Comment by cs02rm0
9 days ago
The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're seeing those with a few quid to rub together leave, but as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income.
On the NHS, I tried for years to push for improvements to switch to digital cancer screening invitations after they missed my mother (offering to build the software for free), which is now happening, but suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here. My sister who works in NHS DEI hasn't spoken to me since publishing a book on it.
Every time someone with the finances, vision and ability leaves I think the situation gets a little bit worse, it increases the proportion of people remaining willing to put up with all of it. Anecdotally, many of my friends have already left, some of the older generation want to leave but feel tied in. My flight out is in 6 weeks. Good riddance, no doubt.
> Taxes are rising (with tax take falling)
> just mentioning increased immigration
One of these seems like the solution to the other.
> as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income
Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe.
I started working with folks from the UK right at the start when social media really took off, and I personally think that what ails the UK is the same as what ails the world. Too much social media.
The UK has always been an empire in decline, but the wheels didn't come off until everyone became glued to feeds. It's Garbage In, Garbage Out. If your view of reality is driven by stuff that you see online, it's a distorted lens which then leads to distorted decision making that then leads to authoritarian creep.
Just my 2¢.
IMO, the wheels fell off decades before I was born.
The peak of the empire was around WW1, where the victory was immediately followed by Irish home rule, and Churchill(!) putting the UK military into austerity to save money, which is how it came to be that evacuating from Dunkirk involved a lot of civilian ships, amongst other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Year_Rule
WW2 was a Pyrrhic victory. Not that Westminster collectively realised the nation's weakness until the Suez Crisis and the Wind of Change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_of_Change_(speech)
I'm not sure the people of the UK have yet fully internalised this decline, given the things said and written during the Brexit process. Perhaps social media really did make it all worse, but it's been authoritarian, chauvinistic (both internationally with imperialism and domestically via the aristocracy), and theocratic, ever since Harold Godwinson may or may not have taken an arrow to the eyeball.
That happened a long time ago, the realization was the 70s.
Thatcher reversed the feeling by selling off the nation to rentiers and foreigners in the 80s, we rode that money in the 90s, and the wheels came off in 2008.
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> it's been authoritarian, chauvinistic (both internationally with imperialism and domestically via the aristocracy), and theocratic, ever since Harold Godwinson
This. The UK was a band of feudal kingdoms that somehow managed to create an overseas empire. The empire is now gone, and the feudal kingdom is struggling to transform itself into a modern nation.
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The Netherlands is politically dysfunctional and the people are egotistical assholes but at least the economy is ticking.
Without money society is just doomed.
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The uk is a lot of things, but theocratic really isn’t one of them. If you’re referring to the House of Lords then you don’t really understand our government. The general population is as atheist as anywhere outside of Scandi countries.
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As for WW2, Roosevelt worked hard to make sure Britain couldn't reconstitute its empire, and to work toward global self-determination.
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> Having UK work experience and having talked to thousands of british folks over a decade, I find this hard to believe
I only have to look as far as my own wallet to see the effects. I'm being taxed to the eyeballs while there is a glass ceiling preventing me taking any more pay home without a major jump which just isn't coming due to stupid tax rules keeping the working class from bumping into the middle class.
I see mine and my family's living standards drop only to be told by the news that I'm a likely target for more tax hikes, and there's just no room to tax me more while my bills have also gone up significantly, and something will have to give. If it gets to the point where I can't pay my bills despite being a "high earner" I'll have to start considering whether I leave with my family, and where to.
I'm not exactly the milky bar kid, but I imagine beyond my friends and family, I imagine the consensus would be very much the same, yet there goes two "successful" professionals and the children we were raising probably to be high earning professionals too.
I don't do social media, but I do keep on top of the news from all outlets, I try to look beyond the biases and form an opinion on a combination of sources.
I left in 2010 and the consensus is very much the same among my friends, or at least some of them anyway.
I’m no longer eligible to have an opinion UK or local conversations. “how would you know”, “the city’s changed a lot since you left”, “why are people who chose to leave so interested in X”, statements specific to ex-pats.
For those from outside the UK, ex-pat (expatriate) as a singular term is almost always derogatory regardless of context or publisher.
