Public services in particular: 2 weeks to see a Dr, a year for an operation, unlikely for the police to attend your call out, stagnant economy, high cost of living and low wages. And all whilst we have one of the highest tax burdens in our history.
I dont follow this line of reasoning too well. The conservative party was in power for fourteen years, 2010 to 2024. The new Labour government has been in power for less than fourteen weeks. Isnt it too soon to make any claims about their performance fixing the structural issues identified in this report?
What he's actually done is the opposite. For example, the website makes the point that British governments often don't do enough capital investment so state-controlled infrastructure rots away. Instead spending rises get used to buy off unions. Sure enough, within just months of Labour coming into power it's already handed out around £10 billion/yr worth of pay rises:
https://inews.co.uk/news/public-sector-pay-deals-cost-323074...
This type of behavior led to pay spirals in the 60s and 70s.
We see this problem elsewhere. Labour's plan to build new prisons is simply to override local councils that are blocking planning applications, but that won't yield funds for actually building them. Where's the capital going to come from in a government that capitulates immediately to union pay demands, and which is already financially over-stretched? To do this they would need to make major cutbacks in other areas, but they have no plans to do this.
Last time I went I was sent for a chest x-ray, which wasn't done at the GP, I had to drive to the place and wait 40 minutes for that, bit of a pain.
Main problem I see is housing. It drags the entire economy -- people are living in overcrowded, people in their 30s living with parents etc.
Anyone living on their own sees all their income drained by landlords, who then pump it into ever increasing housing costs as they out-bid each other. Anyone else never becomes an adult and pumps their money into things like onlyfans and coke.
Good for you, but I think that is absolutely not the typical UK experience.
The problems are mostly concentrated in the poorer areas where they struggle to attract staff.
The entire country's economy feels like a property-indexed Ponzi scheme, with everyone (including the government) rather keep fueling the ponzi as long as possible rather than breaking it up.
you are going to GP every two months? Usually you get referred to a specialist if you are that sick.
It's easy to have a low tax base when you subsidise the state spending with North Sea Oil from the 80s onwards... Prior to that we had really bad balance of payments crises from the Second World War onwards as the empire fell apart.
Low and middle earners in the UK pay pretty much the lowest taxes in Western Europe. We've eroded our tax base all over the place and somehow expect European services.
But your experience of non-life threatening can be anything from good, to indifference/boredom to aggressive dismissal. This also applies to things that could be markers of something fatal, analogy would be they do little when smoke is coming out from under the door but do jump into action when the flames are coming out from under the door. Most of the interactions start on off the foot that you're assumed to be a timewaster too.
Keep begging my parents to just go private because I don't like trusting their lives to the random chance they have a good doctor when I can instead have one incentivized by their continued existence.
Legitimately was a worse and slower service than I would have had at my grandparents' place in Eastern Europe, it's a disgrace. It still makes me angry that it's the experience I get after paying 1000s of £ in NHS contributions.
>>Keep begging my parents to just go private [...]
Except for this difference as we don't have the option to choose private care except for a out-patient services (e.g. physical therapy) and certain drugs & therapies. I'm speaking primarily about Ontario and British Columbia, but I think the other provinces and territories are similar.
Hospitals, diagnostic services and physicians are all funded by public taxpayer dollars at both the provincial and federal level, but it is indeed a single healthcare system.
There have been some workaround attempts in BC (such as the Cambie Surgery Centre, which lost a court case recently-ish) and AB's recent move to give contracts to Catholic health care providers, but the only true "private" option in Canada is the airport.
I could go on about this at length and how it makes me a pariah amongst a flood of anti-American conspiracy theories, but this is a thread about the UK (of which I'm also a citizen) so I'll resist.
Where I am from the village health services act as gatekeepers for the more central services. Just in my direct circles I know of several situations where the central services gave the village services an earful for failing to refer people faster, in at least one case directly leading to death.
Those central services also seem to get further away every few years.
Its the same in USA if you want to see a specialist. There is a worldwide shortage of qualified doctors.
I waited about 1.5yrs to get a routine endoscopy at northwestern hospital in chicago. We've gone to northwestern in downtown for decades and have never seen waits this bad.
https://www.medicaleconomics.com/view/match-day-2023-a-remin...
I'm not sure you can extrapolate that it's worldwide because things are the same in UK and US.
FWIW, I had surgery in Spain recently and had to wait like two-three months tops. Probably depends a lot on the type of surgery and how urgent it is.
Total cost for surgery, follow-up, and 3 days in hospital (he lives in a French Overseas Department so he gets reimbursed): 18,000 Euros.
I’ve been able to get an orthopedic surgery issue diagnosed and booked in weeks (Rush). But routine care with my pain specialist (Northwestern) can need months long lead times.
It took 6 months to get into neurology there, and they rescheduled my 6 month follow-up to be a 14 month follow-up
(I don't know why I hadn't placed you as a Chicago person before; you should come out with us sometime!)
The new Government has had no real time to do anything yet everywhere on twitter/fb I see hundreds of people complaining, who didn't do enough complaining in the last 14 years. What happens with the current Government is yet to be seen, but it's certainly difficult to make any meaningful change in a single term.
Real GDP per capita has been flat since 2008 while official population figures show population has increased by 10m. Total failure to grow the economy in 14 years of Tory rule and Labour aren’t exactly showing signs of having ideas to grow either.