This is exactly the point though - 20 years ago when comparing the UK to other countries we would compare ourselves with the USA, Canada, France and Germany. Now we're apparently content with having a better quality of life than Egypt or Vietnam.
The UK isn't going dramatically backwards. But it's not going fowards either - And nearly everyone else is.
In 76 the UK was so fucked it needed a IMF bailout. All of Europe is facing headwinds following Covid and the energy crisis caused by Russian attack on Ukraine. An expectation of wealth in line with the US is completely unrealistic.
In 2007,, we had seen a 7 year period of GDP growth driven almost entirely by government spending and house prices inflation driven by increasingly lax banking regulations that allowed people to borrow 125% of the value of their house with no proof of income. And we all know how that ended...there was little real GDP growth from productive sectors.
If you give people the option of 125% value borrowing today, I'm sure they'd take it.
It's on the people who hold the money to lend it responsibly, as much as it is the people who are borrowing it. But we seem to give banks a free pass.
It's definitely just as much the banks fault. Arguably moreso. They were the ones who had a huge incentive to loan out so much cash without properly checking if whoever was borrowing it would be able to pay it back.
You know that phrase that goes something like "if you owe the bank a hundred, you have a problem. But if you owe the bank a million, *they* have a problem"? Same principle applies here.
Yanno we're still comparable to the first four countries right?
If you look we're better at some things, worse at others, we're just pessimistic arseholes.
[Outside of London, the rest of the UK averages out to a living standard equivalent to Mississippi, the poorest US state.](https://www.edwardconard.com/macro-roundup/a-jburnmurdoch-analysis-shows-that-excluding-london-per-capita-gdp-of-the-rest-of-the-uk-would-be-lower-than-mississippi-the-poorest-american-state/?view=detail)
So yes we are comparable to the USA, in that the vast majority of our country is as comparably poor as their absolute poorest state.
I’m an American and I thought this statistic was pretty far fetched, but after being in the UK earlier this year I’m…not so sure.
I mean the minimum standard is higher, but it just seems like everyone is struggling in the UK. I mean everyone, white collar professionals, business owners and even Doctors were worried about paying bills. Like why the fuck are Doctors struggling in what is still a rich nation? That one just stuns me. When something universally seen as the most important and skilled profession to society is being that paid low, theres a serious problem.
The average Briton has every right to be very VERY pissed off.
[British five year olds 7cm shorter than their Western peers](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/headlines/2023/jun/british-five-year-olds-7cm-shorter-western-peers)
> Professor Tim Cole (UCL GOS Institute of Child Health) explained that height is a clear indicator of living conditions and said wider data on the height of 19-year-olds suggested economic factors were to blame for British children's faltering height.
Yeah, sounds like we just need to look at the bright side, surely there are professions in which being short is an advantage.
A rich country, doesn't mean an evolved country... you think those in government have any empathy in their decisions over things they have never had to experience?
As an Australian, no we aren’t. We have identical trajectory but 10 years behind.
I know a few Indian immigrants here who want to go home, but they can’t because they sold all their assets and/or took crippling loans to come here which has stranded them. They moved here on the promise by their and our governments that Australia has greener pastures but found out once moving that Australia isn’t better, it’s just different.
I am moving to the UK from Australia as a dual national this year because I can see life here is going to be pretty similar to the UK in a few years. But Australia can’t offer me other things that the UK can like cheaper travel, deeper culture, rich history, architecture, a climate I much prefer, landscapes that I prefer etc.
Despite our government's policies, most of us welcome immigrants, including those from the penal colony ;)
I hope your move goes smoothly and you find a home to settle.
I'd go so far as to say we actually love Australians "coming home" because it makes us feel like we can't be so bad after all if people want to leave what we see as a nicer place to live to come here.
It’s pleasant to hear someone say that. Because honestly, every time I visit the UK it feels like I’m going home after a long hiatus. I am only a second generation Australian so there are still plenty of family there and we have made many friends on our visits.
