Everything is wrong in this country

Employment is at an all time high. I think I heard on radio employment at 27 year high.
NHS free at point of service.
More people can afford foreign holidays than when I was a child.
Most people can afford mobile phones and cable TV non of which are essential.
Gas and Electricity prices are price capped so more can afford them and government offer winter fuel payments to those on pensions. If you are on a means tested benefit you can also get extra help with electricity/gas.
We are not at war with another country.
We are hopefully coming out of EU by end of January.
Lots to look forward to in New Year.
No need to be so miserable WW2.

I think you could be right lemongrove and WWmk2 is a activist bot!

There’ll be another soupçon of Labour manifesto along to entertain us shortly ....
?

There is something to be said for Whitewavemark2 ' list but isn't that the changing dynamics of the U.K.? When younger there was less population of immigrant families in the area I have lived in for 45 years. To be honest I never fully noticed how much U.K had changed until about last 10 to fifteen years and now lack of housing getting your children into a school of your choice in your actual area hospital bed crisis loss of the High Street shopping because it is being pulled down to create even more houses loss of green spaces for the children as being built on for more houses once again so many things and yes the past governments were ready to let many people migrate to the U.K only they failed to notice the country was at bursting point and all the burden this migration was putting on the finances of U.K was ridiculous and we are far from being a rich nation any longer and I for one fear for the future of my grand-children.
I still look for many things that make me feel blessed everyday but my town has been so overbuilt now that it is hardly recognisable and manoeuvring the road layouts to make way for ever increasing transport is an effort in itself when driving around. What I do see is many foreign drivers that seem to have a desire for the large 4x4's good luck I say I would like one of them to ferry the grand-children and my dog around in oh well one can only but dream.
It seems in my area now to maybe have come to U.K through some immigration scheme you are not living in poverty particularly if you drive a 4x4 or latest B.M.W. which is what I see.
I am not being judgemental I have no racist views to have a multicultural town and live in multicultural community is no problem to me only government made all the decisions of the past and we are reaping what they have sown.

I confess, I have not read this entire thread but what I have read tells me that most of us are quick to blame someone else for all the bad things.
No one wants to take responsibility in my view and once elected the politicians, of whatever hue, are shot down in flames.

Are they all so evil? How come?
Inequalities are nothing new.

Back in the 1960s Lady Isobel Barnet was holding forth on Question Time about the undeserving poor and how they misspent their meagre earnings and she could tell them, good Aberdeenshire stock that she was, how to feed a family on wholesome fare for less than sixpence! or whatever a pittence was
Someone suggested that if you were down to your last sixpence, wouldn't you want to spend it on a little luxury?

In other words, if you are in the fortunate position of not being poor it is easy to tell others how they should live.

Please do not paint the poor as feckless drunks, some may be , some rich people are be too, the only difference is wealth. Few single mums chose to be, most have been let down by a man, who pays at best minimum for the children. The father may be dead or disabled. If the mother has dodgy health, or a minimum wage job the child may well be being brought up in poverty.
We imported labour from many countries to do jobs we didn't want to do, while we were doing that our countrymen and women were going off to the antipodes or Canada, some have come back later or on retirement, I know a lot of nurses who did that, to live in a pleasanter climate while we got Irish or Carribbean nurses to do the job we'd trained them to do. Where would I be without doctors or nurses or dentists from overseas, dead probably. Thank heavens we have them. For many it is luck rather than hard work which has given them an easy life, a different decision at a crossroads in their life, a company they worked for closing down, s drunk driver disabling or killing a breadwinner, a freak accident if birth that means you have to give up your job to look after a child with a rare congenital issue...some are born to wealth and privilege, it's not their choice, others are born in poverty and to get to where the rich person is will be an uphill struggle. Wronguns are wronguns whatever their origin, but wring behaviour is brushed off if the person is from the wealthier strata of society, and often demonised or thought of as feckless and to blame if they are from the lower strata, or are incomers from elsewhere.
We'd be so much poorer as a society were it not for the efforts of immigrants over the centuries, Huguenots, in London, Germans in Bradford to mention just a couple of groups. Not all the wealthy are just take, take, some are philanthropic, and care about their neighbour who is struggling. Some are immigrants elsewhere, channel isles, Isle of Man, or other tax havens, avoiding paying the taxes that would benefit so many. They are every but as antisocial as those at the other end of the spectrum. And the likes of Prince Andrew....thank heavens there are members of the royal family who do good for the nation. My mum was once at a dinner at which he was present and says that him and his cronies were throwing bread rolls around, the sort of behaviour that would get you thrown out of wetherspoons. And the waste when people go hungry.

My husband's grandfather came from a large family and worked in the fields during school holidays picking potatoes. He left school at a young age and worked. He worked hard and established a co-operative soft drinks business ( a bit like Corona if you remember that) He was a keen supporter of workers' education and also bringing music to the poorer members of society. He was able to achieve this because he was a Labour Party member who became an alderman and was also Sheriff of Nottingham.

When he died, in the fifties, people lined the streets for his funeral cortege and one half page in the local broadsheet was devote to this and his obit. Tories never stood against him and he was always elected unopposed.

Not everybody from such a background was or indeed is able to achieve what he did. If he had had a slightly different personality, no doubt his family would have been very rich.

