| My takes: The UK has a ridiculously assymetric economy. You either move to London or fight for scraps anywhere else. This ties with the housing problem. Education is a debatable investiment, because highly qualified work presumes moving to London. There is no serious infrastructure investment. There are virtually no specialised companies in big projects, so everything is cut up in small pieces and commissioned to out-of-depth small contractors that see big projects as a "once in a lifetime" opportunity. The process is not streamlined, it can't cope with efficient big infrastructure work. Even small infrastructure work is not being done, like saving classrooms from literally crumbling (https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/may/14/england-cr...). Countryside and suburban people live in a dream-like state induced by the incredibly propagandist media (especially tabloids) where people happily believe that we "once owned the US and Canada" and repeat "5th-6th largest economy" while having tea with the vicar is enough to keep Britain's "achievements". Childcare is preposterously expensive, education likewise. Housing famously so. I could go on for a bit. |