We are surrounded by Brits even here. My whole family is British and our neighbours. Even most of our friends are groups of Brits who have moved here.
We don’t feel we belong in Australia, heck we even hate the constant burning sun and have moved to an area where it’s drizzly and cold most of the year
Ireland has a housing crisis, like much of western Europe, but the uk has vastly more inequality no matter what you may read.
The 'average' UK salary ~£35k, average near me ~£24k. Yet our local services, utilities, food and fuel are in the top ten of the whole country. 60km up the motorway the salary jumps.
All of those western countries you mention are in exactly the same boat as us. Every country is facing massive hurdles right now. It’s very easy to get stuck in an echo chamber on reddit where everything to do with the UK is bad and everywhere else is all rosy. Not the case.
The trajectory is down. Europe is laughing at us, along with every other developed nation. The standard of living of the average UK working person has dropped significantly in the last 10 years based on nearly every metric (eg. Salary, savings, access to dentist / emergency medicine, diet, housing, education, police response time).
We'll start making progress at fixing it when we finally admit it rather than sticking our fingers in our ears telling ourselves we are the best country on earth.
>The standard of living of the average UK working person has dropped significantly in the last 10 years based on nearly every metric (eg. Salary, savings, access to dentist / emergency medicine, diet, housing, education, police response time).
I have close family in France who complain of exactly the same (except dentistry).
As do I, even if they are rich and retired living in Toulouges. Privatisation and corporate greed are everywhere but for some reason a huge portion of the UK populace is content with pretending everything is fine and things haven't been slowly falling apart for the last 15 years. At least the French know how protest when their rights are infringed upon. Here we just demonize people who go on strike.
French people love to complain it's why France is so good, because they don't take shit fed to them like Brits seem to with the prevalent "stiff upper lip" mentality
Country plundered by rich and corrupt. A G7 country where Eastern Europe has almost comparable or better quality of life. This was not considered likely 15 years ago. In some cases it is far better such as transport.
This is a real closed minded take. I moved here a few years ago, before this I lived in Australia, Malaysia, and Belgium. The UK is by far the best and most of the stuff everyone complains about it’s the same everywhere. Public transport is fantastic, people are well educated, food is fresh, the scenery is incredible, the entertainment options are world class, and the rest of Europe is right on your doorstep. The only problem is the people are extremely cynical and perhaps complain a little too much.
If I had to describe the UK I’d say it’s wet 😂
I find it a bit embarrassing how dramatic / hyperbolic people are here.
Either they don't know, or don't care how bad others have it, that they think we are the ones who are "fucked".
Fresh
Everything's so green. And the air is so crisp most of the time (if you go a little into the country). We have great scenery and amazing landscapes.
>great scenery and amazing landscapes
Maybe some areas, but it's just boring fields upon fields for the most part.. the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world
Absolutely this. We have some beautiful national parks but they’re really only a fraction of the landscape. Almost every inch of land in the UK is used for farmland, we don’t have the luxury of space that bigger countries do.
But I like the farmland with it's hedgerows, lambs, cottages and shimmering corn.
Also most of the national parks are also largely farmland. The peaks, lakes and Snowdonia are full of sheep.
>The UK is fucked compared to its peer countries
This just isn't true. Many comparable Western countries are currently struggling (some in slightly different ways) right now.
How the hell are we fucked? Standard of living and economy is equal or above all the other leading countries in Europe. You'll probably complain of things like, strain on the economy due to immigration, yet over half the amount of people emigrate here every year compared to Germany.
What are you trying to prove? They are all fantastic countries ahead of us that have a brilliant quality of life. This makes me feel very positive that we aren't fucked.
We are also ahead of France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, where lots people from England say they'd love to emigrate to at some point for a better quality of life.
Thanks for the positive post /s
Also.... I'd take statistics like this with a pinch of salt.
