Is the United Kingdom going down the drain?

[Crivvens]

Well it’s pretty simple really I’m wondering what everyone thinks of the modern UK.

Maybe it was growing up under Thatcher and Major, maybe it’s being from Northern Ireland and that little stretch of water obscures my opinion of Britain in general. The truth is I feel this country is really going to the dogs.

Personally I think the Blair government and Labour in general have been really bad for this nation, what was up is now down and what is left is now right.

I would consider myself a liberal (not in voting sense which is a bit hard if not impossible were I live) and think that people have a right to live life as they choose as long as it does not infringe on the rights of others.

However, when it comes to law and order I’m very stanch in my belief of zero tolerance. Why do violent criminals have rights, their inhuman acts should strip them of there human rights yet this does not happen. Law abiding people are locked up for lesser offences whilst the real hardcore criminals are supposed to be rehabilitated.

At least in prison give them something useful to do, after all we need to be environmentally friends so how about strapping them all up to rows of bikes connected to a generate and let them exercise some energy back into the national grid.

To me the UK has turned upside down and we now follow the wrong path. What we have now is attempt to please everyone whilst achieving nothing.

I would have said that I loved my country but I don’t think it exists any more. We no longer fix what is broken in society but break everything that works so that nothing can look terrible by comparison.

So as I said at the start of this post how to others view the UK today? I’m interested to know what people think be it an internal or external view.

Thanks for your time reading this. I really needed to rant about this for a while.

[Cassy]

Well, I disagree. I've lived in Britain since I was twelve and as I understand you can compare the Labour government's decade of prosperity against Major's black wednesday and the winter of discontent of the pre-Thatcher years. No, Blair has been good for Britain.

The home office is a disgrace right now though.

[LoZz]

this country is going down the drain, i agree, its totaly gone to the dogs, its no ones fault inpaticular, loads of loads of little things have made it worse.

the only thing that is holding this country togther is wealth, as soon as it goes we are screwed, and it will.


certain groups in this country being given priorty over others, being treated with soft gloves and then any one who questions that is set on like a rapest.

rapests, murders, and pedofiles being let out half way threw their jail term.

the home office in a mess

ilegals running up and down the country, some of them with criminal records

your classifed as a racist for saying the above

our primeminister currently being involved in a criminial invesigation, has been questioned TWICE!!

the sexism towards men in the courts and towards boys in school with means 35,000+ more women going to uni then boys

we have communites living within communites, people not speaking english because they dont need too, a "them and us" culture growing, constanly celebrateing our diffrences BUT not the things we have that are the same and in common, dividing us more.

Political correctness telling us what we can and cant say.

Health and Saftey telling us what we can and cant do.

Our own goverment trying to take our freedom away with id card's and black boxes in cars.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

@Lozz: Want to comment on why "it will"?

[LoZz]

@Lozz: Want to comment on why "it will"?

the wealth will end, we wont go "3rd world" poor, but i think this is as rich as this nation will be.

china and india are on the rise.
we have large skill shortages in the country.
more and more people are claming benifit.
more and more jobs are going overseas to nations like china and india.
taxes are going up and up.
less and less people are taking up maths and science as a job, forceing those kind of jobs to go aboard
a country can not survive if the only thing people are qualified to do is physcology.

give in 50 years, and we will see life becomming alot harder for this nation, remember we are a nation surrounded by the sea, if global warming is true then we will lose large parts of it too the sea

I think you Brits just complain too much.

Haven't your crime rates gone down?
Hasn't your economy gone up?

Perhaps you should spend less time listening to your scaremongering media and more time in your lovely British countryside.

serious crime such a drugs and guns is on the rise, and with super casino's arriveing soon, more and more crime is on its way, we have less police officers on the beat and most crime isnt reported, so its not going down, just un-reported because the police cant do anything
and the police say this themselves

and taxes have gone up so the people are no richer, our hospitals are going, council services are all ready being cut, i have no idea where the money goes

[ErikinWest]

Living on the continent of North America, these are my views.

It's looked like Europe has been going down the drain for a while. The German economy is stagnant, and Europe has high levels of unemployment (The UK's doing pretty good right now, from what I remember).

The whole area has issues to sort out. There is a massive divide of immigration. Minorities are starting to feel marginalized. I don't get the sense that Europe is advancing faster than a slug.

Erik

[Erik]

I think you Brits just complain too much.

Haven't your crime rates gone down?
Hasn't your economy gone up?

Perhaps you should spend less time listening to your scaremongering media and more time in your lovely British countryside.