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> earn a penny more
That is not how marginal tax rates work. Each income band is taxed at the rate for that band. It’s why it’s called “marginal” - because the rate change happens at the margin between brackets.
You are taxed 0% on your first £12571. You are taxed 20% on your next £37669, or, £7359.80 on £50270 of income. If you then earned one more pound, or £50271, you would owe £0.40 (40%) on that one additional pound only, for a total of £7361.20. There is no income stage where earning more money has you taking home less.
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> taxed to the eyeballs
Emotional phrases aside, what is your total NI + income tax deduction percentage, and what percentage do you think you should be paying?
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What does "not exactly the milky bar kid" mean? That you're not white or set for life?
> One of these seems like the solution to the other.
If the per capita spending is exceeding per capita taxation, increased immigration does not solve the problem. More people requires more spending.
> The UK has always been an empire in decline
I find this fatalistic attitude to be very unhelpful in determining good policy decisions. If you start with the assumption that the empire is in decline then it doesn’t seem as bad to add policies that contribute to decline, as long as you get some short-term win out of it.
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> I started working with folks from the UK right at the start when social media really took off, and I personally think that what ails the UK is the same as what ails the world. Too much social media.
There have been a number of public scandals regarding immigrant crimes, along with subsequent anti-immigrant riots started via social media and people being sent to jail for internet posts. Social media seems to be more of accelerant for social unrest than than the cause. For me (an outsider) observing the situation, it seems to be mainly caused by immigration.
Many of the areas most upset by immigration barely see any immigrants, whilst many of the most persistent spreaders of rumours about terrible things caused by immigration to the UK don't actually live there. Of course, it isn't just social media that obsesses over immigrants in the UK (and many other places), mainstream print media and politicians are pretty obsessed with them too.
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The difference between social media and traditional media is, roughly speaking, the absence of a centralised editor that has the ability to gatekeep the nation’s discourse. If that’s not authoritarian I’m not sure what is!
Social media is a forum for people to complain about the problems they face, if you don’t like that the solution is not to censor the messenger but to fix the problems.
As someone who grew up in the UK I can tell you that the elitist mindset of the UK is a huge part of their problem: only the elite are capable sophisticated right-think, all others are wrong-thinking simpletons and must be silenced for their own safety. The BBC is a huge part of the problem as it is inevitably pro-government but trades off a strong image of neutrality, to the extent that it regularly misleads the public and they lap it up.
If editors are authoritarian for controlling what people see, then social media algorithms are super-authoritarian for the same reason. They also decide what people see, they also modify the cultural and political consciousness, just on a more granular level. An editor can try to push one group of people in one direction, but a social media algorithm can push multiple groups of people in multiple different directions.
IMHO, there's nothing authoritarian about either editors or social media. It only becomes authoritarian when they intentionally align with a central political authority.
Turns out most people are bad at editing the firehose of information coming at them to determine what's true and what's not.
I don't support censorship. But increasing the accuracy of the information most people are getting is a difficult problem to solve.
I always thought linking all the main things not working in the actual world to the alienation caused by too much digital consumption to be wrong/not really making sense. However, gradually, I am getting closer and closer to that conclusion... In your case, what brought you to the stance "Too much social media is what ails the whole world"? What do you think we could do to solve it?
Social Media used to be better when you actually had a connection to the other person. Nowadays it's mostly anonymous or parasocial. All social media sites have drifted to influencer content (TikTok, Meta, Youtube) or to moving the identity of the other person to the background (reddit, HN). The inbetween of early social media with smaller groups of people who know each other has gotten very rare
The other factor is that everyone now knows how powerful social media can be. Remember when we had positive movements like Occupy Wallstreet, the Arab Spring and Anonymous Hacktivism all facilitated by social media? That doesn't happen anymore. Small things like getting traction for a petition still work, but anything that questions existing structures has no chance of succeeding anymore. Instead social media is overrun by bots that simulate broad consensus on many issues
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If you go back in history you can find examples of people making the same claims about too much television. Prior to that, too much radio. Prior to that, too much newspaper consumption.