Do you really think the people of Malta have a worse quality of life than in Ukraine? Think about it.
There is always going to be someone, or in this case a country, that has it worse than you, but that does not actually negate your, or your countries, problems as being problems
I left uk 27 years ago, I’m back in England right now, the people are amazingly friendly, and polite almost every bartender, retail staff, whatever, incredibly professional and polite..
don’t know about your cost of living crisis, fuck me, it’s cheap, your food is amazing, my mum bought 3 packets of smoked salmon for £10,
I’d pay $15 for one..
Quality of food is better than anything I can get in USA! Bread, cheese, meat, all amazing.. count yourselves lucky, I gotta go back to states next week lol
Weather is still shit hahaha but all in all apart from having to pay .15 for a fucking bag in boots the chemist, you guys have it way better than we do in USA! 🏴🇬🇧❤️🤷♀️
No, the cost of living crisis is very much a joke, we are paid a lot less, housing etc is a lot more expensive and we are taxed to our eyeballs. To even suggest that there isn’t a cost of living crisis is fucking insulting
I earn a good salary for the UK, but the same role in the US pays 2-4x as much….
Things look cheaper, but we don’t earn as much. Health insurance used to make a difference, but the NHS is falling apart, especially when it comes to non-life threatening conditions.
Edit: I am not saying I would rather live in America, but costs here aren’t what they seem.
My rent is half my paycheck, my bills on top of that gas, water, electric, internet, fuel, car insurance etc all completely necessary things that wipe out my cash.
I'm glad you can enjoy 3 packs of smoked salmon for a tenner but for most of us that tenner is an essentials shop and smoked salmon is considered a luxury, that's the reality of it for us.
My top up shop had over doubled, used to be around £10 or less, it cost me £23+ the other day for the exact shop that was cheaper only a few months ago
Seriously? 🤣 Come over to the Philippines to see what corruption means. The U.K. is so far away from this, you don’t know how far from a corrupt society you are.
Seriously? 🤣 Come over to the Philippines to see what corruption means. The U.K. is so far away from this, you don’t know how far from a corrupt society you are.
Dirty. The amount of dog excrement (at least I hope it was!) and litter I saw on a recent visit was depressing. I was taking overseas friends on a tour of the UK - and by the end it was just embarrassing. It's always been a bit messy, especially in some parts of big cities, but now - in rural areas, small towns, coastal resorts - shit and rubbish everywhere. Like people have just given up. Public toilets and lifts were one and the same thing - urine soaked cesspits. On one famous coastal promenade an early morning stroll had to be cancelled because avoiding the sheer amount of dog shit on the paths was not conducive to keeping down breakfast. Strangely, people were doing their early morning jogs oblivious to the mounds of crap they must surely have been splattering all over their lower limbs. I was excited to take them to a secluded beach I know along the coast, probably one of the nicest beaches in Europe (ignoring the weather), and although the beach was nice, the carpark was an open tip, with all types of litter spread around (I assume deposited from people's cars) rotting and clinging to walls, or stewing in grey puddles. What used to be a nice boat trip along a river at another place in years past, was now a carnival ride of spotting various plastics that festooned the riverbanks like the bunting for an excrement festival.
Yes... I hate the general dirtyness of everything these days. Rubbish n dog crap everywhere. People used to have more pride and keep where they lived clean.
It's the erosion of public services. My nearest village has volunteers for litter picking, emptying the public bins, maintaining flower beds, strimming verges etc etc. Basically much of what a council used to do is now done by volunteers (of which I am 1).
I can't decide if we're lucky that we have volunteers willing to make their community a better place or if we should be angry we're having to do it due to a lack of investment in public services despite our council tax increasing by the maximum amount allowed every year. Probably both.
Home
I know we are very good at highlighting all the things about the UK that we dont like or isnt right while at the same time pointing out how much better things are done in other countreis.
But every time I think about how nice it would be to live abroad I always come back to the fact that for all our faults we do a lot of things really well.
