There are def. signs that human suffering of substantial parts of the population has dramatically increased over the last years.
Here‘s what I can see:
- Substantial energy bill increases: For us at least 100% over last year. Media is full of stories of people not being able to heat their homes
- Dramatic inflation, with cost of food now approaching levels I know from Switzerland. For example, a regular weekly shop for 2 people used to be 100£, now it‘s typically 170£.
- Continous strikes of large parts of key sectors: Teachers, Uni staff, train/ tube drivers, nurses, doctors, public servants. They are mostly protesting the fact that pay has not kept up with inflation for the past decade.
- Huge increase in food banks: I think this is a clear proxy for human suffering. There are foodbanks in hospitals for staff.
- I specifically see the suffering of healthcare staff. Service levels are going down to scary/unsafe levels and most doctors I meet through my wife are talking about leaving for Australia or New Zealand or go to other industries (huge waste given that it takes a decade or more to train a doctor).
- Infuriatingly, the link to policy makers is broken. There is no plan or ideas in place from government to improve things. Given the poor quality of the media here, typically the ley workers themselves are blamed (tube drivers, healthcare staff, etc.).
- Obviously Brexit, which is a whole different post but reinforces the feeling over here that things are going in the wrong direction.
Don‘t get me wrong, if you are in software, finance, engineering etc. you can have a very good salary and will not feel the pressures I‘ve listed above (also if you‘re young and don‘t need healthcare services). The UK and London are still amazing places.
But for lots of people quality of life has gone down a lot.
Post 2016 the messaging from most commonwealth countries (UK, Canada, Australia) seemed to be that they were going to be the ones benefiting from a brain drain of Americans leaving the country. Canada was supposed to become an "AI Superpower" and Universities in the UK were supposed to be where innovation was going to happen next due to the perceived hostility of the United States to foreign talent. I recall someone pitching the "Silicon Roundabout" and that Cambridge and Oxford were going to be the new Stanford and MIT.
It's interesting, in retrospective, to see how wrong these predictions were. Top destination for UK nationals in Academia was, and still is... the US [0].
[0] http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/tech-careers/the-global-bra...
It has been bleeding staff to Australia/NZ for many years, that isn't something new. A more proximate cause was the forced vaccinations of care home staff. Social care was already seriously short staffed pre-2020 and lack of social care capacity was a long term oft-discussed problem. The mandates however took a serious problem and turned it into a catastrophe. They caused an exodus that pushed the sector into absolute unavailability and consequent high levels of bed blocking due to inability to discharge patients back into the community. In turn that causes ambulances to stack up waiting for beds. It also trashed the ability to recruit new people to the sector, as care home work was already minimum wage and now comes with the significant downside that you may be forced to take experimental medical products you don't want regardless of side effects.
https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/social-care/warning-many-c...
It is estimated that tens of thousands of care home staff left their jobs because of the policy, leading to “immense workforce pressures” and contributing to the “most serious staffing crisis for decades”, according to Vic Rayner, chief executive of the National Care Forum (NCF), which brings together 160 of the UK’s social care organisation. Other results showed the negative impact around recruitment, with 94% of respondents stating they thought the policy had made this more difficult.
The mandates weren't supported by any RCT evidence and turned out to be useless. The costs of this policy are now being borne in the form of deaths that could have been avoided if only ambulances got there in time. People are avoiding recognizing this because so many Brits were all-in on mandates and wanted more. Those who warned of the consequences were treated horribly and deplatformed with wild abandon: now the chickens have come home to roost and nobody wants to admit what they've done.
With respect to the other problems, they are an issue all over Europe. Here's a comparison of UK vs EU inflation:
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-kingdom-...
Energy price rises are likewise the same. Trading Economics can't compare energy inflation for the UK vs EU specifically, so here's a comparison with Germany:
https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/united-kingdom-...
Again, it's the same. The cause is Nord Stream and sanctions against Russia, of course.
There is no plan or ideas in place from government to improve things. Given the poor quality of the media here, typically the ley workers themselves are blamed (tube drivers, healthcare staff, etc)
Of course there's no plan or ideas. Except for energy these problems are a direct consequence of the COVID measures which can't be undone now, and which were systematically cheered on or demanded by healthcare staff themselves. The government's wonderful "independent" inquiry looks set to conclude the only mistakes were to not lock down harder, more and earlier so the idea of learning any lessons here is for the birds. The UK will continue to destroy its own healthcare and social care systems until the population accepts that they have the wrong approach.
I say it feels like a third-world country because the usual luxuries you associate with a first-world country such as good infrastructure, law and order, a working healthcare system, etc are no longer there, yet you still pay for them (in the form of taxes).
People in important industries are striking because they can no longer afford to live. As a result those industries collapse. Medicine is especially bad - if you have any kind of health issue you must go private (and be able to afford it) if you don't want to lose your sanity and/or die while waiting for the NHS to actually do what it's meant to do.
The cost of living crisis has put everyone on edge - the general optimism that was felt around before the pandemic is no longer there. Businesses are closing left and right (I've seen multiple repossession notices on commercial property, businesses are outright failing and defaulting on their rents).
I have noticed more homelessness as well as general antisocial/criminal behavior; it's not a surprise, people are either pushed to the edge (where the risk/reward ratio of crime starts being worthwhile) or are finally catching on that law enforcement is dysfunctional and take advantage.
Property prices, especially rents are through the roof. Renting the same standard of property I currently have would cost me over twice as much - I'm actually wondering who is providing the demand for those units considering how bad the economy is... oligarchs? Property standards have always been terrible, so you must go upmarket and pay the overinflated rents if you don't want to live in a moldy shack that looks like a museum exhibit and will bankrupt you on heating bills alone. Buying outright makes no sense considering you can get much higher standards anywhere in Europe for the same price.
I’m still optimistic that things will improve after the tories lose their grip in the next election.
On the salary question, I believe Switzerland has higher salaries (but probably an even higher CoL than the UK).