Now we have the greatest divide between the richest and poorest since the Edwardian era.

Opal, how would you differentiate the 'can't work' from the 'won't work? Next, how exactly would you compel somebody to work? I'd love to know. Would you stop their benefits, perhaps and leave their innocent children to starve?

I think you are barking up the wrong tree anyway. By far the biggest drain on the benefits system are all the elderly who are living much longer lives. What would you do to solve that, I wonder?

83% of schools will suffer further cuts next year, on top of the cuts they have already experienced every year since 2010.

Schools in our area all have banners outlining the amount of money each individual school has lost.

It is appalling.

Some more perspective on WWM2's depressing vision of gloom and doom.
Before the welfare state people had to work until they dropped to the ground of old age, often in cold damp fields or filthy noisy factories. If they didn't work they got no money at all, if they did work they still got no unemployment benefit, holiday pay or pension.
Before the NHS people and children could not afford to see a doctor and often died as a result.
Children didn't go to school so they never had the opportunity to read, write and get a well-paid job. This meant it was into the field or factory for them as soon as they were 7 or 8 years old.
There was no birth control so babies were born one after the other, even if you had no money to feed them.

Our ancestors worked hard over the last 200 years to deal with the above problems.

Can you just stop and think about all the advantages we have now. Most people have a choice whether to educate themselves, work hard and earn more money; what size family they can afford to support; and so on.

Many of our problems are due to being a small overcrowded country unable to support the large numbers of people who now live here, and Labour has been largely responsible for that.

I think it is impossible to make judgements about people who "can't help themselves" unless you have the full facts and history. Superficial judgements lead to bigotry.

I do not agree with the OP that everything is wrong with this country; but I am aware of those things that ARE very wrong; and they are things that relate to the huge divide between the haves and the have nots.

Time to start bombarding back then jo1book

I have this theory that WW2 is not a real person, All posts smack of Labour Party Propaganda direct from Headquarters.
There is never any real dialogue; just negative bombardments. If the polls are right, they are getting desperate.

Orecisely Chestnut.
My own daughter (well-off thanks to big inheritance) send her kids to school to have breakfast because it is easier!

9 years of Tory government.

pinkquartz - if you genuinely can't work, then you deserve all of the help the country can give you. That's not what I've been saying. I'll say it again, we should be happy to help those who CAN'T help themselves, but should not be assisting those who CAN, but simply WON'T. Get them back out to work and contributing to the economy, and then let's see what difference that would make to our services. It's a culture change that needs to happen.

Teachers are freely giving children breakfast, as they find it too distressing to watch a struggling hungry child.
I cannot believe that the parents are so poor they can't give their child breakfast. Before the welfare state people lived in dire poverty but feeding the children was always priority number one. I suspect these are the same parents who go to school and to the shops in their pyjamas.

Curlywurly - I accept your viewpoint and absolutely respect your decision to vote Labour. However, I'm only happy to share my good fortune with those who CAN'T help themselves, not those who WON'T. There is a big difference, and it's that difference that really needs to be addressed if we, as a country, are ever going to have enough in the way of finances and services to help those who are in genuine need.

Lemongrove, yes I've noticed but there are days when we just have to "bomb" back .

Luckygirl - I assure you I am not complacent about the plight that some people find themselves in, and would move mountains to help those in genuine need who could not help themselves. But surely you are aware that there are some in our society who want to live on handouts and benefits, and are simply not interested in working and helping themselves and their families. Or others, who make poor choices and expect to be fully supported by others, whilst they continue to make poor choices? If we can stop this happening in our society, there would be more money and services available for those like you in times of genuine need. I've seen your posts on other threads, and am so sympathetic to your situation, but there are others who are not so deserving, and as a country we need to recognise that and address it, and stop sweeping it under the carpet.

“An honest honourable man” ?

Don’t make me laugh.

He’s an IRA and terrorist sympathiser.

Don’t fall for the avuncular act.
He is a dangerous man.

LuckyGirl
I applaud your post. You are 100% correct.

I am ill and disabled and life is hard. Much worse after 10 years of Tory Britain but the cuts began under Blair.

Sometimes you cannot work no matter how much you want to. Fact.

jE “Corbyn and his cronies would be a complete disaster for this country.

That is a fact.”

How can it be a fact ? Surely it’s an opinion?

Just to give some balance to the posters who have come from nothing, worked hard and are doing well and vote Conservative - I was brought up in a Council house, the youngest of 3 children whose father left when I was 2 months old. We literally had nothing. My husband was also brought up in a Council house. We paid for our own wedding, bought our own house, had absolutely no help from anybody. Through hard work we have ended up very prosperous, put our 2 children through university and gave both of them deposits to help them buy their own homes. And it is precisely because I KNOW what it is truely like to be deprived and to stuggle that we vote Labour. We are happy to pay more tax, we can afford it, my poor hard-working Mother (she had 3 part-time low-paid jobs (at the same time), when I was school age) could not. I have never forgotten my roots, and am only to happy to share some of my good fortune to help those that can't help themselves.

Opal I agree with all that you have said ?
Lemongrove - spot-on !

If anyone hasn’t noticed....what WWM2 is doing ( and has been for a while) is to follow the activist method of bombing threads with so called facts ( anti Conservative).This is what is happening all over social media, for all political parties.
The OP isn’t worth responding to in my view.