The anxiety of living in a totally useless state.

HighToryPsychic said:

that means they could keep 8-12 boats operational to attack Britain and blockade us, starve us out. And there is nothing we can do about this

This is the state of the navy now. It has been administration after administration that cut the budgets of the military so there is no single party or agenda to blame. It is a reality - we are not significant military power and have not been for 50 odd years.

Military spending is a totally different ball game these days as we rely on much fewer, hight value items to wage war with and the conventional forces of soldiers with guns are largely obsolete in defending our country as we are unlikely to experience a conventional invasion.

Our contracts with foreign suppliers leaves us open to their price gouging and the political agreements resulting in being willing to overpay for something rather than make it ourselves.

HighToryPsychic said:

The state is basically bankrupt

To be fair we have been since the 2 world wars. We got so far into debt then that it crippled us as an economic power and we never recovered from it. There have been some better times and some worse times but we have always been in debt since then.

HighToryPsychic said:

what do you think could be done to improve society? 

Maybe we should nationalise all the landed gentry and turn their estates over to government run farming to help reduce the national deficit.

Implementing price controls on medications and treatments should reduce the overheads for hospitals and allow the budget to stretch much further, including raising wages to attract home educated doctors.

Unfortunately we do import a lot of the lower level staff such as carers, orderlies and nurses because foreign workers will accept the salaries for these roles when the domestic labour supply will not. This is simple market forces - pay better and you will encourage the domestic supply to take up the roles and if you make it harder for imported labour to come in then you shift the whole supply/demand equation.

I meet a lot of care workers visiting my mother and got to know some of the management of these companies who told me that they just cannot get UK staff to take the work - they are either unwilling to do the tasks (consider helping an elderly patient wipe their bum) or expect a high salary for it. Foreign workers typically do not have these same qualms and actually make good carers while the Brits are often entitled and opinionated.

This is all based around my experiences in Scotland.

Maybe making unemployment benefits harder to get when jobs are available would be one approach but this has plenty of pitfalls - especially knowing how much autists struggle with personal interactions and sensory issues making them unsuited to jobs like these.

I don't think there is any simple solution to any of this.

HighToryPsychic said:

that means they could keep 8-12 boats operational to attack Britain and blockade us, starve us out. And there is nothing we can do about this

This is the state of the navy now. It has been administration after administration that cut the budgets of the military so there is no single party or agenda to blame. It is a reality - we are not significant military power and have not been for 50 odd years.

Military spending is a totally different ball game these days as we rely on much fewer, hight value items to wage war with and the conventional forces of soldiers with guns are largely obsolete in defending our country as we are unlikely to experience a conventional invasion.

Our contracts with foreign suppliers leaves us open to their price gouging and the political agreements resulting in being willing to overpay for something rather than make it ourselves.

HighToryPsychic said:

The state is basically bankrupt

To be fair we have been since the 2 world wars. We got so far into debt then that it crippled us as an economic power and we never recovered from it. There have been some better times and some worse times but we have always been in debt since then.

HighToryPsychic said:

what do you think could be done to improve society? 

Maybe we should nationalise all the landed gentry and turn their estates over to government run farming to help reduce the national deficit.

Implementing price controls on medications and treatments should reduce the overheads for hospitals and allow the budget to stretch much further, including raising wages to attract home educated doctors.

Unfortunately we do import a lot of the lower level staff such as carers, orderlies and nurses because foreign workers will accept the salaries for these roles when the domestic labour supply will not. This is simple market forces - pay better and you will encourage the domestic supply to take up the roles and if you make it harder for imported labour to come in then you shift the whole supply/demand equation.

I meet a lot of care workers visiting my mother and got to know some of the management of these companies who told me that they just cannot get UK staff to take the work - they are either unwilling to do the tasks (consider helping an elderly patient wipe their bum) or expect a high salary for it. Foreign workers typically do not have these same qualms and actually make good carers while the Brits are often entitled and opinionated.

This is all based around my experiences in Scotland.

Maybe making unemployment benefits harder to get when jobs are available would be one approach but this has plenty of pitfalls - especially knowing how much autists struggle with personal interactions and sensory issues making them unsuited to jobs like these.

I don't think there is any simple solution to any of this.