A common thread is that when people complain about too much media consumption, they’re always talking about other people consuming other media. Few people believe their own consumption to be a societal level problem. Almost nobody believes that their sources of media are the bad ones. It’s always about other sources that other people are consuming.
This is why age verification has the most support of these topics: Adults see it as targeted specifically at a group that isn’t them (young people) whose media they dislike the most.
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As the other user said, people have been warning about new forms of media since the invention of writing. It has always been in vogue to be a nay sayer.
But social media is different. For most forms of media, TV, movies, books, radio etc. You had some degree of agency and choice over what you consumed. You couldn't set what a channel or station was playing, but you could change the channel.
You don't choose what you see on social media. You see what an algorithm thinks is most likely to keep you hooked / going.
Our brains only know what's real based on what's in front of it. You can acknowledge something is rage bait, but as you process it, you will still feel some degree of anger / discomfort. You can acknowledge that something is a cherry picked example, designed to tug the sensibilities of users, but it will still tug on your sensitivities.
And so sure enough, as you keep getting rage baited, concern trolled into algorithmic oblivion, it changes your gestalt. Your worldview shifts to one where those are data points, and it starts distorting your perception of reality.
Garbage In. Garbage Out.
Other people have said that it's like electricity consumption. No. This is very much like tobacco. I don't use social media. Even though I get paid to post to it.
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Get people hooked on local solutions and local social networks that exist "IRL."
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Man, right now if you're white and male you are very much the bottom of the pecking order in the UK.
The only successful professional white men I know and have known for the last 10 years are self employed...and even that is under attack. If you want a permanent job as a white man in the UK, your hope of career progress is minimal at best. You will only be promoted if there is no other option.
There is so much home grown talent in the UK going to waste in the name of modern ideology.
Its creating a kind of apathy towards work for a lot of people. Especially those now reaching their 40s. There are loads and loads of professionals with 20 years under their belts that have seen nothing but stagnant wages and slow / non-existant career progression.
The sad thing is, all of this hard line "white and male is stale" rubbish hasn't changed the balance in terms of wealth distribution...you can still he financially successful as a white man in the UK, just not through permanent work and definitely not working for British businesses.
Ive seen it first hand, I spent ages pitching a business idea and prototype to raise some funding. Not a sausage. As soon as I had a couple of black ladies involved (great lovely women, but far from the top of their game) money fell put of the sky. They didn't even have to deliver high quality pitches.
What is equally as sad is these two ladies don't want to be given hand outs based on their race. They struggle to work out whether what they're trying to do actually has value or whether they're just being given money because they're black and female. It messes with their heads as well.
Qualified immigration is indeed a net economy boost. But that isn‘t what‘s happening.
> One of these seems like the solution to the other.
Humans are not fungible cogs
Yeah totally agree - whether it’s Keir or Boris or whoever in charge, the one thing I want to scream at them is “turn the ‘net off! Turn it off!” People are simply too stupid to handle social media. If I was in charge of authoritarian Britain the first thing I’d do would be to flip the serious switches in the big network cabinet down at GCHQ.
As if the authoritarian state doesn’t prefer its subject distracted and entertained by Netflix, Reddit, TikTok instead of reading books and meeting in coffee shops to discuss anarchist literature and Uncle Ted’s manifesto. The Internet has proven to be the ultimate sedative for the masses.
Sorry to say, gizajob, you would make a terrible dictator.
> I started working with folks from the UK right at the start when social media really took off, and I personally think that what ails the UK is the same as what ails the world. Too much social media.
Absolutely. It's not the only problem, but it is a serious and deep problem.
That’s absolutely spot on!
the empire was always propped by colonialization - there wasn’t much to go once the colonies were no longer a cash cow for the UK
This narrative is bullocks and I’m sick of hearing this framing. “The UK deserves it because colonialism”.
Contrary to your statement, the UK is a center of education, innovation, and still a major player in finance. The current malaise infects the West and is much more than “brexit” or “colonial hangovers”.
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> but suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here
I don't know anyone that doesn't complain about the state of the NHS. The only time I've heard anyone defending it would be when compared to countries without national healthcare (e.g. America).