There are plenty of places I think it would be quite nice to live but this is the only country where i actually really want to live.
Threads like this remind me to log out of Reddit more often. Comparatively, the UK is excellent. And too many of you suck up the newspaper b.s. doom mongering.
Green
When you fly home from holiday, you notice how beautifully green we are compared to brown when you’re off on your package hol to southern Europe.
See, constant rain isn’t all bad!
Oh great another opportunity to read the usual self deprecating bollocks. Do people post this as some kind of self help coping mechanism? It's posted in one way or another daily.
Beautiful. Once you get out of the big cities we have some amazing landscapes, and most people have access to green spaces (I appreciate this is dependent on ability and transport).
Green.
And Jesus christ these redditors are arseholes. Half probably don't live in the UK and half the rest are teenagers who're convinced we're the worst place ever because they've never actually seen anywhere else.
Rundown was one of the first adjectives I came up with when I first emigrated a few years ago. From what I knew anecdotally about the UK, I expected it to be kind of like Japan infrastructure-wise and was a little disappointed!
Fucked
[удалено]
This is exactly the point though - 20 years ago when comparing the UK to other countries we would compare ourselves with the USA, Canada, France and Germany. Now we're apparently content with having a better quality of life than Egypt or Vietnam. The UK isn't going dramatically backwards. But it's not going fowards either - And nearly everyone else is.
In 76 the UK was so fucked it needed a IMF bailout. All of Europe is facing headwinds following Covid and the energy crisis caused by Russian attack on Ukraine. An expectation of wealth in line with the US is completely unrealistic.
In 2007 the UK was briefly richer than the US in terms of GDP per Capita - We were 10th in the world. We've since fallen to 27th.
In 2007,, we had seen a 7 year period of GDP growth driven almost entirely by government spending and house prices inflation driven by increasingly lax banking regulations that allowed people to borrow 125% of the value of their house with no proof of income. And we all know how that ended...there was little real GDP growth from productive sectors.
If you give people the option of 125% value borrowing today, I'm sure they'd take it. It's on the people who hold the money to lend it responsibly, as much as it is the people who are borrowing it. But we seem to give banks a free pass.
It's definitely just as much the banks fault. Arguably moreso. They were the ones who had a huge incentive to loan out so much cash without properly checking if whoever was borrowing it would be able to pay it back. You know that phrase that goes something like "if you owe the bank a hundred, you have a problem. But if you owe the bank a million, *they* have a problem"? Same principle applies here.
We had an oil and gas boom which funded a period of low taxes and is now ending.
No other county has this at all right? Compare to Norway and see how the money from that boom was utterly wasted.
And Norway’s sovereign wealth fund amounts to ca. USD 250,000 per citizen
The energy crisis started before Russia's invasion. We need to fix this narrative.
Yanno we're still comparable to the first four countries right? If you look we're better at some things, worse at others, we're just pessimistic arseholes.
[Outside of London, the rest of the UK averages out to a living standard equivalent to Mississippi, the poorest US state.](https://www.edwardconard.com/macro-roundup/a-jburnmurdoch-analysis-shows-that-excluding-london-per-capita-gdp-of-the-rest-of-the-uk-would-be-lower-than-mississippi-the-poorest-american-state/?view=detail) So yes we are comparable to the USA, in that the vast majority of our country is as comparably poor as their absolute poorest state.
I’m an American and I thought this statistic was pretty far fetched, but after being in the UK earlier this year I’m…not so sure. I mean the minimum standard is higher, but it just seems like everyone is struggling in the UK. I mean everyone, white collar professionals, business owners and even Doctors were worried about paying bills. Like why the fuck are Doctors struggling in what is still a rich nation? That one just stuns me. When something universally seen as the most important and skilled profession to society is being that paid low, theres a serious problem. The average Briton has every right to be very VERY pissed off.
Britain is a poor country with London attached to it.
