One word to describe the U.K.

Depressing!

There are bad apples in every party

It's just that the past 14 years have thrown up an exceptional number of tory bad apples.

I don't for one minute think that every single tory MP is a wrong 'un.

GrannyGravy13

Aveline

I object to the unpleasant comments re Tory MPs. They are not all out for themselves or 'self serving'. I feel that comments such as this say more about those saying them. I'm not voting Tory but neither am I jumping on a knee jerk reaction to slag off the party I don't particularly like.

I agree, we have a Conservative MP in our extended family, they are human, have the same emotions and feelings as you and I.

I am still undecided where to put my X, but it definitely will not be Labour, Lib Dem’s or Reform. Leaning towards a local Independent.

I voted for a Local Independent once.
It felt like the right decision for me.
There was not much of what he wrote that I disagreed with.

Aveline

I object to the unpleasant comments re Tory MPs. They are not all out for themselves or 'self serving'. I feel that comments such as this say more about those saying them. I'm not voting Tory but neither am I jumping on a knee jerk reaction to slag off the party I don't particularly like.

To clarify Aveline, when I said the government had shafted the electorate for personal gain I wasn’t meaning the average Tory MP, just the cabinet - the Bullingdon crew, particularly I. Johnson’s era, who were doing just that. I don’t believe for a minute that anybody thinks all Tory MPs are bad people, of course they aren’t, we’ve discussed that on previous threads. There are bad apples in every party.

Aveline

I object to the unpleasant comments re Tory MPs. They are not all out for themselves or 'self serving'. I feel that comments such as this say more about those saying them. I'm not voting Tory but neither am I jumping on a knee jerk reaction to slag off the party I don't particularly like.

I agree, we have a Conservative MP in our extended family, they are human, have the same emotions and feelings as you and I.

I am still undecided where to put my X, but it definitely will not be Labour, Lib Dem’s or Reform. Leaning towards a local Independent.

Aveline

I object to the unpleasant comments re Tory MPs. They are not all out for themselves or 'self serving'. I feel that comments such as this say more about those saying them. I'm not voting Tory but neither am I jumping on a knee jerk reaction to slag off the party I don't particularly like.

I agree, so many comments about Tory MPs, past and present. You'd think they were ALL derisable for being narcissistic, pompous, affected, philandering, scruffy and fat etc etc!
I don’t like slagging anyone off, (M&H occasionally the exception!). It shows a lack of decorum, and yes, you're right, the comments do say more about those writing them.

I object to the unpleasant comments re Tory MPs. They are not all out for themselves or 'self serving'. I feel that comments such as this say more about those saying them. I'm not voting Tory but neither am I jumping on a knee jerk reaction to slag off the party I don't particularly like.

Thanks Siope that's interesting. I didn't follow the RP programme closely - but basically I thought of it as trying to improve communities to make them better places to live. I think, you are right, like the SureStart programme it was probably started up too quickly with "light touch" (insufficient?) preliminary research.

I was part of that early research and was expected to turn reports round way too quickly. I always included my time constraints in the conclusions because it was deeply frustrating.
Now I think of it, I was also asked to do some work for a council on a particularly underprivileged area they were trying to improve and I was only given a few weeks (3?) to gather the info for that. I worked all day every day including doing street interviews at night (!) and "hanging out" with young lads with dogs one Saturday evening.... in my defence I was younger then!

Do you think that by the time it was on the way out the lessons were clear and a good job might have been done using that learning? Or do you think the whole idea was in essence, useless?

I worked in Social Housing (Supported) prior to Blair but by then had moved into Children and Families. I felt they were trying to implement SureStart before they really knew what it was, they were doing things in a rush. I know that as they matured the good ones became excellent and I really hope they will redevelop this model.

I heard someone on the radio yesterday saying that the mistakes made by the Conservatives when Johnson came in with that massive majority was not instantly implementing new money-intensive radical programmes immediately. They were saying there's a small window when "the people" will allow a government to be radical. It is at the beginning. I just wonder if Blair thought it's now or never?

Aveline

It's funny that people somehow think if their party of choice is elected everything will instantly and automatically be perfect. The incoming govt will have the same problems to deal with and the same laws and restrictions around their actions.
Lower your expectations people!

I don’t think anybody thinks that, have they said they do? My feeling is it will take years - but at least the government will have the will to improve the lot of the average voter rather than to shaft the electors for personal gain.

Aveline

It's funny that people somehow think if their party of choice is elected everything will instantly and automatically be perfect. The incoming govt will have the same problems to deal with and the same laws and restrictions around their actions.
Lower your expectations people!

Who's that then? I certainly don't expect everything to be perfect and I haven't met anybody who thinks it will be.

Aveline

It's funny that people somehow think if their party of choice is elected everything will instantly and automatically be perfect. The incoming govt will have the same problems to deal with and the same laws and restrictions around their actions.
Lower your expectations people!

Th incoming government won't be full of self serving corrupt individuals with no concern for the poor, the sick and homeless.
That will do me fine for a starter...

