> Collapsing councils are a microcosm of the British state’s failings: austerity, short-termism, Treasury myopia and decades of failure to solve the so-called wicked problems of policymaking, such as council tax, planning and our broken social care model.
> Every block in the Jenga tower appears to be wobbling.
> The NHS is stuck with one in ten jobs vacant, crumbling buildings and equipment, strikes and poor patient outcomes. Welfare is no longer acting as a safety net: the UK now has record levels of long-term sickness at 2.8 million and a system too threadbare to propel people back into work. So depleted are our armed forces that military chiefs mull the return of conscription. Police fail to solve 90 per cent of crimes. And best of luck to anyone who encounters a prison or courtroom.
> Everywhere you look, the country is blighted by neglect and decay – literally, in the case of the nation’s teeth. Dentistry is so overstretched that police had to control a queue that had amassed along a road in Bristol for the opening of a new dental practice in February. The government released a hasty “Dental Recovery Plan”, intended to incentivise dentists to offer more appointments: the British Dental Association’s head said it wasn’t “worthy of the title”.
> Labour’s big idea is supervised tooth-brushing for children aged three to five. But after the policy was announced, I heard that nursery heads warned party insiders they didn’t have enough sinks or staff to do this.
> Bust Britain is coming for the universities next. Domestic tuition fees, capped at £9,250 a year in 2017, haven’t risen with inflation, and the number of UK students applying is falling. This unsustainable funding model pushes universities to rely on higher foreign-student fees and compromise on the quality of teaching. Meanwhile, the government tightens visa rules for those coming to study in Britain.
> Decay has also advanced in those sectors where the private sector owns vital national infrastructure. Water companies pollute our rivers and beaches as bills go up. The Royal Mail can’t even deliver hospital letters on time. Energy firms rip us off. Train services are a shambles.
> While the British public struggles with poorly run services, shareholders and, ironically, foreign governments (rather than the UK taxpayer) benefit. EDF Energy, Britain’s fourth largest household energy supplier – which is building the country’s long-delayed first nuclear power station in a generation – is 90 per cent owned by the French government. Avanti, one of Britain’s least reliable train operators, is part owned by the Italian state.
> As a weak streak of mid-morning sunlight broke through the fog in Taunton, Bill Revans returned to his desk to work out what he could rescue in the town of his birth. “You want to have a pride in the place where you were born, grew up, and raised your family,” he said. “But how sad it is to manage decline.”
Relevancy:
> It’s not just happening in England: nearly a quarter of Scottish councils fear they can’t balance their budgets this year, and Welsh council leaders have also warned about the likelihood of bankruptcies.
> Crisis-ravaged councils span party colours and a range of different failings – including risky commercial ventures, financial mismanagement and bungled local projects.
It comes from populism. Freezing their budgets, forcing them to make cuts so upper levels of government can pretend it’s not their fault.
It also comes from few sensible people wanting the job, leaving it open to ideologically driven morons, tinpot nutters on a power trip, and career politicians using it as a way to move up the party
Tories. That’s how.
How did it come to this?
no news article required, idiot electorate voting for self-harm.
>It’s not just happening in England: nearly a quarter of Scottish councils fear they can’t balance their budgets this year, and Welsh council leaders have also warned about the likelihood of bankruptcies.
Scotland’s councils have it hard, there is no denying that, but the problems being faced in England are in another stratosphere.
Tories nuff said!
Modern monetary theory. We’ve been living on tick since 1997, not a shock we’re finally going bankrupt and the mega rich toddle off having saddled the public with their gambling debts and acquired all the assets they can. Bailing out the banks in 2008 and the huge amount of QE in 2019/20 has fucked it.
We never should have locked down during covid. Also we pay far too much in welfare
Tories
It is pretty simple. We are here because of short term politically motivated decisions by government. Simply, austerity, coupled with the politically motivated triple lock in pensions.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that we have had 14 years of the destruction of the public realm simply because they bribed pensioners with triple locked pensions for votes after the financial crisis. While being fully aware of our demographic crises and aging population timebomb. The conservatives did this by imposing real terms budget cuts on everything else under their control. Including long term investment for economic growth. While unsustainably growing pension and financial sector liabilities.
This was a short term political calculation at literally the cost of everyone else’s quality of life.
However, it has particularly cost the most vulnerable in society. Notably, the disabled and the poor. As it is traditionally them who rely on these public services the most. It has also, however, seen a dramatic rise in taxes on middle and higher income PAYE households. Who are then encouraged to blame the disabled, immigrants and the poor for this.
The UN has called out the government for their abysmal treatment of the disabled.
It is telling that the Conservatives have continued to allow record immigration despite their anti-immigration rhetoric. This behaviour indicates that they are well aware that without this immigration, to address the aging population crisis, the wheels would totally come off.
​
It also makes no economic sense to direct such vast amounts of public funding to pensioners. Especially at the cost of investment.
If we had taken the lead from other nations and invested heavily during record low interest rates. We would have seen a crazy return on that investment and could afford to have a thriving public realm with sustainably growing pensions, public services and higher wages.
