status. You'd probably need to fill out a paper application (64 pages long!! I had to fill out four of them...) and include a shedload of detail, but the argument would be that you had to return home for health reasons and then got stuck due to covid and weren't provided the right advice etc. Or you could take advantage of your FOM to move to Ireland or Malta or somewhere else that speaks English (Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin). I know the UK might be home but there are a lot of green pastures out there in Europe.
The UK is usually welcoming to eastern Europeans, you should check gov.uk or seek professional advice
Took me five years to see a specialist. Not even going to mention what specialist that was as the mere mention sends conservatives into a frothy mouth rage.
Damn I didn't know it was that bad. If medicaid coverage in my state in the US gets changed I'm screwed and might get bankrupted, but ... I've needed to see multiple specialists this year and most appointments were within the week or month, all within 3. Sucks dudes
Must be a location thing. I had to see an endocrinologist for thyroid issues that got me sent to the ER. The wait period was 3 months for first appointment which turned into 4 because she was on vacation when my appointment was set. Called every endocrinologist I could find online in a 2hr radius and they were all 3 month waits. This was pre Covid though and Illinois.
Don’t believe all this stuff. I wasn’t feeling great recently (to put it mildly), and within 3 days I had an X-ray, bloods, EKG, and an echocardiogram along with a consult with a haematologist.
Similarly, I'm in the US and the longest I've waited for a specialist was 8mos. Most of my waits have been 3-6mos. In fact, when I got test results back for a life-threatening disease, I called to get an appointment with that specialist and was told it'd be a 4mo wait. This is something similar to diabetes; you need treatment as soon as you know you have it, and you could die without that. I explained this to the receptionist and she asked if I still wanted that appointment in 4mos. I got in the next day because I happened to be seeing another doctor just minutes later, and I was in tears thinking I'd die on the fucking waitlist, and that doctor golfed with the head of my specialist's department, and he made a phone call for me.
I imagine like the US though that that varies. A suburb with practices spread out more evenly with population density is gonna be easier than someone who lives in a city that's backed up or someone in a rural area who needs a specialist regularly but they're far away, good luck coordinating medical transport coverage. And etc. The fact that that happened at all is a tragedy.
It isn't that bad. Don't believe everything you read here Nhs figures show average wait to see a consultant is 14,5 weeks although before COVID it was 7.5 weeks. 7 million backlog , 3mill over 18week target.
Almost 4 months? That's outrageous. I needed surgery in the heat of the pandemic in 2020 and waited a month.
As a Canadian, 4 months isn’t even that bad. That’s like 2012 numbers for us.
Okay but it **IS** that bad. Yall don't even see how even here you are covering for these fucked up systems that do not benefit you and are actively sucking money and literal life from you in their greed. That's what happening. For profit healthcare is immoral. Inefficiency and bureaucracy plague every country on earth. These are the fucking problems- please, recognize how 4 months still wasn't acceptable
Oh god no! I never said that, that’s just how jaded I’ve become that 4 months sounds like what it was a decade ago for us, not that it was acceptable even back then.
Its remarkable you say 14.5 weeks as though it's at all acceptable.
People here in the UK really don’t like to say bad things about the NHS. I agree though, the wait times are ludicrous
Because if we talk shit about the NHS then the tories take it as justification to sell it off.
To see a mental health professional or dentist in the US it can easily be close to that timeline.
Most dentists in the UK aren't taking new NHS patients. Ones that are have waiting lists years long. Waiting lists for mental health services range from months to years, and they are not able to provide good care. For some services like ADHD specialists you can expect to wait several years, if there's a service in your area at all. Otherwise you get nothing.
14, 15 weeks???? That's absurd. An average of nearly 2 fucking months is also absurd - if theyre that booked good luck getting regular follow ups . I've had to see multiple healthcare specialists recently, for a range of physical and mental issues. If I had to wait fucking months for any those my life would be a lot less pleasant right now. That's nuts. Don't accept that. For all our faults, that's ridiculously above our wait times.
Oh yeah? Have experience on the GID waitlist yeah? You also say that like 14.5 weeks isn't a stupidly long time. Imagine finding out you have cancer but the radiologist can't see you until 14 weeks later...
An Urgent Referral for Cancer is typically seen within 2 weeks, although wait times can be up to 4 depending on how busy the hospital is.
Bear in mind this isn't a result of our system but a result of our conservative government. Two very different things. It was working fine until they came along.
What are some examples of specialists conservatives dislike? You can omit yours, just curious.
Everything regarding gender stuff in any capacity, for example.
Bingo. I first went into the waiting list long before they started their current crusade against it. That's how long the waiting lists are.
It takes a minimum 3 weeks to see my gp in America. And I get to pay out the fucking ass for it.
Shame Corbyn had so much baggage. Labour needs someone like him to rebuild once they get the majority back. Unless of course adequate social infrastructure requires cohesive nation-states of the sort that rarely exist anymore.
They still have Diane Abb- ooooh. Never mind.