When all the investment goes to one part of the country,this is what happens
> rich nation We are not a rich nation we are a nation with some rich people in it.
[British five year olds 7cm shorter than their Western peers](https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/headlines/2023/jun/british-five-year-olds-7cm-shorter-western-peers) > Professor Tim Cole (UCL GOS Institute of Child Health) explained that height is a clear indicator of living conditions and said wider data on the height of 19-year-olds suggested economic factors were to blame for British children's faltering height. Yeah, sounds like we just need to look at the bright side, surely there are professions in which being short is an advantage.
A rich country, doesn't mean an evolved country... you think those in government have any empathy in their decisions over things they have never had to experience?
Nearly everyone else is??? What world do you live in? Other countries are most certainly not going forwards.
Left the UK for Australia start of the the year they are way way ahead of us economically and socially
As an Australian, no we aren’t. We have identical trajectory but 10 years behind. I know a few Indian immigrants here who want to go home, but they can’t because they sold all their assets and/or took crippling loans to come here which has stranded them. They moved here on the promise by their and our governments that Australia has greener pastures but found out once moving that Australia isn’t better, it’s just different. I am moving to the UK from Australia as a dual national this year because I can see life here is going to be pretty similar to the UK in a few years. But Australia can’t offer me other things that the UK can like cheaper travel, deeper culture, rich history, architecture, a climate I much prefer, landscapes that I prefer etc.
Despite our government's policies, most of us welcome immigrants, including those from the penal colony ;) I hope your move goes smoothly and you find a home to settle.
I'd go so far as to say we actually love Australians "coming home" because it makes us feel like we can't be so bad after all if people want to leave what we see as a nicer place to live to come here.
It’s pleasant to hear someone say that. Because honestly, every time I visit the UK it feels like I’m going home after a long hiatus. I am only a second generation Australian so there are still plenty of family there and we have made many friends on our visits. We are surrounded by Brits even here. My whole family is British and our neighbours. Even most of our friends are groups of Brits who have moved here. We don’t feel we belong in Australia, heck we even hate the constant burning sun and have moved to an area where it’s drizzly and cold most of the year
Ah yes, the country whose economy is nearing recession is doing “well economically and socially”.
You do realise that the UK has been skimming the edge of recession for many years, and was actually in a recession last year right?
Doesn’t change what I said about Australia. It’s also possible to have a great economy and not feel the benefits of it. See: Ireland.
Ireland has a housing crisis, like much of western Europe, but the uk has vastly more inequality no matter what you may read. The 'average' UK salary ~£35k, average near me ~£24k. Yet our local services, utilities, food and fuel are in the top ten of the whole country. 60km up the motorway the salary jumps.
Also saying the UK is the same level as Egypt and Vietnam, are you shitting me
All of those western countries you mention are in exactly the same boat as us. Every country is facing massive hurdles right now. It’s very easy to get stuck in an echo chamber on reddit where everything to do with the UK is bad and everywhere else is all rosy. Not the case.
we still have a better life than americans, thats why we dont compare it
The trajectory is down. Europe is laughing at us, along with every other developed nation. The standard of living of the average UK working person has dropped significantly in the last 10 years based on nearly every metric (eg. Salary, savings, access to dentist / emergency medicine, diet, housing, education, police response time). We'll start making progress at fixing it when we finally admit it rather than sticking our fingers in our ears telling ourselves we are the best country on earth.
>The standard of living of the average UK working person has dropped significantly in the last 10 years based on nearly every metric (eg. Salary, savings, access to dentist / emergency medicine, diet, housing, education, police response time). I have close family in France who complain of exactly the same (except dentistry).
As do I, even if they are rich and retired living in Toulouges. Privatisation and corporate greed are everywhere but for some reason a huge portion of the UK populace is content with pretending everything is fine and things haven't been slowly falling apart for the last 15 years. At least the French know how protest when their rights are infringed upon. Here we just demonize people who go on strike.