It's funny that people somehow think if their party of choice is elected everything will instantly and automatically be perfect. The incoming govt will have the same problems to deal with and the same laws and restrictions around their actions.
Lower your expectations people!

This morning

Anticipation and hope🌞🌞🇬🇧🇬🇧

Casdon, very similar here in the North West. We were king cotton, heavy industry, manufacturing, engineering, mining. A proud industrial heritage but now so much waste land, deprivation, poor health and poverty

zakouma66

GrannyGravy13

The last Labour government was that good that in Tony Blair’s first six years he committed U.K. troops to combat situations five times more than any other Prime Minister in history.

Iraq 1998 and 2003

Kosovo 1999

Sierra Leone 2000

Afghanistan 2001

Like I said, rose tinted glasses with the current world situation do t be surprised if our brave troops end up in Ukraine or Middle East…

The brave troops have signed up to do a job.

They were lied to.

Betrayed

GrannyGravy13

The last Labour government was that good that in Tony Blair’s first six years he committed U.K. troops to combat situations five times more than any other Prime Minister in history.

Iraq 1998 and 2003

Kosovo 1999

Sierra Leone 2000

Afghanistan 2001

Like I said, rose tinted glasses with the current world situation do t be surprised if our brave troops end up in Ukraine or Middle East…

The brave troops have signed up to do a job.

Primrose53

Casdon

Primrose53

Go and live in Labour controlled Wales and see what you think then. 😱

We had a few Welsh GNetters on here recently saying how bad it is there.

It’s really not, it’s the best place to live, regardless of the long term impacts of our industrial past, which have meant Wales has underperformed compared with the wealthier southern parts of England for the last fifty years regardless of which government was in power.

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/05/11/labours-woeful-record-in-wales-should-serve-as-a-warning/

Find something from a reputable source rather than a Tory mouthpiece Primrose, they are ever more desperate. If you compare the health, poverty levels etc. of the former industrial areas of Wales with those of North East England, with a very similar industrial legacy, there’s no difference.

Casdon

Primrose53

Go and live in Labour controlled Wales and see what you think then. 😱

We had a few Welsh GNetters on here recently saying how bad it is there.

It’s really not, it’s the best place to live, regardless of the long term impacts of our industrial past, which have meant Wales has underperformed compared with the wealthier southern parts of England for the last fifty years regardless of which government was in power.

www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2024/05/11/labours-woeful-record-in-wales-should-serve-as-a-warning/

Primrose53

Go and live in Labour controlled Wales and see what you think then. 😱

We had a few Welsh GNetters on here recently saying how bad it is there.

It’s really not, it’s the best place to live, regardless of the long term impacts of our industrial past, which have meant Wales has underperformed compared with the wealthier southern parts of England for the last fifty years regardless of which government was in power.

NotSpaghetti The Housing Market Renewal Pathfinders. A lot of lip service was paid to the theory that community engagement and cohesion should be integral to the Pathfinder dets, but the rushed early implementation meant that wasn’t really the case. I felt the whole programne was problematic in its relationship to affordable and social housing (inevitably, given the aim was to close a market gap between poor and more affluent areas), and indeed, one consequence was increased private landlord interest.

I didn’t (still don’t) think the evaluation and impact measurements were robust, and the counterfactuals were weak (the various government reports support this, noting that even where the market gap closed, it’s impossible to say this was as a result of the Pathfinders).

However, I think the way in which the programme was closed by the Coalition (with a very badly managed ‘transition fund’) was even worse!

Go and live in Labour controlled Wales and see what you think then. 😱

We had a few Welsh GNetters on here recently saying how bad it is there.

Unsettled.

Like the weather
Disagreeable
Dark grey skies
Cool
Breezy
Occasional short burst of warm sun
Occasional heavy shower
No change in site

dragonfly46

NotSpaghetti

The UK may still be a good place to live, grandMattie.. but it's not the happiest!
Not according to the 2024 William Russell happiness report. This considers lots of evidence such as perceptions of the environment, friendliness, safety, and inclusion.

Here's the list of the top 20 in order:

Finland
Denmark
Iceland
Sweden
Israel
Netherlands
Norway
Luxembourg
Switzerland
Australia
New Zealand
Costa Rica
Kuwait
Austria
Canada
Belgium
Ireland
Czechia
Lithuania
United Kingdom

I second that. Living in the Netherlands was wonderful. The Dutch seem to have got their work/life balance much better than over here and they are intensely patriotic - they never run their country down as we do. I often wish I had been born Dutch.

TBH, after very extensive travel all over the place and living abroad for many years, I’ve come to the conclusion that the citizens of most countries are much more likely to tell you how great their country is, than slag it off. IMO Brits (or perhaps the English in particular) are somewhat unusual in being so keen to bang on about how dire everything is.

An extreme example, I know, but when dd1 was working in Aceh (Indonesia) after the 2004 tsunami, people were endlessly asking her whether she didn’t think Aceh was absolutely the nicest place she’d ever been to? Hardly any of them had ever even been elsewhere in Indonesia, let alone anywhere in the wider world!

^zhould be , between times, more.