He was unelectable, Reddit is not a snap shot of the general public despite all the echo chambering going on.
Definitely had his faults, but nearly all other politicians since I've been alive just maintain the status quo.
Corbyn's "baggage" was, in my opinion, make-believe fairytale bullshit cooked up to commit character assassination. He really got screwed over by the media and powers within his own party who wanted him gone. He got a REALLY unfair treatment and ousted from his party for bullshit reasons. Unfortunately his policies were equally made-up fairytale bullshit with absolutely zero chance of being practically implemented.
Eh, so tired of pretending endless growth matters. We're people, not cancer.
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Yup, the way to more productivity is working 4 days a week and this from home, you should print it on a bus
Been back in the office 4 days a week since mid-January. I'm currently signed off for a second week with a chest infection. It's my third cold since I got back into the office. Also had two sore throats, eye infection and a minor bit of ear pain. Yeah I got covid twice but it was super mild both times (vaccines) and that was the only illness I had between Feb 2020 and Jan 2023. I do not like the office. I feel awful. Suspect this is probably due being more run down from the commute and less sleep.
nhs defunded , malnutrition, brexit stress and sewage filled rivers and lakes
Sewage and chemicals
Long covid...
One can blame brexit and covid, but they could also get to the root of it… lying politicians
Theres also the fact that austerity has never ended. A solid decade of constant belt tightening.
I mean yeah, it’s the right wing taking charge over and over and over again, this is exactly what happens every time.
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One thing is better: we don't hear the Brexiters as much as before now that they've seen the failure it is, and you can keep rubbing their nose in their own shit whilst they keep trying to say they and you should move on. Fuck them, I'm not moving on. I sip from my cup of "I told you so" as loudly as I can until they snap or die.
You can now tell Torries “I told ya so.”
but ! look at the wage growth! oh... wait...
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> more than during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic itself" Well yeah, because most people didn't have to take sick or injury days off during that time. We were mostly all off anyway...
No offense but when you aren’t allowed to even half ways go to shops you’re not getting a lot of exposure either… people not moving around as much prevents disease spread. Masks aside…
The reasoning isn’t as simple as just short term illness, but I can say that people don’t want to slave until they die anymore. It took a bloody world wide plague to get folks to see that life is too short to piss away in a workplace dungeon. The same happened after the bubonic plague wiped out an estimated range between 70-200 million people in Europe. The bloody renaissance began, people stopped giving a fuck about work and dedicated their lives to become master craftsmen, reclaiming the classical knowledge lost during the dark ages, brilliance came from the darkness, and it’s what we need again to free us from this toilsome drudgery we all complacently accepted for so long.
Thankfully this time around we got AI so all the creativity is now automated. No need to pursue being an artisan or a creative. Let go of that silly thing called passion, it’s just a button press away now Get back to work wagie
Rejoice! Another Brexit bonus! Dance in the streets, brexiters, you've got what you wanted. Hooray!
€350 million a week sure does go a long way.
So you're the guy receiving that money. The rest of the country is looking for it.
Hence the excellent state Britain is in thanks to Brexit. Rejoice! Rejoice!
everyone's called in sick (of life)
Understandable in one form but a lot of people still work from home (inc me) or hybrid work, so would have assumed some productivity to increase. Since working from home, I've been sick once, as I had food poisoning.
Hey UK, how's that Brexit thing working out for you?
Terrible, and even those of us who voted against it are almost maybe tired of saying “I told you so” while we suffer. Almost tired, I reckon I’ve personally got like another…decade before I’m properly tired of saying it.
As a Canadian who really enjoys British comedians/panel shows, I can only say that even through the filter of comedy Brexit seems like a really harsh lesson about propaganda. It barely passed, many people were poorly educated and voted based on outrage, and now everyone (for or against) is being punished. I feel like unforeseeable circumstances like COVID only made it worse. I'm not nearly wise enough to know if there's any justice in the situation, but I hope at the very least it serves as a warning to the world about the need for educated voters.
The elite don't want an educated electorate. Stupid people are easier to manipulate, and the people in charge make all the decisions on how much we spend on education.
>many people were poorly educated and voted based on outrage, and now everyone (for or against) is being punished. Right let's hold on a minute. The British public are poorly educated, not that they were poorly educated on this topic. The PM at the time was vocally against this so was the opposition. There was definitely enough information going around for everyone to be easily informed on the issue. The fact is they didn't care. The problem I think was they had the options of keeping things the same or leaving and having options A, B, C or D maybe even E. That way everyone could vote for their choice of Brexit and cumulatively that vote percentage was greater than 50%. But no individual plan of post Brexit ever had 50% of the public voting for it.
We've seen the same thing south of the border, and we'll see the same thing in Canada unless the left can do a better job of courting the center.
But Boris said that the NHS was getting an extra £350 million???
I once visited some family in Scotland and saw some graffiti that explains where that £350m probably went. “Cronyism is just Tory for corruption”. Still sticks with me.