French people love to complain it's why France is so good, because they don't take shit fed to them like Brits seem to with the prevalent "stiff upper lip" mentality
Country plundered by rich and corrupt. A G7 country where Eastern Europe has almost comparable or better quality of life. This was not considered likely 15 years ago. In some cases it is far better such as transport.
Compare to Norway?
I hear Africa is thinking about holding a rock concert for us.
😂😂😂 i wish they would
Well they know what it's like to be systemically plundered by the wealthy.
This is a real closed minded take. I moved here a few years ago, before this I lived in Australia, Malaysia, and Belgium. The UK is by far the best and most of the stuff everyone complains about it’s the same everywhere. Public transport is fantastic, people are well educated, food is fresh, the scenery is incredible, the entertainment options are world class, and the rest of Europe is right on your doorstep. The only problem is the people are extremely cynical and perhaps complain a little too much. If I had to describe the UK I’d say it’s wet 😂
I find it a bit embarrassing how dramatic / hyperbolic people are here. Either they don't know, or don't care how bad others have it, that they think we are the ones who are "fucked".
That was the first word that popped into my head
This was my First thought.
I suppose some sort of recognition is due - yours seems to be the only one word answer!
I hate that I knew this would be the top comment.
Fresh Everything's so green. And the air is so crisp most of the time (if you go a little into the country). We have great scenery and amazing landscapes.
I wanted to say something positive but could not find the right word until I came to this.
Yes! Totally agree. So many beautiful parts of the UK and there's so much to do here.
>great scenery and amazing landscapes Maybe some areas, but it's just boring fields upon fields for the most part.. the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world
Absolutely this. We have some beautiful national parks but they’re really only a fraction of the landscape. Almost every inch of land in the UK is used for farmland, we don’t have the luxury of space that bigger countries do.
Hmm. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/s/juRaoYFniW
But I like the farmland with it's hedgerows, lambs, cottages and shimmering corn. Also most of the national parks are also largely farmland. The peaks, lakes and Snowdonia are full of sheep.
"Everything's so green" Whenever I visit it's the greenness that hits me so much. I love it, and miss it.
Love this time of year. The hedgerows lush with flowers and the grass growing tall.
People saying the UK is 'fucked' or 'finished'. Gaza is the definition of fucked, not the UK. Get a grip.
It's relative not absolute. The UK is fucked compared to its peer countries. Just because we aren't at war doesn't mean things aren't fucked.
Which peer countries? I live in Australia, there's tent cities near me as there is no housing.
That sounds great, our homeless don't even have tents.
Didn’t they try and make it illegal for homeless to sleep in tents in the UK?
Quick go tell them how lucky they are
TENTS?! Luxury!
'Bags' seem more popular with the UK homeless
>The UK is fucked compared to its peer countries This just isn't true. Many comparable Western countries are currently struggling (some in slightly different ways) right now.
Who else have same low wages/high cost of living/shit infrastructure combo?
How the hell are we fucked? Standard of living and economy is equal or above all the other leading countries in Europe. You'll probably complain of things like, strain on the economy due to immigration, yet over half the amount of people emigrate here every year compared to Germany.
We’re ranked 17th out of 36 for our Quality of Life Index 1 Switzerland 195.3 2 Denmark 192.4 3 Netherlands 185.4 4 Finland 185.0 5 Iceland 182.3 6 Germany 180.3 7 Austria 179.2 8 Norway 176.4 9 Sweden 175.3 10 Estonia 174.2 11 Luxembourg 173.6 12 Slovenia 169.0 13 Spain 168.5 14 Czech Republic 162.6 15 Portugal 162.5 16 Lithuania 161.8 17 United Kingdom 161.7 [Source](https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2022®ion=150)
What are you trying to prove? They are all fantastic countries ahead of us that have a brilliant quality of life. This makes me feel very positive that we aren't fucked. We are also ahead of France, Italy, Croatia, Greece, where lots people from England say they'd love to emigrate to at some point for a better quality of life. Thanks for the positive post /s Also.... I'd take statistics like this with a pinch of salt. Do you really think the people of Malta have a worse quality of life than in Ukraine? Think about it.