Instead, because of their woeful economic management, motivated by a short term populism for the elderly political calculus and a desire to underwrite the U.K. financial sector, we are all gradually going to pay a higher and higher price. While having to deal with stagnant or falling living standards.
I can only hope labour have a better plan than the Conservatives. Because, so far, their rhetoric has been deeply uninspiring and totally fails to address the main economic issues we face.
Debt nearly at 100% of GDP. Highest tax burden in 70 years. Public services that are already falling over only face further cuts – those pressures making it harder for people to have kids, thereby shrinking the future tax take.
Hard to see a way out given we’ve no more countries to occupy nor family silver in the way of public assets to sell-off, those apparently being the traditional means of reversing economic decline.
Genuinely, what can be done about this? Any article, book, essay recommendations for intelligent people who are taking this seriously? Any historical examples of countries who have dug themselves out of similar holes?
Never ending great replacement migration.
I’ve lived in both The Netherlands and France. In both of those countries, local authorities exist to serve the local population and do the basics well. In the UK, local authorities seem to exist in order to invent ever more convoluted ways of making life more difficult and expensive for the population and persecuting them. They are remarkably heavy handed and faceless. They are also remarkably unaccountable.
Town planning is a disaster and well overdue reform, as we have ended up a cartel of national house building companies not building what the country needs (smaller, inexpensive units) in order to drive profit.
And I’m sorry, but creating LEZ zones in Scottish cities to follow on from the economic problems caused to businesses following Covid, in the midst of a cost of living crisis is as tone deaf and elitist as it gets.
Yet council tax is routinely 3 or 4 times more per year in the UK than the equivalent property tax in other European countries.
An absolutely staggeringly massive transfer of public wealth to private hands. Consumers have no money, governments have no money (because their citizens can’t pay enough tax, and they won’t tax the people who could make a difference). Some people have done spectacularly well out of this last few years, and ultimately they are the ones holding many of the cards now.
Didn’t you notice the Tories plundering the country?
Maybe if they spend some of all the money that was saved on leaving the EU! Maybe then they would be able to sort out the system!
England votes Tory. Not hard to work out
Fuck the Tories
Y’all got looted by elites again.
Happens a lot. All over.
Fella oughta be aware of elite looters. And get in front of it.
It’s simple as: Westminster. It’s always mismanaged Scotland and Wales but now after 14 years of tories and no EU immigration to top up jobs England is now feeling it more then it ever has
Weird can’t understand at all how this happened when absolutely every issue ever was reduced to pick a side and education, housing, transport etc all became political footballs
23 comments
> Collapsing councils are a microcosm of the British state’s failings: austerity, short-termism, Treasury myopia and decades of failure to solve the so-called wicked problems of policymaking, such as council tax, planning and our broken social care model.
> Every block in the Jenga tower appears to be wobbling.
> The NHS is stuck with one in ten jobs vacant, crumbling buildings and equipment, strikes and poor patient outcomes. Welfare is no longer acting as a safety net: the UK now has record levels of long-term sickness at 2.8 million and a system too threadbare to propel people back into work. So depleted are our armed forces that military chiefs mull the return of conscription. Police fail to solve 90 per cent of crimes. And best of luck to anyone who encounters a prison or courtroom.
> Everywhere you look, the country is blighted by neglect and decay – literally, in the case of the nation’s teeth. Dentistry is so overstretched that police had to control a queue that had amassed along a road in Bristol for the opening of a new dental practice in February. The government released a hasty “Dental Recovery Plan”, intended to incentivise dentists to offer more appointments: the British Dental Association’s head said it wasn’t “worthy of the title”.
> Labour’s big idea is supervised tooth-brushing for children aged three to five. But after the policy was announced, I heard that nursery heads warned party insiders they didn’t have enough sinks or staff to do this.
> Bust Britain is coming for the universities next. Domestic tuition fees, capped at £9,250 a year in 2017, haven’t risen with inflation, and the number of UK students applying is falling. This unsustainable funding model pushes universities to rely on higher foreign-student fees and compromise on the quality of teaching. Meanwhile, the government tightens visa rules for those coming to study in Britain.
> Decay has also advanced in those sectors where the private sector owns vital national infrastructure. Water companies pollute our rivers and beaches as bills go up. The Royal Mail can’t even deliver hospital letters on time. Energy firms rip us off. Train services are a shambles.
> While the British public struggles with poorly run services, shareholders and, ironically, foreign governments (rather than the UK taxpayer) benefit. EDF Energy, Britain’s fourth largest household energy supplier – which is building the country’s long-delayed first nuclear power station in a generation – is 90 per cent owned by the French government. Avanti, one of Britain’s least reliable train operators, is part owned by the Italian state.
> As a weak streak of mid-morning sunlight broke through the fog in Taunton, Bill Revans returned to his desk to work out what he could rescue in the town of his birth. “You want to have a pride in the place where you were born, grew up, and raised your family,” he said. “But how sad it is to manage decline.”
Relevancy:
> It’s not just happening in England: nearly a quarter of Scottish councils fear they can’t balance their budgets this year, and Welsh council leaders have also warned about the likelihood of bankruptcies.