[wipeout140]

I think you Brits just complain too much.Perhaps you should spend less time listening to your scaremongering media and more time in your lovely British countryside

Two Things we like

Complaining and a good queue so we can complain again

P.S I do as i live in the "lovely British countryside" - One less thing to complain

[Shaun]

I think you Brits just complain too much.

Haven't your crime rates gone down?
Hasn't your economy gone up?

Perhaps you should spend less time listening to your scaremongering media and more time in your lovely British countryside.

What? Your making sense!!! The daily mail had better had better write a mass conspiracy story to keep us all discontented.

[Freddie]

I think you Brits just complain too much.

Haven't your crime rates gone down?
Hasn't your economy gone up?

Perhaps you should spend less time listening to your scaremongering media and more time in your lovely British countryside.

Crime has actually gone up since Labour come to power 10 years ago. Crime was on the slide when the Home Office was run by the conservative the Rt.Hon Michael Howard MP because he brought into place procedures that got the villains of the streets and into jail. For all of Michael Howard’s faults he was a brilliant Home Secretary.

As for the economy Britain is now the 3rd or 4th richest nation in the world, yet our overall quality of life according to a recent American travel compare survey puts us as lowly 33rd. The reason being is that all though we are rich the cost of living is in the UK is expensive. BTW the economy was good when Tony Blair took over, so far all Gordon Brown has done is not screw it up.

[Erik]

Crime has actually gone up since Labour come to power 10 years ago. Crime was on the slide when the Home Office was run by the conservative the Rt.Hon Michael Howard MP because he brought into place procedures that got the villains of the streets and into jail. For all of Michael Howard’s faults he was a brilliant Home Secretary.

Not according to these stats:
ALL CRIME - British Crime Survey data

Source: http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page54.asp

As for the economy Britain is now the 3rd or 4th richest nation in the world, yet our overall quality of life according to a recent American travel compare survey puts us as lowly 33rd. The reason being is that all though we are rich the cost of living is in the UK is expensive.

No, the reason is because you choose to be very capitalistic.
Other rich capitalistic countries like the US and Ireland also score very low on quality of life.
Socialistic countries score much higher because they have less poverty which is a much bigger factor in these "quality of life" stats than how many millionaires you have.

[Freddie]

Not according to these stats:
ALL CRIME - British Crime Survey data

Source: http://www.crimestatistics.org.uk/output/Page54.asp



No, the reason is because you choose to be very capitalistic.
Other rich capitalistic countries like the US and Ireland also score very low on quality of life.
Socialistic countries score much higher because they have less poverty which is a much bigger factor in these "quality of life" stats than how many millionaires you have.

Those crime figures you have shown are out of context, have a look and see how many crimes have been report, and the fact every government now records crime differently so they can spin the figures. That applies to both Conservative and Labour governments, although Labour are better at it.

As for crime numbers,

The risk of becoming a victim of crime in England and Wales is rising for the first time since 1995, figures suggest.
The British Crime Survey, regarded as the most reliable measure of crime by the Home Office, said the risk had risen one percentage point to 24.3%.
In a separate measure, the number of crimes reported to police had fallen 3% in the third quarter of 2006 compared with the same period the previous year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6297715.stm

As for the quality of life being determined by our “capitalist” ways is nothing more then a cliché with no substance. For example if that were true why doesn’t it affect the America quality of life? In that same survey they finished in the top five of countries to live and they are the most capitalist country in the world. The fact of the matter is quality of life is determined by other factors, such as where you life physically (most other countries of the earth have much better whether then we do), so saying our quality of life is done to fact we have a capitalistic economy (which is wrong in the first place) is just nonsense.

Actually I think the Chancellor's budget has been running at a surpluss for several years now, including the most recent one.

Rubbish. The Chancellor had to raise indirect taxes to fill a black hole of his own doing because he didn’t get his sums right on economic growth.

CBI: Budget black hole a priority
The Confederation of British Industry (CBI) insists the chancellor must cut back on public sector spending "or jeopardise future growth".

In its recommendations for his pre-Budget report, the CBI warns that the alternative to spending cuts - tax rises for businesses and individuals - would "hit the economy" at the time of economic slowdown.

"A £10 billion structural deficit has opened up in the public finances, which needs to be tackled early in the next fiscal cycle," said deputy director general John Cridland.
http://www.politics.co.uk/issueofthe...371$367046.htm

but the general assumptions made about the criminal justice system in this thread merely hihlight the number of people who seem to base their fact finding exercises on what they read in the daily mail. most of which is just plain and simply wrong.

the Home Office is a total mess, no one can deny it, but whose fault is it? Whose fault is it that Prisons are overcrowded? government policy that sends more and more people to jail, and for longer.

as of 2005 we jail more people on inderminate and life sentences than the rest of the EU15 put together, we imprison a ratio of our population second only to the USA in the west, and the only reason the USA rates higher is because of their federal drugs laws and mandatory sentencing policies.