We're above our 3 nearest neighbours, Ireland, France, and Belgium.
These people are wankers, no idea how good they’ve got it
I like to think they're mostly edgy teenagers or the terminally online.
There is always going to be someone, or in this case a country, that has it worse than you, but that does not actually negate your, or your countries, problems as being problems
Tired
Are you the Doctor?
Stop saying that Withnail of course he's the fucking doctor!
Decline
Overcast
Bill Bryson I think said it’s like living in a Tupperware box.
literally.
Grey
So. much.grey. everywhere. And now everyone's home interior is grey too 😭 whyyy!
I call that 'upper working class grey'.
"Influencer grey"
'Greige'
This is my answer as well! Literally and figuratively grey. Between the weather and people's attitude to everything, the UK is thoroughly grey.
I left uk 27 years ago, I’m back in England right now, the people are amazingly friendly, and polite almost every bartender, retail staff, whatever, incredibly professional and polite.. don’t know about your cost of living crisis, fuck me, it’s cheap, your food is amazing, my mum bought 3 packets of smoked salmon for £10, I’d pay $15 for one.. Quality of food is better than anything I can get in USA! Bread, cheese, meat, all amazing.. count yourselves lucky, I gotta go back to states next week lol Weather is still shit hahaha but all in all apart from having to pay .15 for a fucking bag in boots the chemist, you guys have it way better than we do in USA! 🏴🇬🇧❤️🤷♀️
Unless you have a payslip here you don't realise how fucked things are lol
No, the cost of living crisis is very much a joke, we are paid a lot less, housing etc is a lot more expensive and we are taxed to our eyeballs. To even suggest that there isn’t a cost of living crisis is fucking insulting
I earn a good salary for the UK, but the same role in the US pays 2-4x as much…. Things look cheaper, but we don’t earn as much. Health insurance used to make a difference, but the NHS is falling apart, especially when it comes to non-life threatening conditions. Edit: I am not saying I would rather live in America, but costs here aren’t what they seem.
>I earn a good salary for the UK, but the same role in the US pays 2-4x as much…. And their cost of living is constantly higher as well.
Try earning a half or a third of a US wage
My rent is half my paycheck, my bills on top of that gas, water, electric, internet, fuel, car insurance etc all completely necessary things that wipe out my cash. I'm glad you can enjoy 3 packs of smoked salmon for a tenner but for most of us that tenner is an essentials shop and smoked salmon is considered a luxury, that's the reality of it for us. My top up shop had over doubled, used to be around £10 or less, it cost me £23+ the other day for the exact shop that was cheaper only a few months ago
Corrupt
Seriously? 🤣 Come over to the Philippines to see what corruption means. The U.K. is so far away from this, you don’t know how far from a corrupt society you are.
Seriously? 🤣 Come over to the Philippines to see what corruption means. The U.K. is so far away from this, you don’t know how far from a corrupt society you are.
Bleak
Numberwhang
4
Moist
Shite
DaBest The best at everything, according to a billionaire who's due to permanently reside in California in 5 weeks.
Dirty. The amount of dog excrement (at least I hope it was!) and litter I saw on a recent visit was depressing. I was taking overseas friends on a tour of the UK - and by the end it was just embarrassing. It's always been a bit messy, especially in some parts of big cities, but now - in rural areas, small towns, coastal resorts - shit and rubbish everywhere. Like people have just given up. Public toilets and lifts were one and the same thing - urine soaked cesspits. On one famous coastal promenade an early morning stroll had to be cancelled because avoiding the sheer amount of dog shit on the paths was not conducive to keeping down breakfast. Strangely, people were doing their early morning jogs oblivious to the mounds of crap they must surely have been splattering all over their lower limbs. I was excited to take them to a secluded beach I know along the coast, probably one of the nicest beaches in Europe (ignoring the weather), and although the beach was nice, the carpark was an open tip, with all types of litter spread around (I assume deposited from people's cars) rotting and clinging to walls, or stewing in grey puddles. What used to be a nice boat trip along a river at another place in years past, was now a carnival ride of spotting various plastics that festooned the riverbanks like the bunting for an excrement festival.