> Crisis-ravaged councils span party colours and a range of different failings – including risky commercial ventures, financial mismanagement and bungled local projects.
Archive: https://archive.is/IOqZy
It comes from populism. Freezing their budgets, forcing them to make cuts so upper levels of government can pretend it’s not their fault.
It also comes from few sensible people wanting the job, leaving it open to ideologically driven morons, tinpot nutters on a power trip, and career politicians using it as a way to move up the party
Tories. That’s how.
How did it come to this?
no news article required, idiot electorate voting for self-harm.
>It’s not just happening in England: nearly a quarter of Scottish councils fear they can’t balance their budgets this year, and Welsh council leaders have also warned about the likelihood of bankruptcies.
Scotland’s councils have it hard, there is no denying that, but the problems being faced in England are in another stratosphere.
Tories nuff said!
Modern monetary theory. We’ve been living on tick since 1997, not a shock we’re finally going bankrupt and the mega rich toddle off having saddled the public with their gambling debts and acquired all the assets they can. Bailing out the banks in 2008 and the huge amount of QE in 2019/20 has fucked it.
We never should have locked down during covid. Also we pay far too much in welfare
Tories
It is pretty simple. We are here because of short term politically motivated decisions by government. Simply, austerity, coupled with the politically motivated triple lock in pensions.
It isn’t an exaggeration to say that we have had 14 years of the destruction of the public realm simply because they bribed pensioners with triple locked pensions for votes after the financial crisis. While being fully aware of our demographic crises and aging population timebomb. The conservatives did this by imposing real terms budget cuts on everything else under their control. Including long term investment for economic growth. While unsustainably growing pension and financial sector liabilities.
This was a short term political calculation at literally the cost of everyone else’s quality of life.
However, it has particularly cost the most vulnerable in society. Notably, the disabled and the poor. As it is traditionally them who rely on these public services the most. It has also, however, seen a dramatic rise in taxes on middle and higher income PAYE households. Who are then encouraged to blame the disabled, immigrants and the poor for this.
The UN has called out the government for their abysmal treatment of the disabled.
It is telling that the Conservatives have continued to allow record immigration despite their anti-immigration rhetoric. This behaviour indicates that they are well aware that without this immigration, to address the aging population crisis, the wheels would totally come off.
​
It also makes no economic sense to direct such vast amounts of public funding to pensioners. Especially at the cost of investment.
If we had taken the lead from other nations and invested heavily during record low interest rates. We would have seen a crazy return on that investment and could afford to have a thriving public realm with sustainably growing pensions, public services and higher wages.
Instead, because of their woeful economic management, motivated by a short term populism for the elderly political calculus and a desire to underwrite the U.K. financial sector, we are all gradually going to pay a higher and higher price. While having to deal with stagnant or falling living standards.
I can only hope labour have a better plan than the Conservatives. Because, so far, their rhetoric has been deeply uninspiring and totally fails to address the main economic issues we face.
Debt nearly at 100% of GDP. Highest tax burden in 70 years. Public services that are already falling over only face further cuts – those pressures making it harder for people to have kids, thereby shrinking the future tax take.
Hard to see a way out given we’ve no more countries to occupy nor family silver in the way of public assets to sell-off, those apparently being the traditional means of reversing economic decline.
Genuinely, what can be done about this? Any article, book, essay recommendations for intelligent people who are taking this seriously? Any historical examples of countries who have dug themselves out of similar holes?
Never ending great replacement migration.
I’ve lived in both The Netherlands and France. In both of those countries, local authorities exist to serve the local population and do the basics well. In the UK, local authorities seem to exist in order to invent ever more convoluted ways of making life more difficult and expensive for the population and persecuting them. They are remarkably heavy handed and faceless. They are also remarkably unaccountable.
Town planning is a disaster and well overdue reform, as we have ended up a cartel of national house building companies not building what the country needs (smaller, inexpensive units) in order to drive profit.
And I’m sorry, but creating LEZ zones in Scottish cities to follow on from the economic problems caused to businesses following Covid, in the midst of a cost of living crisis is as tone deaf and elitist as it gets.
Yet council tax is routinely 3 or 4 times more per year in the UK than the equivalent property tax in other European countries.
An absolutely staggeringly massive transfer of public wealth to private hands. Consumers have no money, governments have no money (because their citizens can’t pay enough tax, and they won’t tax the people who could make a difference). Some people have done spectacularly well out of this last few years, and ultimately they are the ones holding many of the cards now.
Didn’t you notice the Tories plundering the country?
Maybe if they spend some of all the money that was saved on leaving the EU! Maybe then they would be able to sort out the system!
England votes Tory. Not hard to work out
Fuck the Tories
Y’all got looted by elites again.
Happens a lot. All over.
Fella oughta be aware of elite looters. And get in front of it.
It’s simple as: Westminster. It’s always mismanaged Scotland and Wales but now after 14 years of tories and no EU immigration to top up jobs England is now feeling it more then it ever has
Weird can’t understand at all how this happened when absolutely every issue ever was reduced to pick a side and education, housing, transport etc all became political footballs
Never saw this coming at all