Slightly related: to any British readers, I have a question. In the past few weeks, I have seen more and more YouTube videos showing most of Britain outside of London as being essentially like Detroit. How bad are things really?
Generally there is a lot of propaganda around at the moment, so take that with a pinch of salt. The UK is not as well off as the US generally, but this does not mean there is a breakdown of society or law and order.
The propagandists would have you believe that there is a massive crime wave and social breakdown due to immigration, but what people are mostly worried about in actuality is job uncertainty and backlogged public services.
There are areas of wealth and of deprivation both inside and outside London. There is political and economic uncertainty because the UK economy is imbalanced, and most people expect a difficult few years and are sceptical that the government knows how to fix the issues (and that vested interests won't prevent the solution)
People just don’t have the money to spend on things. Wage growth is non-existent and prices have risen dramatically. For my own part I have get a real “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas” feeling. All we ever hear on the news is how spending will have to be cut yet again and taxes will have to go up.
Being from Northern Ireland I personally hope for unification with Ireland, although without significant changes I worry nothing much will change as Ireland has its own very similar issues.
We have a housing deficit, so abandoned houses are unusual, and mostly in places where people are moving away.
However "having transitioned quite well out of the factory economy" is definitely too rosy. We did "what the market wanted" but it turns out the market is not a strategist. And we have too large a population to exist purely as an offshore financing hub.
Unemployment has been low most of the past decade, although it is rising this year.
De-industrialisation is much exaggerated because there is a perception that the UK makes nothing because there are so few British branded consumer goods, but there are a lot of things made in the UK either foreign branded (e.g. Nissan cars) or parts or non-consumer goods (from drugs to satellites to get engines). While we are at the bottom end compared to other large developed economies, its only marginally so compare to, for example, France or Canada. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.IND.MANF.ZS?end=2024...
I have lived in two English counties (Warwickshire and Cheshire) in the last few years, and have visited a lot of different places this summer (from Somerset to York to Liverpool to Cambridgeshire and a few other places) and overall its a pretty pleasant country to live in in terms of everyday life. A lot of places (Manchester and Coventry, for example) seem to have improved over the last decade or two.
There are some issues with (lack of) policing IMO, such as the reluctance to investigate "minor" crimes, but this is not entirely new.
> The propagandists would have you believe that there is a massive crime wave and social breakdown due to immigration, but what people are mostly worried about in actuality is job uncertainty and backlogged public services.
I think politicians like to play up immigration as an issue because it distracts attention from their real failures. Both the big parties are try to cling to consensus policies that have failed.
> most people expect a difficult few years and are sceptical that the government knows how to fix the issues (and that vested interests won't prevent the solution)
I agree entirely. On the other hand I think the west in general faces the same problems.
I left the UK about four years ago but AFAICT the picture of housing over there hasn’t changed a lot - it keeps going up in price and there’s a shortage.
There are economic problems at the moment, and service provision problems in particular with the NHS. A decade of post 08 GFC austerity stripped public services and hammered government investment, which turned out to have not been that smart. Then Brexit hammered trade.
Closed-up shops have been a minor trend for a while - small shops have been failing for years due to high taxes, insane rents and being thoroughly outcompeted by the internet. Many old-fashioned high streets have become little more than strips of coffee shops and charity retailers, the former because apparently there is no limit to the appetite for coffee, the latter because they often get tax and rent concessions.
It has always been true that London is like its own country, with transport, employment and investment there dwarfing everywhere else, and tackling this to spread out the prosperity more widely has been a consistent failure of British politics for as long as I remember.
Beyond London there’s the ever expanding, fairly wealthy belt of dormitory-towns, and then there’s the rest of the country, which in my last visit did just feel run down.
I’ve been to Detroit, and I’ve read about the decline there. I don’t think the UK is anywhere near that. But it is languishing in a prolonged economic malaise.
Be wary of what you are fed on YouTube (or any major social network) they are astroturfed to hell at this point.
Life here isn’t great for a lot of people but it’s not super terrible either for the most part, we have broadly the same problems as many western nations (aging population, corporations running amok, slow and expensive infrastructure development, expensive housing, low wage growth).
We are still a safe wealthy western democracy though.
When you say "like Detroit" I assume, having never been, that you mean a high crime rate and unemployment rate? You could visit the ONS: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeand... https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotin...
My own personal experience tends to back up what the data here show (no significant changes really) - I teach in a large secondary school and really, kids today are not massively different from how they've ever been. They face challenges in navigating the vast amounts of information and misinformation presented nowadays, but we do try to educate them as best as possible in respect of this.
Cheers and hope this helps.
If I'm honest with you, I wonder if you need to think more critically about what you're watching? Grand Designs is designed to evoke envy (mostly) as well as some of the difficulties involved, which keeps people watching. I don't really watch YouTube but people generally seem more predicated towards watching things that evoke feelings of danger, anger, loss, worry, that sort of thing. In both cases you are being shown a version of the truth that results in the programme maker gaining somehow (money, views, whatever).
I'm only saying this off the back of your few comments here though, so apologies if I'm wide of the mark.
You seem to be picking on a US city as an example of (something) and attempting to apply (something) to the entirety of the UK that isn't a particular city in the UK.
Are you sure that is a wise comparison? I'm certain that Youtube is a source of information, but are you sure it is a useful one?
I live next door to a park and have just stuffed shit loads of cash into an American cruise company as a passenger (P&O - British name, American owner).
I'm alright mate and I'm sure you are too.