I'm an American living in London and I'd gladly return to the US just for the healthcare.
Granted I'm in tech so that's steady employment with benefits, but there you go.
Nothing stops you from getting private healthcare here and still end up paying a fraction of the average per capita cost for Americans - the NHS costs about the same per capita as Medicare + Medicaid, and private health insurance is overall cheaper in the UK, because they "fall back" on using the NHS as a first line.
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I haven't lived in another country, but I have never had an issue with healthcare in the USA. It does seem like you can step on a landmine if you are negligent, but I have employer paid healthcare now and it works great. When I was low income (during my early 20s) medicaid would legitimately hound me to keep me on it. I actually had an issue because they kept enrolling me after I got I job that no longer required them.
I imagine medicaid funding is directly tied to the enrollment count so they are very aggressive about getting people on it. Granted it was trash insurance and most specialists wouldn't take it, but it covered basic care fully.
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That’s the entire point of the NHS
That's different. Yes, everyone complains about the state of the NHS but the "religion" is that the NHS may not be criticised itself. So it is in a bad state because it does not receive enough money, that's it, nothing else. Any suggestion that the organisation itself might be improved or, god forbid, that patients might pay is indeed usually seen as "blasphemy".
> god forbid, that patients might pay is indeed usually seen as "blasphemy".
There are policies that are wildly popular. Free public healthcare is one of such policies in many countries, and perhaps for a good reason.
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> So it is in a bad state because it does not receive enough money, that's it
In real terms the budget is the largest it's ever been, it's a relic of the time when people worked and died shortly (a decade) after retiring, not when they live for 30+ years longer.
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The UK spends about 18% less per capita on the NHS than the EU14 countries do on their health systems.
A lot of that money has gone on stealth privatisation through inefficient outsourcing of contract staff and PFI of infrastructure.
So the actual standard of care is far lower than the funding suggests. And it has been deliberately run down so a US-style system can be implemented.
So yes, the organisation should be improved, but in the exact opposite direction to the one you're suggesting.
The UK's real problem is that it's run by an out-of-touch inbred aristocracy with vast inherited wealth, working through a political system which prioritises stealth corruption over public service.
They don't see why they should contribute anything to the welfare of the peasants. The obligation is all one way - from the peasants to the gentry.
And there's a layer of middle class professionals who have convinced themselves they're the gentry, even though they can't afford to pay their school fees, never mind maintain a huge estate.
So - private ownership good, public spending bad. More sensible countries don't have this attitude problem, and are proud their public services actually benefit the public.
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The one country whose healthcare I’ve studied in depth aside from the US is Costa Rica. Our Plan B is to establish permanent residence there and starting next year we will be spending a couple of months there every winter and maybe in July.
Costa Rica has an affordable all inclusive public health care system (Caja). But you can also pay for extra for private healthcare. Is it the same in the UK?
Yes. Like no matter what someone thinks about the NHS, it's always affordable, and it's entirely inclusive. And if you want private healthcare, you can absolutely get it. I've had private health insurance at every post-university job I've had, it's a standard offering in tech.
The main criticism of two tier healthcare systems (public+private) is that it creates an unstable system. The private system steals all the talent, the rich don’t care if the public system is good since they don’t use it, and thus the public system dies a slow death of 1,000 cuts.
In canada we’re in a phase where this is just starting. Private clinics (e.g. telus health) have started to pull doctors out of the public system and put them behind subscription paywalls. We’re still paying the majority of their salary, but they can only be accessed if you pay their private overlords a monthly fee.
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> But you can also pay for extra for private healthcare. Is it the same in the UK?
Yes
I moved to the UK with my family just before the Brexit vote and left last year. I love the country, but the changes I saw over that time period were so stark -- and, similarly, so many of the friends I made in that time had already left the country.
That I could have multiple negative NHS experiences relating to missed cancer diagnoses of friends in that relatively short span of time is suggestive of a real problem. The institution seemed to have less of an issue with elder care (in the US, the phantom menace posed by Obamacare or any governmental involvement in healthcare was meant to be "death panels" deciding the fate of grandparents) than with avoiding at all costs detecting potential long-term problems in the young. It's a 'rational' fear in the sense, as you note, that such cases put tremendous pressure on services, but there's no world where the best health outcome is refusing to screen your working age population.
