Britain has historically been one of the richest countries in the world. The fact that so much of it now feels broken is not a tragedy. It’s an embarrassment. And for this, blame successive governments, who have hollowed out and sold off British assets.
The UK’s median house price is around £278,000. Median full-time earnings are about £39,000. That’s 7 times annual earnings nationally. The official benchmark for affordability is five times earnings. Britain didn’t accidentally stumble into a housing crisis. It built one.
The NHS waiting list still stands above 7 million treatments. Millions of people are waiting for care in a country that spends enormous sums on healthcare. Staff are delivering record numbers of treatments, yet the backlog remains vast. That is not a sign of success. It is a sign of demand overwhelming the system.
For nearly two decades, Britain has suffered a productivity decay. Normal productivity growth more or less vanished after the 2008 financial crisis. The consequence is simple: weak productivity means weak wage growth, weak growth means weak public finances, and weak public finances is made even worse by a Labour government creating a record tax burden that is punishing the self employed and small businesses - the engine room of growth.
Everywhere you look, the same story repeats itself:
The trains are expensive.
The roads are full of potholes.
High streets are decaying
Road drains blocked.
The housing is unaffordable.
The NHS is overloaded.
Taxes are at historically high levels.
Record business closures.
Growth has flatlined.
Britain has perfected the art of managed disappointment. And since Covid, the national mood is worse than I can ever remember.
And that is what makes people angry.
Not because Britain is poor.
Not because Britain lacks talent.
Not because Britain lacks resources.
Yet somehow the country often struggles to reboot forgotten communities, improve roads, construct railways, maintain infrastructure, or deliver major projects without years of delay and billions in extra cost.
The outrage comes from the gap between potential and performance.
We should be spending our taxes for national infrastructure improvements, but instead governments are funnelling our money to their corporate cronies and turning off the taps on North Sea oil and gas to hit net zero targets. It’s shameful.
A generation ago, politicians promised rising prosperity. Today they promise that things will get slightly less worse than expected.
The national ambition has shrunk from “How do we become better?” to “How do we stop falling even more behind?”
That is not decline in the dramatic sense, but instead, a slow erosion of standards, expectations and confidence.
Britain isn’t a failed state. It’s a successful country that has become horribly comfortable with failure.
A country that still thinks of itself as world-class while accepting conditions that would have caused outrage twenty years ago.
A country living off the reputation built by previous generations while struggling to build enough for the next.
And perhaps the most infuriating statistic of all is one that cannot be measured: the number of people who have simply lowered their expectations.
When a nation starts treating dysfunction as normal, decline stops being an event.
It becomes a culture. We are where we are.
Congratulations Celtic on the most tainted title ever in this century.
Funny saying this despite the Covid title and a Cup being won after the final was rescheduled for after their opponents was relegated and half the team was sold off, all happening in the last few years.
Strange coincidence that in all 3 instances, it was one club benefitting.
Well tried Hearts. But it was all too much at the end.
Ha, quality joke from @LeeAndersonMP_ in parliament about Llama’s, but the real joke is Labour’s Health Minister, Ashley Dalton, pushing ‘llama rights’ while the NHS collapses.
If I identify as tax-exempt, will HMRC respect my truth? #Llamageddon
𝟒𝟎 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐅𝐢𝐟𝐞! 🎉
It’s ExxonMobil FEP’s Ruby Anniversary year.
Since 1985, we have stood as one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of ethylene, a chemical that touches our lives every day.
We have created hundreds of skilled jobs, made a major contribution to Fife’s economy, supported community causes, and put Scotland at the heart of a global value chain.
Look out for more reflections on our proud history in the Kingdom and how our legacy will shape our future.
#40inFife #ethylene #Fife
😮 CEO of Octopus energy on Sky News yesterday morning -
“If we did location pricing, every region would be cheaper
Scotland would go from the most expensive electricity in Europe - to the cheapest.”
If Keir Starmer had said before the election that he would remove the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners, add inheritance to family farms, council tax & energy price increases, raise university tuition fees, plaster mass-scale solar panels on thousands of acres of prime farmland despite huge local community objections, spaff £22bn of taxpayers’ money on carbon capture machines, give £3bn a year of taxpayers’ money to Ukraine, pledge a 20% cut in meat & dairy and get exposed for receiving over £100,000 worth of freebies - he almost certainly wouldn’t have won. He duped the electorate. An utterly shameless display of snake oil political salesmanship. And still he lectures all of us in that gratingly sanctimonious manner of his like we are all somehow the problem here.
Ally McCoist scored this magnificent winner for Scotland against Switzerland at the European Championships on this day in 1996.
The two countries meet again in the same competition tomorrow
The coverage of Taylor Caterall 2 on @DAZNBoxing tonight was embarrassing! The most biased I’ve ever watched. @JoshTaylorBoxer didn’t stand a chance.
At worst that was a draw. Taylor by 2 or 3 easy