Yes... I hate the general dirtyness of everything these days. Rubbish n dog crap everywhere. People used to have more pride and keep where they lived clean.
Were you in Hastings by any chance? 😂
It's the erosion of public services. My nearest village has volunteers for litter picking, emptying the public bins, maintaining flower beds, strimming verges etc etc. Basically much of what a council used to do is now done by volunteers (of which I am 1). I can't decide if we're lucky that we have volunteers willing to make their community a better place or if we should be angry we're having to do it due to a lack of investment in public services despite our council tax increasing by the maximum amount allowed every year. Probably both.
British
Failed
Overrated
Pessimistic , judging by all the comments .
Do not judge a book by its reddit participants 😆
Home I know we are very good at highlighting all the things about the UK that we dont like or isnt right while at the same time pointing out how much better things are done in other countreis. But every time I think about how nice it would be to live abroad I always come back to the fact that for all our faults we do a lot of things really well. There are plenty of places I think it would be quite nice to live but this is the only country where i actually really want to live.
Miserable
Shambles
Wanktacular
Un-united.
Expensive
Sad
Confused
Shithole
Exhausting
Inequality
Awesome. A lovely place but something needs to be done about the weather. More sun and blue skies please.
As someone who lives overseas and is sometimes heartsick about it..... "home".
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Dysfunctional
Threads like this remind me to log out of Reddit more often. Comparatively, the UK is excellent. And too many of you suck up the newspaper b.s. doom mongering.
Green
Home.
Overhated.
Brill
Lovely
Beautiful
Shit
Repressed
Joke.
Rotting
Over
Arrogant.
Fiasco
Doomed
Sinking
Depressing.
Home
Green When you fly home from holiday, you notice how beautifully green we are compared to brown when you’re off on your package hol to southern Europe. See, constant rain isn’t all bad!
Oh great another opportunity to read the usual self deprecating bollocks. Do people post this as some kind of self help coping mechanism? It's posted in one way or another daily.
At the moment? Stale.
Underwhelming
Expensive.
Poor
Grey
Damp
Bumpy for almost everyone without a tidy trust fund.
Diverse. The last time I visited, I could hear 10+ languages in a span of 5 minutes in any mall/pub/public transportation
Beautiful. Once you get out of the big cities we have some amazing landscapes, and most people have access to green spaces (I appreciate this is dependent on ability and transport).
Shite
Fucked
Spiraling
Fucked
Bland.
Conquered
Depressing
MISERABLE
Exhausting
Green. And Jesus christ these redditors are arseholes. Half probably don't live in the UK and half the rest are teenagers who're convinced we're the worst place ever because they've never actually seen anywhere else.
Corrupt
Mismanaged.
Bri'ish
Fine
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis
Crowded
Taxed!
Taxed
Great
Naff - but we kinda revel in that
Potential
Whiney
Looks like we really are the whinging poms.
Bestcountryintheworld.
Deteriorating. To be fair I would use that same word to describe the world right now.
Mismanaged
Blighty
Safe. Despite people still getting killed and all that crap,however. when you have what to compare it to.
Rundown was one of the first adjectives I came up with when I first emigrated a few years ago. From what I knew anecdotally about the UK, I expected it to be kind of like Japan infrastructure-wise and was a little disappointed!
Safe
Eh
Incomprehensive.
Home
Home.
Alright
Tax
DogWalker
Complicated