The NHS is cheap but quite ropey.
> suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here
That's really not my experience. In fact, almost everyone is surprised when I suggest that despite its many problems, the NHS does better for the people than most modern countries' health systems.
I am certainly surprised by that suggestion.
No one I know who has lived in France or Germany or any developed country other than the US thinks the NHS is better than the systems in those countries.
I've heard from Spanish friends living in the UK that the NHS is so bad, they fly back to Spain for medical checks and even to see the dentist. That's mind blowing.
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If it were only France or Germany, it wouldn't be as bad. I returned to Poland after almost 15 years in the UK, and despite our health service being an absolute shambles, I still prefer it to the NHS.
I have heard some scary things about NHS from friends. Some mothers of Greek origin preferred to give birth back in Greece. I don't know if cultural differences played any role. A humble N=4-5 from a doctor
> The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're seeing those with a few quid to rub together leave, but as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income.
Have they though about joining some sort of economic union, maybe one with like minded countries that share the same continent?
I think it's always a bit of a bummer when someone takes the time to write a really well-thought out comment and someone comes in with a reddit-style quip that adds nothing to the conversation but derails it for everyone else.
There are so many charitable and earnest ways to make the point you're getting at, why reach for such intellectually low hanging fruit?
> I think it's always a bit of a bummer when someone takes the time to write a really well-thought out comment
Is this the same comment where they said good riddance to the entire country?
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It's not a "reddit style quip" to mention the UK deliberately shot themselves in the foot economically when talking about the economic situation in the UK.
So if we’ve agreed with OPs assessment that the problem in the UK is the government attempting to seize more power…how will becoming subjects of yet another government body that is even more powerful and less beholden to the people…help things?
The EU might be better on digital privacy right now, however the emotional winds of the political mob change often and many people in EU government feel differently. The EU is also an aging population of technologically illiterate and immigrant-afraid retirees. I wouldn’t expect much different coming from them in the future.
> So if we’ve agreed with OPs assessment that the problem in the UK is the government attempting to seize more power
Most of the OP's assessment that I quoted is about the UKs failing economics
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This government didn't even bring this law up, it was enacted in 2023. The law had a two year implementation deadline, which just expired. It's pretty understandable that the government trying to take the country back on track didn't get to repealing the law (relatively minor compared to what's on the legislative agenda), which would require a full trip through both houses of the Parliament.
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The one that just agreed to pay 3000 dollars per capita to the USA to prevent a trade war?
The one that is also working on a digital age verification system?
The one that created an AI regulation that stopped all innovation, and a data protection innovation who's single result is billions of people having to spend 3 seconds before visiting every website clicking a button that doesn't actually do anything (in 80% of cases)?
Yeah, great.
The EU is facing the same fundamental situation as the U.K. The latter recklessly accelerated their problems but an aging and shrinking population coupled with unsustainable social spending and precious little technological investment can only result in a downwards spiral. Just look at how far behind the US the EU is since 2008.
Yes? The idea that EU-era Britain is still a north star for you is interesting.
some sort of an European Union?
perhaps they voted on this in a sort of Brexit? Stop being coy
This mirrors my experience of the UK. A dysfunctional country whose wheels were slowly falling off and now not so slowly. I’m generally pro devolution but in the UKs case their political class is so god awful that giving them more power didn’t seem to be a good idea.
I left for greener pastures a long time ago and subsequently all of my friends and anyone I knew of any talent has also left, it feels weird visiting a place I once called home and not being able to see friends.
There is an old irish song called "The man of the daily mail", I think they could use your views to update the song for our times.
> Every time someone with the finances, vision and ability leaves I think the situation gets a little bit worse, it increases the proportion of people remaining willing to put up with all of it.
This is the issue.
I left around the time of Brexit so I have no useful opinion on the recent financial/admin state of the UK, though it seems from afar that austerity has done the place no favours. But...