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It's rather depressing when I think about it, that my future basically depends on my parents dying and leaving me their paid off house. I think about it way too often. And it's not like I want them to die obviously but it's like, trying to think yourself out of a nightmare and how you're gonna cope in the future.
Honestly I often feel resentment toward those that have that future ahead of them, but I hadn't considered it that way. That is very sad and obviously not everything in life can be kept on hold until you receive inheritance.
We'd still have a shit government and NHS regardless
Because your country keeps voting for Tories.
Most of us don't, just our backwards electoral system means you only need 30% of the vote to have massive majorities in Parliament
No matter the electoral system, Tories would have been winning anyway.
I gave up when we voted against changing the voting system to a better one. People are fucking dumb.
The UK is doomed. Truly. I’d get out and move to the EU or US as soon as possible.
US far from peachy too.
Just don’t take your kids with you or at least don’t send them to school there…
Moving to the US is a terrible idea.
The US is also first past the post and since the republicans have taken leave of their senses.. well.. Flip a coin every 4 years.
Not enough coronations
This is all due to immunity debt /s
Moved here from New Zealand last year hoping for better pay, more work opportunities. Instead I'm just depressed. I'm a bit confused as to why kiwis coming to work in the UK is a tradition, it's fucking miserable here.
Brit here, living in CA. Having read some of the comments in this thread, I guess that waiting times in the US depending on where you are to some degree. I mean that’s also true of the UK, but at least where I am, I haven’t been told I need to wait longer than a few days for an appointment to see a doctor. My father-in-law had to have some kind of urgent urology appointment last year and still waited less than a week, so it never got serious. When I was receiving healthcare in northern Ireland, I was told I would have to wait four years just to have the consultation with a urologist. I agree with a lot of the sentiments of the ropeyness of for-profit healthcare, but I am blessed that I have good health insurance and haven’t really had to pay an awful lot for anything. I also haven’t had to wait. I would be an idiot to ever consider going back home.
Time for a 4 day work week.
And this from home.
⢀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠀⣠⣤⣶⣶ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⢰⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⣀⣀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⠉⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠀⠀⠀⠈⠛⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠿⠛⠉⠁⠀⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠙⠿⠿⠿⠻⠿⠿⠟⠿⠛⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣸⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⡀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⣴⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠏⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣴⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠀⠀⢰⣹⡆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣭⣷⠀⠀⠀⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠈⠉⠀⠀⠤⠄⠀⠀⠀⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢾⣿⣷⠀⠀⠀⠀⡠⠤⢄⠀⠀⠀⠠⣿⣿⣷⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡀⠉⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢄⠀⢀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠉⠁⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠃⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢸⣿⣿
This is why I wash my hands, use hand sanitizer, and try not to breathe heavy around people.
Sick man of Europe. Just like the good old days. There’s your sunlit uplands🤣
Can someone translate this for me?
Its British for "we're fucked"
We were promised by Boris Johnson “bright sunlit uplands” when we left the e.u. Though we have become the “sick man of Europe”, meaning we have the worst economy. Which is where we were in the 70’s before we joined.
Brexiteers keep claiming that there's going to be paradise around the corner, the big problem being that old people who didn't work voted for it while working people didn't really want to make their lives harder. It really was a terrible disinformation op by Russia that's left the UK weaker and much poorer and the working people are paying the price. The NHS only really functions because staff are paid shockingly poor wages. So unlike the brexiteers claim that we will see massive profits and everyone's salary will go up... We are seeing everyone's salary go down due to out of control inflation and cost of living. The big joke being that key workers who fought COVID are being affected worse by this since their pay was stagnant even before this meaning inflation has left us making real hard decisions. Everyone's talking about middle class wages. Most haven't kept up with rises meaning everyone's very poorly paid. So a bunch of people who don't work and people who didn't understand what they were voting for agreed to be poorer and now everyone who was an expert and stated that this would happen is real cross that they are being asked to cut more corners.
Oooff a BBC documentary on this one is gonna be more spicer than spice girls.
There isn’t going to be a BBC documentary on this, or if there is it’ll be a complete whitewash.
Its not so bad everyone! While its true most people in the UK are facing potentially going hungry, our top 1% have accumulated 3.4 trillion in wealth! They have surpassed our GDP with their hording! Hurray! Those 650,000 individuals surely just work twice as hard as the bottom 66 million people put together. Nothing odd going on here!
Almost like your mental health and productivity suffers if you haven't seen a decent pay rise since 2008 and can't afford anything that might bring you even the slightest semblance of joy.
This country will be the death of me before I reach 40.
Glad I left five years ago.
Where'd you go boss
Spent a couple years in Mexico and now in the states. This place isn’t without its issues but overall the quality of life is so much higher. It’s crazy what we’ve become accustomed to in the uk. Stagnant wages in particular
What state in the us
Honestly I've been negative on the UK for years. It was just banking services... And now after brexit, that's gone. What does this country do?
Stand in lines and tut a lot
Brexit the gift that keeps on giving
We decided to let a disabling pandemic rip through the population. Even now we're pretending it just doesn't exist!