Is the UK now giving off strong Third World vibes?

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101494#Comment_121101494

Maggies transition to a services based economy worked wonders for them

Until people discovered those menial low skill jobs like call centers, IT support, entry level programming etc is all done cheaper elsewhere to much the same effect as the product is a service rather than a tangible good.

They lost most of their manufacturing capacity and cant really get it back, most cars trains planes made elsewhere, ol blighty only makes a fee specialist bits now (with large corporate subsidies to keep them from leaving)

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101878#Comment_121101878

They're still leaders in science, IT, medical research, engineering and a host of other things. The problem is that the collapse of manufacturing left most places in quite a grim state. Great if you live in Oxford, Cambridge or London but not so much if you're in Derby or Sunderland.

jetsonx

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101847#Comment_121101847

Nothing stays still. The same forces the brought business here could be the same forces that cause business to leave here. There are loads of places in Europe that were once economically thriving only to fall on hard times because of technological, political or economical change.

TedBundysDriver

Out health, justice and housing systems give off 3rd world vibes OP.

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101494#Comment_121101494

The signs in shops, doctors surgeries, motorway tolls and council offices asking people not to abuse or assault the staff is a telling story.

Scotland is not as bad, but I was amused to find one of the site rules posted at both Cockenzie and Longannet power stations was a command not to assault people working on the site.

The Tories killed manufacture wanting to concentrate on services instead. Then with Brexit they killed UK services too :-)

Astartes

Bath is nice

mariaalice

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101993#Comment_121101993

No, they dont, the navel-gazing and self-absorbed view of the world is absorbed.

Strumms

It’s not 3rd world it’s just again struggling with going from 59.6 million people living there in 2003 to 67.7 in 2023.

8.1 million population explosion in 20 years. A 13.59 % population increase.

I have a lot of family there who were born there and it’s impossible to get timely access to healthcare without insurance. NHS has gone from one of the best public healthcare systems in the world and I think it was THE best at one point to one that is described by their healthcare watchdogs as ‘falling apart’ and in ‘crisis’….public transport is way oversubscribed too.

crime is almost out of control, some of the stuff happening there on social media is 😵. The crime rate in the United Kingdom was 75.88 per 1,000 people in 2022–2023. That overall UK crime rate saw an 8% increase from 2021. 😒

the UK is fûcked. It did what it needed to do. But probably too late.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101977#Comment_121101977

That's far too generic to be meaningful.

Padre_Pio

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101932#Comment_121101932

All small scale employers though.

Manufacturing is where it's at. A team of 10 people design a product, a team of 100 people manufacture that product.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102150#Comment_121102150

Not at all. GSK's facility in Stevenage for instance is the size of a large Irish town.

SupaCat95

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102005#Comment_121102005

Yeah I know Margaret Thatcher changed Britain after the Falklands war but it was on a downward spiral anyways. But she got a great defense industry going. The crap they sold after the Falklands like the Harrier and plenty of ships. That is a dangerous precedent being abusive to the essential services like medical staff. Look at what is happening here, the medical staff and their families (most importantly) are quitting and going overseas.

In ireland they are now so desperate they are allowing nursing students to do their first two years of nursing college as a QQI course. That is going to be fun.

Dublinandy3

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101718#Comment_121101718

Possibly if you're going to say without being racist it may be good not to start your post with a saying that is associated with racism for the a few decades.

Shank Williams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101312#Comment_121101312

pitbull owners should all be put down along with the dog , no reason for them

Slightly Kwackers

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102199#Comment_121102199

What a lot of the Brexit bunch seemed to forget was that Britain was being manipulated by foreign manufacturers.

British industry was going down anyway and the likes of Sony, Panasonic De Lorean and loads of others were given huge grants to start production in Britain.

The Japanese made mugs of the government. I recall their TV set which was to have British made parts but was deemed "too good" for Mullard tuners. Mullard were the main supplier of electronics in the UK but their stuff never was suitable for Japanese "quality"

The tuners were prone to drift at minus forty degrees centigrade, which could of course be disturbing for viewers in the UK :-)

Mullard bit the dust!

When the gravy train stopped and the grant money was gone, so were the overseas manufacturers :-)

greencap

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101718#Comment_121101718

You may feel that due to UK having the 2nd largest Pakistani diaspora in the world.

You would think that when they were feeling aggrieved at their change in culture and overcrowding, that they may have chosen to dial it down a bit by reducing the numbers entering from Asia and Africa, while maintaining a relation with the EU, where approximately 1 million British live, their most important economic partner too.