Sorry but this is wrong as well. Labour were told were told years ago that we would need 100,000 more prison places were going to be needed by 2010. Rather then act on this report labour ignored it out of hand and now we are suffering the consequences. But your right on one thing John Reid can not be made a scapegoat for the failings of his office, after year’s abuse by previous idiots.

The report is illustrated by a series of annotated charts. One suggests that the prison population is expected to rise by 25% in the next five years from 80,000 to more than 100,000. This far exceeds the number of prison places the government has planned for, suggesting that ministers will have to come up with radical solutions to cope with the expected crime wave.

[Erik]

As for crime numbers, [/COLOR][/FONT][/CENTER]

The risk of becoming a victim of crime in England and Wales is rising for the first time since 1995 (...)

"for the first time since 1995", that means it has been dropping constantly from 1995 to 2006, doesn't it?
Talk about taking figures out of context....

As for the quality of life being determined by our “capitalist” ways is nothing more then a cliché with no substance. For example if that were true why doesn’t it affect the America quality of life? In that same survey they finished in the top five of countries to live and they are the most capitalist country in the world.

In all quality of life stats I've ever seen American scores lower than Britain.

The fact of the matter is quality of life is determined by other factors, such as where you life physically (most other countries of the earth have much better whether then we do), so saying our quality of life is done to fact we have a capitalistic economy (which is wrong in the first place) is just nonsense.

No, it's based on other stats like life expectancy, access to certain luxuries like internet and TV, average number of healthy years, etc. etc.
It's also not an exact science.

The thing is:
Your quality of life increases dramatically when you go from $1 per day to $10 per day.
But to so much when you go from $101 per day to $110 per day.
ie: Quality of life doesn't scale linear to income.

So the better you distribute your nations wealth the higher the average quality of life of your citizens.
It's simple maths, really.

[Cluny the Scourge]

My advice is to stop reading the Daily Mail and get a grip on reality. Britain is not dying and fulminating angry little men with their ghastly parasitic opinion-columns can grumble and fume as much as they like - it's all they're any good at.

[Søren]

It's not "going down the drain". However, it is true that some civil liberties are being curtailed by beaurocracy, pedantry and politically correctness. And yes, there are problems with home ofice issues, but nothing that can't be sorted out. Not that it necessarly will be, but it could be, and to be honest; it's not awful. This isn't a good thing, but Britian is still a much better place (IM(biased)O) than the large majority of countries.

[PacSubCom]

Yes it is. See, nothing lasts forever. Good times are over.

And everybody (like criminals) gets what he deserves.

[Tabell]

Its being going down the drain since world war II

[Lord Boris]

I'm from the UK also and agree with those that say it has a lot of problems.

To me, the root of these problems are that we live in a New Labour government that is full of contradictions. People who go and commit acts of delinquency and petty crime get all the support in the world (if they are willing to collaborate with the schemes) and in the end, end up much better off than honest people in low end jobs. I've seen numerous cases of this happening in my town. I can see honest people think to themselves, hmm. Maybe if I become a petty thug I will also end up with a nice flat and work training and a decent job thanks to the free training.

The government should be tougher on the crims while at the same time helping the honest decent people. Even if they are on low end jobs and stuff, they deserve better than criminals that are going through rehabilitation. Otherwise you could end up with the preposterous situation of someone thinking - hmm, i have to house share and I work crappy hours in a factory for minimum wage. I barely make ends meet. I know, i'll commit a petty crime so I can get state support for my own flat and get training for a better job. Which while seemingly ridiculous, could make sense - the way things are going.

*Sorry for the post seeming like repetition, i've been a little bit 'cut'!. But I want to emphasise that the argument has it's weight. If criminals who are being rehabilitated have the right to such courses, so should low end workers who have comitted no crime. Or, we could avoid the problem altogether by giving a decent minimum standard - to citizens.
Oh dear that sounds like socialism! You bet it does! Make people proud to belong to a country god damit! That's the trick to low crime rates, and then we can all prosper and not have to worry about ideological struggle!

[Virgil]

the whole world is going down the drain.

[Cluny the Scourge]

the whole world is going down the drain.

That is what every civilisation in every age has ever said since records began. They were always wrong.