Things ( utilities) that have got worse during your lifetime

All the above seem to have gone already in our area, so I’m not sure what else can be cut. Our main local park is now being closed for a year to sort out drainage problems. At least that’ll stop us all complaining about the lack of flowers and the tatty play equipment.

Half of all councils are on the brink of bankruptcy and will have to slash even more services- libraries, parks, public toilets, youth services, playgrounds, street sweeping , swimming pools - all under threat in many areas if they haven’t been cut already. Those who think all is rosy in their area might light to think of others.

M0nica

Pascal I have seen pictures of Brighton with weeds 5 foot tall growing between the paving slabs.

Yes Monica it is an ongoing battle.. The greens banned pesticides, fair enough, but we don't have enough council workers on the streets..

Pascal I have seen pictures of Brighton with weeds 5 foot tall growing between the paving slabs.

Can I add litter to my list of grumbles? It’s particularly bad in our local authority - embarrassing when we have visitors. We cross the border into our neighbouring Council area several times a week and see workers picking up litter, and those little sweepers trundling along, on their side. Never on ours. The lack of bins doesn’t help - DH picked up a broken bottle on a walk recently, along the main road, and had to carry it a mile before there was anywhere to put it. Yes, we do all complain to the Council and yes, some if us we do join in the occasional organised litterpicks and go out with our own little litterpickers, but we’re fighting a losing battle. A lot of it is left after the recycling wagon’s been round - with 6 boxes and bags per household it’s not surprising really that so much gets spilt. Okay, rant over!

Flooding in the East Midlands, exacerbated by lack of clearing of gullies and ditches, so nowhere for the water to go.

Potholes. I hate driving in the dark or after rain as you risk wrecking your car if you drive into one.
So many road closures at night for months on end for major reconstruction of junctions making evening journeys unreliable. When the work is finished the “improvements ” are minimal.
GP appointments hard to get and long delays, mainly as new housing has been developed without the infrastructure. Also badly affects parking in my small market town.

Plus the usual inaccessibility of companies who don’t want you to speak with a human being. Some notable exceptions with good bereavement departments.

Council services are absolutely dire, here.

Far, far worse than years ago.

My area is like a slum, including the block I live in.

I live in Brighton and have never experienced an electricity cut, the bus service is excellent and we have a fantastic library..and it is possible to get GP/nurse appointments within a few days.

I'm not keen on all the bins on the pavements and the postal service seems to be a bit erratic.
We have terrible problems with sewerage leaking into the sea and. the cost of housing is appalling and we have a real problem with homelessness and insecure housing..

Cheap housing. Not necessarily high spec housing. There used to be dumps and by that I mean probably no central heating, no bathroom and an outside loo.
While I definitely wasn’t brought up in such housing, to my parents’ horror me and my then boyfriend did rent one for next to nothing per week in the late 70s (pre Thatcher)
The roof was sound and there was a gas fire in the back room a Cole fire in the front living room and a very old gas oven and ascot hot water thingy in the kitchen.
A bit damp upstairs but nothing 2 healthy people couldn’t cope with. Second hand vacuum cleaner plus lots of hot water, soap and bleach. Was out most of the time anyway😉..ooh forgot the coin slot colour tv (remember those?) and massive stereo and speakers - priorities for goodness sake.
It was as was the rest of the street in a notoriously run down area and we assumed it would be due for demolition some time in the future.
I took a look on Google street view recently out of curiosity and some of the houses remain and have been “done up”
We didn’t stay long because we put our names down for a housing association house and were offered one about 7 months later. Different times and different expectations.

Dentistry! NHS dentists are hard to find and tend to be booked up months ahead. We are already known to be a nation of bad teeth and soon it might be a nation of no teeth. Tooth extraction is a major reason for admission of children to hospital. When I was a child, removal of tonsils was a common reason. I'm glad to say that all my YA DGC still have theirs!

I live in a London suburb and our bus services are fabulous every 2-3 minutes. It does help we are on the Heathrow route!

Somebody used to come annually to clear the drains. That is a distant memory.

Call centres are in other countries so because of the accent I cannot understand a word.

No banks locally- went to the nearest town yesterday, and queued outside in the cold as they were full. Had to queue for ages once indoors. 3 cashiers working and no space for more.

My blue wheelie bin was stolen, paid nearly £80 3 weeks ago, still waiting for its replacement.

