One word to describe the U.K.

Banjaxed!

Farmor15

Banjaxed!

😂😂😂

Mixed.

Home. It's where my heart is.

I read the Zadie Smith piece too -
Here it is if anyone else wants to:

www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/zadie-smith-on-hope-trepidation-and-rebirth-after-14-years-of-the-tories

NotSpaghetti

I read the Zadie Smith piece too -
Here it is if anyone else wants to:

www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jul/03/zadie-smith-on-hope-trepidation-and-rebirth-after-14-years-of-the-tories

thankyou.. great article..

Divided. Sadly, tomorrow won’t make any difference to that.

It is a good article.

When I first moved to the US, I spent a lot of time saying two things:

- that asking, as many Americans did, how much tax Brits paid was the wrong question (the answer broadly was ‘about the same as you’ when direct and indirect taxation was considered). The right question was ‘how much more per $ do you get for it’;
- ‘you know those food collection baskets you have in supermarkets? We have those for animals, not people’. Embarrassed nowadays at how bloody smug I was, sure that we’d never have a system that failed so many.

grandMattie

Wonderful!

Never forget that for all its faults, the UK is so much better than most other countries despite all its problems and difficulties.

I like this. I know about all the troubles and divisions and difficulties, but I’d still rather live here than anywhere else. Whilst visiting my daughter in New Zealand earlier this year, I was asked if I liked New Zealand. Of course I said yes because it’s a beautiful country and has lots of pluses, but I wouldn’t want to live there and I said so. I’m British through and through, and I love meeting people from all over the world, but this is my home and my roots are here.

This too shall pass

There will be better times. I feel sure of that, but it will a long road.

be a long road

Hell

disillusioned

Unrecognisable!

Mutating

My one word- Dreadful
To those who think the UK is wonderful must live in an affluent bubble- think people need reminding of what life is currently like in the UK and did not used to be the case.
Potholes galore. .
Beaches and rivers getting sewage discharged into it.
Wildlife depleted.
We have more street homelessness than I have ever seen in my life time, and I am old.
Crumbling schools
More local food banks than ever before.
More litter and less street sweeping.
Much longer queues at A and E and queues of ambulances outside.
Long waits for operations.
Shoplifting up.
Housing unaffordable for many young people
I am not a negative person and know I am fortunate compared to many, but I hate what austerity has done to this country. - another word -Embarrassed

CoolCoco

My one word- Dreadful
To those who think the UK is wonderful must live in an affluent bubble- think people need reminding of what life is currently like in the UK and did not used to be the case.
Potholes galore. .
Beaches and rivers getting sewage discharged into it.
Wildlife depleted.
We have more street homelessness than I have ever seen in my life time, and I am old.
Crumbling schools
More local food banks than ever before.
More litter and less street sweeping.
Much longer queues at A and E and queues of ambulances outside.
Long waits for operations.
Shoplifting up.
Housing unaffordable for many young people
I am not a negative person and know I am fortunate compared to many, but I hate what austerity has done to this country. - another word -Embarrassed

"austerity" Some made up nonsense. Makes it sound like WW2, all pulling together. Instead of what it really is.

Plus the weather is rubbish at the moment

Divided.
But, like others, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

We have been in a bad place before.

The power cuts in the 1970s under both Tory and Labour. The never ending strikes, rubbish piled high and the dead unburied. I think we were called the sick man of Europe. Massively high inflation.

Later under the Thatcher years crippling interest rate. People lost their homes and businesses. The poll tax and civil unrest.

Somehow the wealthy manage to make money even in the hardest times.

Whoever gets in we are in for a very difficult few years. Any politician who says we are not is a liar.

Better than many other places. As a woman I am free to drive, work, have an education. There is a democracy and gay people arent thrown off buildings. There is no capital punishment or gun culture.

ronib

Resilient

I second this.

Yes. Resilient. Maybe not as resilient as we once were though.

Wonderful. We are lucky to live in a beautiful country with so many freedoms. People seem to think the grass is greener elsewhere, it’s not. It’s the same everywhere. And for me with many European countries turning to the Far Right I’m even more proud to be living in a tolerant and multicultural society.

No one said the grass is greener, but stop pretending everything is hunky dory here - compared with 15 years ago, the U.K. is in a worse place in many areas.

Destroyed.