Our Crumbling Economy

Add comment | Report | Private message GabriellaG54 Fri 03-May-19 09:37:37
They should stop treating health visitors who fly here to have ops or babies and leave the country without paying
Do you mean “health tourists” GG?
I think our Health Visitors are wonderful , massively overworked, understaffed but invaluable.

Most people do but it remains untapped. Many children never fulfill their potential.
How to teach somebody when they are dehydrated, hungry and dirty and their class mates bully them?

GG54 - Bruce Oldfield has a talent - not everybody does.

MaizieD still better to be second then 17th.

Local and County Councils have had a shake up yesterday, perhaps if they stopped paying salaries over £100,000 they would have more money to allocate into the local communities?

Investment in London is partly a result of the pound being low and overseas investors picking up bargains.

Increasing the wealth of the City of London does nothing for the rest of the country. The UK may appear over all to be very wealthy but the wealth is not being distributed across the nation. It is still concentrated in the hands of a small proportion of the population. As crystaltipps pointed out a few posts ago.

According to City AM London has jumped to second in the global rankings as best cities to invest in. Closest European City is France at seventeenth!!!

GabriellaG54

m.youtube.com/watch?v=w2c3lQsvkZ4

Grany
www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/big-election-questions-nhs-privatised.

Grany.....trust me, you are totally wasting your time.

message GabriellaG54 Health visitors as you say, who use the NHS don't make a dent they are a drop in the ocean how it's run the NHS was set up to help people. People don't know that the NHS is being sold off under the radar behind our backs people unaware.

Say no to NHS privatisation

Crime is rising dramatically.

I am 'lucky' in that I live out in the countryside, where violent crime is low. However, the number of burglaries and car thefts in our surrounding villages has absolutely rocketed over the last few years. I follow the local Neighbourhood Watch group on Facebook, and such incidents are happening nearly every day. Those responsible are able to operate day and night without any danger of being caught, knowing that the nearest police (apart from traffic officers with speed cameras) are miles away.

Meanwhile, our bus service has been slashed - actually, the council cut it completely, but several parishes have banded together to fund a minimal service for a limited time. No good for anyone depending in it to get to appointments etc.

Our doctors surgeries are like those in the towns, with not enough doctors and increasing difficulty in getting an appointment.

Our local roads are now in such bad condition that they make driving dangerous. Most repairs that have been done to them are so badly done that they might as well not have bothered, but I guess there isn't the money available to check that the work, done on the cheap, is up to scratch.
Roads that should be wide enough for two normal-sized vehicles to pass with ease are now effectively single track in places, with people having to drive in the centre to avoid deep potholes, which makes driving on them very dangerous.

On a more superficial level - our local rights-of-way across local fields are in danger of being lost. Over the last couple of years, farmers have failed to 'reinstate' these paths after sowing their crops, meaning that they have become impassable for many months of the year. This happens to coincide with the bankruptcy of our county council which means that no one is available to enforce the law in these matters. Not a priority, I know, but still very much a sign of the times!

Those are just some of the effects of the crumbling economy out in the countryside!

They should stop treating health visitors who fly here to have ops or babies and leave the country without paying.

Underfunding is not nonsense This Tory government are deliberately underfunding our NHS Heatlh spending was 5.4% of GDP IN 2010 and it is now 1.4%. So it will fail and changing it to an insurance based model like the USA to make profit from our Health Service The USA health care system disastrous we should have nothing to do with it.

This is a fall in spending of 74% of GDP

The Independent is reporting that the NHS has delayed cancer treatment, in some cases I definately, because it has had to put so much money aside for the Brexit effect.

The real problem is inequality which has increased dramatically. The have and the have nots are divided more starkly than in previous generations. Social mobility is possible, but it is harder. This is the result of successive governments’ policies to protect the better off. The whole country has been living off the coat tails of the international hub that is the City. The fact that it isn’t the worse place in the world shouldn’t make us smug or think we can just be I’m all right jack. The government are squandering billions on all sorts of failed / failing / potentially disastrous policies that we can see the whole facade crumbling before our eyes.

