One word to describe the U.K.

Gillycats

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.

Hear hear!

Galaxy

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.

I second this.

pascal30

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..

I agree. It's a very good article.

Damaged.

A good country reduced to a far worse country by the disaster of Brexit and the last nine years of gross incompetence, chaos and corruption.

I think you are remembering the Labour years through rose tinted glasses.

Struggling

I’m not `GrannyGravy. I remember the sense of hope, the community schools, family centres so much focus on Early Years - based on research, not on how much can we cut from this lot

Brilliant Zadie Smith article in the Guardian! Looks forward to new hope on the horizon

GG13, I’m not. I gave up a great job as I could not, in good conscience, implement one particular Labour policy because I believed it would do more harm than good to the communities affected by it (and being proved right was not much consolation).

There were other decisions and policies which I think were not great for the country, in the medium to long term.

But overall, it’s hard to argue with a large amount of empirical evidence that against a wide range of measures, the UK was better during the Labour administration than it has been for many - most - years of this one.

No one can deny by a large number of measures the U.K. is worse off now than 15 years ago. No one is looking through rose tinted glasses, no one says it was perfect, but we didn’t have so many depleted services.

I’ve now read the Zadie Smith article. Fantastic 😄. I’m beginning to dare to hope

varian

Damaged.

A good country reduced to a far worse country by the disaster of Brexit and the last nine years of gross incompetence, chaos and corruption.

Why only nine years. The Lib Dems put the Tories in power and they are to blame too.

And no they didn't moderate any damage done by the Tories during the coalition. They enabled it. Ed Davey was fully involved. They would have sold their grannies to ride in a ministerial car.

Siope - what was it please? The thing you thought was such a bad Labour idea?

I was sceptical about SureStart - (though involved in research for it) but came round to it fairly quickly when I was sure what it was and saw what a good one could achieve.

Much earlier I campaigned against the National Curriculum as I felt that would be the beginning of "teaching to tests".

Thdy would have sold their grannies to ride in a ministerial car.

And then Nick Clegg cleared off to a lucrative job in America!

I expect Labour to win. It would be amazing if they didn’t.
I’m concerned about what happened to our finances last time they were in
and what might happen this time when we have less time for recovery.
I’m seriously concerned about KS’s reluctance to protect females.
I’m worried about the immigrants situation. There seems to be no plan for sorting out the issue and Yvette Cooper is happy to see continued use of the Bibby Stockholm barge.
I think it’s been really funny watching all parties ruining their green credentials hurtling up and down the country.

Intolerant

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…

^zhould be , between times, more.

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!

Unsettled.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

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.