Energy prices are horrendous- I will soon be staying in bed longer and retiring earlier.

I could go on and on.

I think train services, at least here, are vastly improved on how they were when I was working in years when I was a young slip of a girl.

The buses.... well....
they're just appalling, but then a small island, with thousands of people trying to get off it, all at the same time is never going to run smoothly.

Our postal service is absolutely appalling! We seem to go for a few days with no post, then stacks!

We are quite lucky with our GP service, which has recovered quite well after Covid, however not quite so lucky with our local hospital, I waited 7 months for a pain clinic appointment only for it to be cancelled due to staff shortages.

Water companies are abysmal with leaks leaks and more leaks.

I cannot abide call centres.

I live in Central Scotland. The postie calls daily but I only expect cards as I go paperless for most things. Electricity outages are rare but we did have a burst water main last year. Scottish Water were quickly on to it and as it took a couple of days to repair, they set up a drive in collection point for packs of bottled water. They delivered to anyone who couldn't get to it.
Telephone service is fine, but I would be alarmed if emergency calls were not working.
I do agree that there are problems with getting GP appointments and with NHS waiting lists.
My current concern is that my cash strapped local council is having to cut important services in this area. What is worse in my lifetime is beggers on the street and.families who are homeless and dependent on food banks.

Also meant to add potholes. Driving has become akin to a highly skilled video game where you have to dodge the gaping craters which are so bad they could easily write your car off or cause a nasty accident.

Everything has radically deteriorated over the last decade or so. The postal service in Bristol is horrendous. Lucky to get post once a week and even then it's likely to be posted through someone else's letterbox.

NHS dentists effectively no longer exist in Bristol. You may have seen on the national news the never ending queue of desperate people trying to register at a new surgery in St Pauls.

Public transport in the city is beyond dire. It's nothing to see around 20 bedraggled souls waiting at a bus stop at any time of the day. Buses are randomly cancelled or are likely to break down mid journey. You could not possibly rely on public transport to get you to work or for anything important. I've known it reduce people to tears.

GP appointments are a farce. You have to be dying to get one and even then it's touch and go. Our group practice now just has one doctor working limited hours. There used to be around 4 doctors available between 9am and 6.30pm.

Our local pharmacies seem to be a complete shambles. They regularly don't have your requirements or can only fill part of your prescription. Prescriptions also get lost. They seem to be constantly running on skeleton staff which change weekly and as a result are often not even open.

Trying to arrange anything has become agony. Such as an engineer to look at your washing machine/Sky box/central heating. After hours on the phone you are allocated an appointment in two weeks time (if you're lucky), you then dutifully take a day off work only for them to not turn up.

Every mortal thing is like walking through treacle these days. It's exhausting and demoralising.

I am in Cambridgeshire

My biggest moan is the service GP’s give now. No appointments available and surgery always empty!! A & E in hospitals heaving with people with minor ailments. I know this as DD works in local hospital A & E.

Private dental appointments only now. Amazing they can now offer everything needed and phones work again but all at a price!

Wait forever for routine hospital procedures!!

A shout out to 111 staff who are really helpful and try their best. Must be such a stressful job for them so thank you for your kindness and service.

I could go on as the list is endless ……

However I would give a thumbs up to British Gas the service we have received from them has been outstanding this year.

Also ADT alarm well done them.

Out postal system seems to be working here one delivery a day all good!!

We live in Hampshire, southern England.
Our electricity supply is better as the local sub station was upgraded about ten years ago.
Post is the same, less of it, but we see our postie about most days.
GP surgery has had to close its books to new patients, too many houses being built, not enough infrastructure, which brings me to roads. No provision for the new houses, existing roads are poor quality and often gridlocked, so although we have regular buses, they get held up.
We’ve just got back a local policeman after about twenty years without one.
I bank online, have been mobile phone only for 18 odd years and am a regular user of the internet for most shopping and admin.

I remember,in London, my mum used to go bananas if the bus was 5 minutes late! We’re lucky if they turn up here so most of us just rely on our own cars. The trains are slightly better, they usually turn up eventually.

I went into my bank HQ last week and it was a good experience.
My accounts were changed to give me better interest rates and it was good having everything explained face to face.

The local branch closed 2 years ago and I have been using online and mobile banking as best I can. Occasional cheques can be paid in at the post office. Our post office is excellent and very busy.

Does it truly save so much money closing our high streets?