Eloethan
Underfunding is nonsense. The NHS is terribly wasteful and that's a well known fact as are doctors who prescribe medication that cost pennies as opposed to prescription prices.
I had a friend who for many years had a sore thumb joint for which she was prescribed a cream which arrived straight from the manufacturer. It cost £84 for a 100g tub. After at least 4 years her thumb was no better.
She and her OH had shed loads of pills in stock.
HMRC are another lumbering creaking dinosaur as are social services. We can't change them all.
It would take at least another 50 years to make any sort of dent in public services and only if those in charge had the will and the nous to do it.

I think having more people crammed into certain areas overloads the infrastructure to the detriment of housing, policing, education, transport, jobs, green spaces and hospitals/health centres.
You'll find that happens much more often in cities than suburban or rural areas and that is why more green spaces are lost to housing. Crime is more prevalent.
Many building firms are paying contractors who employ cheaper workers who often live in HMO.
It's the way it works in virtually every country. To change the status quo is akin to getting the Red Sea to part.
There is a lot of sympathy here for people who are disadvantaged.
How about posting your realistic ideas as to how we, who are more fortunate, can change their lives and the prospects of our AC and GC for the better, bearing in mind that it would have to be sustainable, affordable and acceptable to the majority.

Those who talk of the OP and others "talking down the country" have not addressed the list of crumbling public services that the OP provided.

Saying that "unemployment is at its lowest rate" doesn't in any way comfort me. There appears to be no definition of what "employment" means, other than working at least one hour a week. To my mind having a very insecure working arrangement which may mean working only a few hours a week is not what most people would recognise as true "employment".

In my view, the OP is absolutely right. This is supposed to be an advanced country and yet almost every day there are reports of failing services. This evening's news was about the crisis in our hospitals where job cuts and general underfunding have placed such pressures on medical and other staff that sickness levels are at an all time high.

It seems that some people who are not directly affected by austerity measures feel that there is nothing to be concerned about. But, to my mind, even those of us who are relatively secure and comfortably off will be affected if this decimation of public services continues. Unless they are super rich and can afford to find themselves a nice tax haven to emigrate to or pay for any service they need, including policing, they are still vulnerable to crime, poor physical and mental health and to the creeping degradation of amenities such as parks and other public spaces. Having said all that, it feels wrong to me to be so self-congratulatory about one's own - and one's family's - good fortune while being so dismissive of the real suffering and pressures occurring in many other people's families.

I'm sorry, GGMK3 that your thread has degenerated in this way. MaizieD (Thu 02-May-19 22:30:24)

It is a shame Maizie as there have been some really good posts. There are always some who want to talk more about themselves than discuss the point but we got a longer go at the subject than we usually do.

"I apologise for being upbeat and having a positive, can-do attitude. I blame my parents as I didn't ask to be this way. dIt annoys the heck out of a lot of people." GabriellaG54 (Thu 02-May-19 21:56:57)

Always interesting to hear how people see themselves. I shouldn't worry about it. Personally, I don't find your posts upbeat, positive and can-do so please don't fret. That is certainly not what annoys the heck out of me where they are concerned.

It's like a red rag to a bull, isn't it. Mention poverty and it's suddenly all about moaners and shirkers; as if all a poor person has to do is work hard and everything will be fine. If they're poor it's their own fault.

Well, a lot of 'poor'people work very hard for negligible reward and are still poor. And there are a lot of rich people who have done nothing to 'deserve' their wealth apart from being born into a very wealthy family. Which are then the 'shirkers'?

I'm sorry, GGMK3 that your thread has degenerated in this way.

dealt!

Gabriella that is so encouraging - you can laugh, or you can cry in this life, and there are people who have achieved stupendous results when life has deal them the worst cards.

Why not elect someone who knows all about it such as the Prince of Pimlico Plumbers Charlie Mullins or JKRowling or the B'stard of Billingsgate Roger Barton?
Contrary to what she might like to portray, Joanne Rowling had a very middle class upbringing in a lovely house in a leafy village. She may have hit hard times as a single mum at one point, but she had an advantaged start to life.
I don't know about the other two you mention, Gabriella.