- this kind of authoritarian nonsense is just what Home Secretaries do. David Blunkett brought in RIP (then, to his very slight credit, changed his mind). Jack 'boot' Straw was famous for his I-AM-THE-LAWing. I don't think the Tories are any better.
- No, criticizing the NHS is not against the religion there. The newspapers are forever getting in digs about long waits, unpopular (but perfectly rational) decision from NICE about what drugs to pay for, and junior doctors and their apparent insistence on being paid properly.
- And with that in mind, having lived in three countries (four if you accept that the NHS in England and Scotland are different) I personally think the NHS is fucking fantastic. Someone close to me was diagnosed with a serious illness and immediately swept up in a production line of modern, effective treatment. Sure, it was somewhat impersonal, the biscuits are rubbish, and they were a widget on the production line, but they're also still alive ten years later, and we still have a house and savings.
- kudos to your sister. The UK is an ethnically diverse place, one of the least racist and divided that I've seen, but - like everywhere else - imperfect. The NHS always seemed to me to be a reflection of what things could be elsewhere with doctors, nurses and cleaners hired from all over the world. [which reminds me that while the right-wing press hates the NHS for being free, the left wing press occasionally hates the NHS for bringing in medical staff from poorer parts of the world. They just can't win]
- No, criticizing the NHS is not against the religion there. The newspapers are forever getting in digs about long waits, unpopular (but perfectly rational) decision from NICE about what drugs to pay for, and junior doctors and their apparent insistence on being paid properly.
This is exactly what I'm saying. The NHS are seen as perfect by some. All criticism is digs that are wrong.
I'm pro-NHS. But this perspective that it's infallible is beyond all reality.
> All criticism is digs that are wrong.
Often, when people criticize the NHS they have an ulterior motive, like privatisation. Consider all the political difficulties the NHS has had in the past few years. As such, negative remarks can be read or misread as dogwhistles for other views, so they're something that have to be phrased carefully and within context.
I was unclear: did you publish a book, or did your sister?
In general, for something both as key and as endangered as the NHS is, criticism isn't always useful -- support is. Problems can be recognised and addressed through support.
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"The NHS are seen as perfect by some"
I've never met anyone who thinks that the NHS is perfect - least of all anyone who has used it or anyone who works there.
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> But this perspective that it's infallible is beyond all reality
Very very very few people think the NHS is infallible. What are you even talking about? We all understand the NHS has many many problems, and those of us that have used the NHS understand this even more.
However, we still think it's a lot better than the private healthcare model.
Not sure what you're getting out of this weird strawman argument you're putting forward.
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> the biscuits are rubbish
This is why I'm pleased that for the ward I visit, biscuits and snacks are provided by a charity, it is the best of both worlds.
Not only I am not bankrupt from medical care, but I also get to enjoy decent snacks and a good coffee machine.
The resistance to innovation in the screening invitations is more down to empire building by low-talent management than to the NHS 'religion'. Dr Ben Goldacre wrote a memorable X thread on a closely related topic some years ago.
Where do you see people leaving heading towards? What’s your emigration destination? It seems like most countries have their challenges and I’m curious where people who have inevitably done more research than me are landing, literally!
Personally I've known people moving to Portugal, Malta, Cyprus, Australia, New Zealand, France, Spain, the US, Singapore. There's obviously a variety of factors that go into the choices people make and certainly no perfect choice.
For me, it'll be the UAE. Instinctively, some people will probably attack that choice, which is fine. I've lived in the Middle East previously, it's not perfect to say the least and I have some personal history with that, but I understand the choice I'm making. One thing people won't like is the headline tax rate, but I probably won't come out ahead there initially as cost of living is quite high - it'll cost me about USD 70k just to put three kids in school. Accommodation is also quite expensive, private healthcare also needs paying for, but at least you get what you pay for then.
Where the tax situation is appealing though is that then I'll be incentivised to earn more beyond those high living costs, where I just don't feel I am in the UK. Sun and swimming works for me too. Job adverts there are absolutely rammed with literally thousands of applicants and I'm hearing from recruiters that a lot of people from the UK and wider Europe are trying to head in the same direction. I'll be working for myself though.