Ah but no.

And so post-brexit the Europeans left, and were replaced by non-EU immigration.

Well played Brexiters.

Last I recall Sunak was organizing more visa for Indians. And the boats remain inbound. Make of that what you will.

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102661#Comment_121102661

They knew what they were voting for.

greencap

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102674#Comment_121102674

as did the British of Pakistani and Indian extraction, no doubt.

Europeans coming over, taking their jobs.

Shauna677

I go over quite often and the changes there are awful. There's a general feeling of decay and grimness about the place and one can visible see the poverty many are enduring.

pavb2

Thing is the NHS has never been efficient there was a TV programme in 2007 ‘ Can Gerry Robinson fix the NHS’ where a management expert was called in to see what he could do.

His conclusion was good particularly the quote:

‘ I think what the NHS needs to learn is that actually you don’t solve problems by throwing money at it, and not every problem actually needs money to solve it. That’s the first lesson. Secondly, to get out of their heads the idea that things have to take three years to do and get into the idea that there is a series of objectives that we need to do now, and that we’ve got months, not years to do it. Those two things, I think, would have the biggest single impact on the way that the Health Service is managed.’

but I’m not sure how much if anything changed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Can_Gerry_Robinson_Fix_the_NHS%3F

ancapailldorcha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102793#Comment_121102793

A random tv programme isn't a good metric for healthcare efficiency.

It's a very efficient system in my experience once you get access. It's suffering from an ageing population, lack of investment and lack of adaptation to the changing nature of British society.

whisky_galore

Fading one time world power yes, not quite "third world".

At least it's not "fur coat, no knickers" pretense at playing a super rich country as Ireland does.

pavb2

Not just the TV problem I lived in UK for many years and the NHS has always had a negative reputation, the only time it ever got any credit was during Covid.

I do though think people over there get used to the free healthcare and take it for granted.

salonfire

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101878#Comment_121101878

It was Maggie who saved the UK from the unions. Why do you think she was so popular at the first election? Go research what life was like in the UK before Maggie came to power.

dxhound2005

Is this all about England, or do Wales Scotland and NI qualify as Third World also?

Tombo2001

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101718#Comment_121101718

This is a weird post and way wrong.

Also the irony of it - "I am reminded of people wanting to make it Pakistan" - ignoring the fact that the British went over to Pakistan in the first place (then India) and tried to make it like Britain... .like, what language do we speak here.

Britain clearly has the legacy of the Commonwealth, and has allowed migration from Commonwealth countries for many years. So no, Ireland is nothing like this.

pavb2

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102783#Comment_121102783

What I’ve noticed is that London and the major city centres such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds have all improved and are much nicer to visit than they used to be shopping malls, Cafe culture, cocktail bars etc but go about a mile outside the centres particularly to the inner cities which were always quite depressing and these seem to be worse than say 20 years ago.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102783#Comment_121102783

Serious question, where are you visiting? I’m from London and my family are all from there or the Home Counties, London is London, same as any big city, good and bad but has always been that way. Home Counties are generally nice, safe spots and you’re not likely to see much decay there.

If you’re going to Burnley or Wakefield maybe the decay may be true, but sadly that’s also been true for well over 40 years, I don’t think that’s a new thing.

grumpyperson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121101340#Comment_121101340

I remember thinking driving to Leeds that it was like driving through a rubbish dump such was the level of rubbish back in 2016. I guess people just threw their rubbish out the window?

I think it's floundering massively but still has notions. We always hear about the USA and UK here because English but both countries seem to be in decline unwilling to adapt and innovate.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/09/rishi-sunak-g20-india-delhi-summit

Why would Mohdi want to pay respect to the leader of a country that occupied India and is accused of causing over 100 million deaths in his country.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/12/2/how-british-colonial-policy-killed-100-million-indians

It's astonishing the lack of awareness of the British.

I find it hard to believe the UK is still the 6th biggest economy and I'm not the only one that feels that way.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/aug/30/a-fairer-measure-of-britains-wealth

They need to wake up imho because they seem to be going backwards. moving away from the monarchy would be a good start. Just end tax breaks to Charles and his possee of leeches.

grumpyperson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121102830#Comment_121102830

I think the Quality Adjusted Life Years metric for patient care is something we should be looking into. AS someone said recently when the HSE gets more money it goes to end of life. Some of the money might be better spent at early life and the QALY formula attempts to drive that rather than eeking out a few extra days at end of life intervention.