I live in Sussex

My biggest moan as far as utilities are concerned is

Water - sewerage and our seas and rivers. They are disgusting, and as far as I can see there is a lot of talk, higher bills but no action to repair a worsening problem. This means that our beaches have “do not swim” notices as well as our rivers, and wildlife is dying.

The next is the PO. I don’t think that there is a worse managed business. The staff are abysmally paid and treated (I watched a select committee on a fact finding mission) and the delivery is hit and miss at best.

Electricity - ours is entirely from renewable and although ludicrously expensive when compared to other countries, I can’t remember the last time we had a power cut.

Gas - see above except not renewable and contributing to the worlds pollution.

Telephone - Virgin - no issue except the price.

Pot holes - someone has wished the potholes a happy birthday by painting hearts and flowers around the ones outside of his house. But they are dangerous and cause a lot of expensive damage.

I think people moan, because as a rule when one is paying a high price for services etc you expect a high quality of service, but we are not getting what we are paying for.

We are not door mats and sit by and let them walk on us - we moan instead. But really action is what is needed.

Less access to people- " you can find answers on our website online" : not always you telephone person! I think that the postal service is poor, and too expensive. Maybe the price means people don't use it. I wonder if a reduction might help? The trouble is, the lucrative parcel deliveries have been hived off to providers who see money to be made. These firms aren't interested in delivering birthday cards to rural Cumbria- no profit in that.
Public transport here is very good.

Post arrives daily here in Bedfordshire and parcels by various couriers are usually on time.

Our transport system is good for the most part. I travel a lot by bus and train, and love the cycle path network we have here. I feel much safer cycling now than I did even just 10 years ago.

I am lucky that I have space to store bins and can move them easily. I can remember carrying the metal dustbin from the back yard each week. Though one bin a week was rarely full - where does all the waste come from?

My moans?
As alluded to above - the huge amount of packaging that seems to come even though I shop at markets etc as much as possible.

The motorway system which clogs up frequently, especially the pothole ridden M25.

MOnica - I now have a radio in each room! It's the time lapse between LW and FM that catches me out sometimes. Though it does mean that I can hear the answers to Vernon Kay's 10 to the top while OH is still listening to the question sometimes!

I live in Oxfordshire.

Landlines replaced by VOIP 'you will not notice the difference' (BT) , in other words you will not notice that you have to buy new phones, cannot get the answerphone to work, cannot use it all over the house because in some area you are too far from where your internet connection is, calls get cut and you have to redial, sometimes you cannot get a connection, even though the internet is up and running.

Apart from those small items you really will not notice the difference.

Radio reception I am a Radio 4 listener. I prefer Long Wave, a good strong signal that can be heard anywhere in the house and garden. We are assured that FM and digital are so much better, so why will digital work at the front of the house but not the back? and FM work at the back of the house but not the front. carryig a radio round the house listening to a programme is impossible with digital and FM.

The NHS Do I need to say more? It has been reported this mornig that 10% of all elective surgery is paid for in private hospitals.

Contacting utility companies. Back in the 1980s-90s, when I worked for British Gas, you rang your local district office which had a small team of customer call staff. All calls were expected to be answered within 2 minutes. If the avarage went above that the District Manager would have it brought up at his annual assessment. It was all carefully monitored - I ran the monitoring service.
Postal Service read AliOxons saga of getting Royal Mail to deliver a new router for her computer. The cost of sending a letter or card is extrortionate. Birthday cards - first class need to be sent at least a week in advance.
Electicity is better. We no longer get regular power cuts some lasting 8 or 9 hours. However constantly needing to monitor different companies and their prices for the best deal.

Bluebelle corruption in local government is much less than it was. One area I lived in as a child/young woman (1950s60s) A prominent local estate agent wasa councillor, Alderman and Mayor and chaired the planning committee. He died a very wealthy man. His name was a byword, a long time afterwards.

I'm in Scotland BlueBelle. I realise nobody writes letters anymore but I am still suspicious that my mail comes only once a week!

The Royal Mail has a rule of not delivering only junk mail so I think mine gets saved up.

I have a compost caddy in the kitchen Nanna8 but its not hot here!

I have 3 bins. Blue for paper and plastic recycle, red bucket for bottles and black for everything else. But I can store them on my own property and bring them out on the day. There is no provision for people in flats.
I should be writing this to my councillors, not to you!!