I likely won't see out my days there. I'd imagine we'll retire to somewhere on the Med, my wife would prefer NZ but I don't think that works for me. The US is perhaps desirable, but it seems quite hard for a Brit to get into unless they happen to have a job with a company there. We'll have to see.
>it'll cost me about USD 70k just to put three kids in school. Accommodation is also quite expensive,
Just a note to you or anyone else reading this, USD 70k is on the high side; average yearly schooling cost in Dubai is around 40k for 3 kids. And the accommodation cost depends heavily on location; it's more than 50% cheaper if willing to live at least half an hour's drive from the city centre.
I was going to ask the same thing and I hope they answer.
I can't speak for OP but I can report on what I'm seeing... I know a lot of British, Canadian, and Australian expats that have moved to California in the past 5-15 years.
Why? Healthcare is probably everyone's first concern, but expats tend to be well educated successful people who can afford excellent healthcare... I'm an expat from a different country and seeing the top end of the healthcare facilities in the States is a luxury experience compared to national healthcare where I'm from. I wish everyone here had access to that, but at least poor people in California do have access to state healthcare.
Politics is a shit show, and has gotten worse recently of course, but that's true in a lot of places now and everyone I know came in before the most recent decline. I know a couple of families who have gone back to their countries, but all of them went back because they wanted to be close to family again, but none of them left because they didn't like it here.
Across everyone I know, the main appeals for coming to California seem to be weather and lower taxes than their home country. Cost of living is similar to many of the big cities in the countries I mentioned above. I'm not suggesting America is a better place, that's a different calculation for everyone, just reporting on what I'm seeing.
Which countries would you recommend to move to?
Isn't the cost of living crisis and rising wealth inequalities a problem that many western countries face?
It's hard to recommend anywhere generically, there's so many facets to it and it depends what you're trying to get out of life.
Cost of living and wealth inequalities aren't key concerns for me personally. It's more quality of life for my family, safety and economic opportunity.
> but as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance" regardless of the brain drain and loss of tax income.
Your comment was mostly on point until you decided to put straight presenting white guys as the victims
You missed out the housing!! How local authorities who issue notices of bankruptcy while in the background buying up properties at full retail market prices. Knocking up rental prices beyond affordability. Shoplifting increasing costs of living on top of the large supermarkets profiteering since covid. Slum lords offered a guaranteed rents for a 5 year Contracts including the maintenance and any works required to bring it up to standard of conditions. To house illegal migrants, while these previously extremely poor housing our citizens was and still are forced to live in. Well not for long as no fault evictions are forcing these tenants out of their home. So shady and greedy slum lords can take full advantage of this home office offer , LL are rubbing their filthy hand's together
We had talented people piling in and GDP going up and all that pre Brexit. It's the gift that keeps giving.
Is there enough support to reverse brexit (yet)?
With the general public, yes. With politicians, no.
It’s also not entirely up to the UK, the EU has to be convinced about the seriousness of such a decision and how it would benefit them.
The funny thing is that NHS doctors want the money that doctors get in Australia, which is… a market rate.
> mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up
Skilled immigration or the Channel crossing?
I don't think anyone objects to what the UK had 20 years ago - genuinely skilled immigration (in American terms, closer to O-1 than H1B).
Unfortunately due to the Boris Wave, we got mass, unskilled legal migration.
The channel crossings are a rounding error compared to that (but should be stopped as well).
>I don't think anyone objects to what the UK had 20 years ago - genuinely skilled immigration
20 years ago it was mostly Poles whose only quality was that they were willing to work for less than native UK citizens in jobs that said UK citizens supposedly did not want to do (which is doublespeak for businesses not wanting to pay a decent wage). This kind of immigration was one of the reasons Brexit happened.
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there was also a Trudeau wave here in Canada. Why did they all decide to start mass unskilled immigration then? Just to keep labour costs down?
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Either, both.
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> just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up
This significantly underplays the situation here. The UK state views "anti-migrant" views as extreme: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2025/07/26/elite-police...
In the UK attending a protest against putting illegal immigrants from Afghanistan in a hotel by your kids school is likely to have you on a watch list or arrested. This might not sound that bad to our European friends, but you guys in the US might be quite surprised to hear this.
It's not just "right-wing" positions which are dealt like this either, I should note for legal reasons that I strongly disagree with the actions and views of "Palestine Action", but arrests of peaceful protestors who simply wish to voice support of them as a group (without actually being part of the group themselves) is in my mind absurd. It's one thing to make membership of the group illegal, but to also make debating that judgement illegal is highly problematic in my mind. For those interested you'll find videos of the police arresting elderly women for terror charges for simply peacefully voicing their opinions on Palestine Action. It's vile.
Are you referring to https://archive.is/HgLRj ? Your summary is poor.
No? I linked what I was referring to...
The UK government has announced a new "squad" who will check social media for anti-migrant sentiment. Even if you are not "anti-migration" (whatever that means), I think we can agree that opposing migration is still a valid opinion to hold in a democratic society.
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Who said good riddance? Maybe they thought good riddance to racist privileged white people.
> Who said good riddance?
Sounds like you...
> just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up
okay what are you implying tho?
> My flight out is in 6 weeks
Where are you going?
> as long as those people leaving are straight, white males, or their families, they're being told "good riddance"
This is totally untrue. As long as it's selfish, unpatriotic people leaving, I couldn't care less what their skin color or sexual orientation is.
Patriotism is the only thing that's kept me here so long, despite what Emily Thornberry thinks of it.
Selfish? I'll take that. I'm choosing to put the future of my children ahead of those who couldn't care less about them in any respect.
Well if they are you're probably getting a greater amount of other selfish, unpatriotic people to replace them so idk if it's a net gain from your pov.
I doubt that's the case; people who want to live in a country are usually more patriotic than those who don't want to live in it, in my experience.
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Sounds like you’re actually proving the parents point…
And to what promised land are you headed, might I inquire?
No-one thinks the NHS is perfect. People are rationally defensive of it because the most likely alternative is not something like the German system (which is better, but has major problems) but a sale of the NHS to an American company such as Kaiser Permanente. Most people are well aware of the deeply rooted problems of the American system, and recognise that almost anything is better than that. Any systematic change would require a government which is trusted to handle it. That rules out the Conservatives (who are in power most of the time) as even their supporters don't trust them on this issue, and Labour is unlikely to either have the inclination to implement deep changes, or be in office long enough to effect them.
It's funny -- in the US, the liberals who want to nationalize healthcare look at the UK and EU as a shining example of success.
The grass is always greener I suppose.
Out of curiosity, where are people going?
They aren't. The figures suggesting the rich are leaving come from Henley & Partners, who aren't impartial.
Anecdotally, the loaded people I know are all still here and largely back up polling data that the rich tend to favour higher taxes on themselves.
"suggesting the NHS isn't perfect is against the religion here."
Errr, what? A lot of people complain about the NHS, whilst conceding there are issues that are difficult to address eg staff, lack of investment etc.
Complaining is the British pastime so complaining about the NHS is grandfathered in. However if you try and offer any suggestion for improvements to the NHS you soon realise you cannot criticise it in any meaningful form and be decried a blasphemous heretic.
Is your suggestion for improvement just privatization? Because that’d explain the backlash.
Why stay in a declining 1st word country when you can move to Bulgaria and live like a king?
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The worst part is I don't see really any western country that's not in decline at the moment. Seeing the "surrender"'s from EU and other countries on tariffs makes me feel so bad. It's like there is no place in the world that's socially and economically strong anymore. The US remains economically strong at least, but they're now run by bullies. Even so, I see people all over the world leaving to immigrate to the US. Canada has the same growing cynicism and economic troubles and emigration, maybe less of a police state though. We're all just pathetic vassals to the US now.
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But… you have discrepancies like the town of Middlesbrough , a small North Yorkshire town with crime rates on par with large European cities and rampant poverty and drug abuse with no clear way out because no one seems willing to invest in the once infant Hercules.
I hear about the North turning into a kind of rust belt as the population concentrates around London. I'm not sure how you solve that in a finance centered economy with no local industry - small towns are struggling across the developed world for similar reasons.
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Middlesbrough's problems are not the reason people in Dudley, or Stoke on Trent vote for fascists.
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