Great argument. I’ll be sure to reflect on your well-reasoned counter.
Likewise some fair points but I cant agree with you sorry. This is not disagreeing on where these policies come from but the actual reality of them.
RE Brexit vs COVID. The Office for Budget Responsibility, which Sunak has used to base his budget on stated that the damage from Brexit would be 4% on GDP. Covid was estimated to be 2%. This was reported in October 2021.
UK GDP is still 1.5% below where it was in the 4th Quarter of 2019. If you account for a typical level of growth that you’d expect over that period (without Covid) we’d be a lot lower.
NHS was really struggling pre Covid. This I really fear has broken it. We all know that spending in real terms has been falling and sectors within the NHS are continually being privatised by stealth. Despite promises of budget increases performance is falling due to resources and not having a workable budget.
Taxes for the lowest paid in society. While they pay less tax they are now losing the £20 uplift on UC, having to pay larger NI bills. This is in the face of soaring inflation. The NI increase is actually regressive because for employees earning over £50,000 per year, NICs drop to 2%, instead of up to 12% depending on what band you’re in. Therefore, employees earning above this threshold will pay proportionally less of their income in tax. This will still be the case even when the higher rate of tax rises to 3.25%. Similarly there’s an argument that the increases hit the jobs market as employers have to also pay the increase.
With regard to social care, the promise was that no one would have to sell their home. That is blatantly not true under the reforms. Houses in many areas of the UK are of a relatively low value, below the £86k cap and this could be counted as an asset resulting in that person losing everything. The wealthiest will only pay the £86k and get to keep everything else. Basically yet another manifesto promise broken.
Police cuts were before 2019 I agree.
Should the Russians turn off the gas tomorrow, I want us to have fucking huge coal mines open. Renewables are the future but the government’s responsibility is also today and tomorrow.
Do we even have the coal-burning capacity?
Most of the biomass assets in the UK are Rankine cycle steam turbines that could be repurposed fairly easily to coal use, so there is more capacity than meets the eye.
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All those metrics might be true, at the same time if you take a holistic view of the UK it’s in a poor state.
The country is fractured across several lines. Brexit/Europe , north/south, NI/Scotland independence. The divisions have got an order of magnitude worse. This has a a big societal impact, and paralysed government for last 6 years. At this point in time a united Ireland and an independent Scotland seem more likely than not. The repercussions of Brexit/Nationalism yet to be fully felt.
Health - Even before the pandemic the NHS had got progressively worse. It has been crippled. In last 3 years have had 2 family members die during routine ops in Liverpool, others having complications from mistakes. Waiting lists measured in years. Wife recently got a letter for an op request 4 years ago. (We left the UK 2 years ago 
). NHS effectively now a triage service for emergency care only. Staff overwhelmed/overworked that mistakes occurring.
Poverty. Before the pandemic it was estimated more than 1 in every 5 people in the UK lived in poverty. It’s disgraceful that there are now more food banks in the UK than Mc Donald’s. In 2019 more than a million homes (2.5M people) experienced destitution. Going without food, heating etc. With inflation this is only going to get worse. In real terms people will be poorer.
Education. Average student debt leaving Uni now £45K. 
Its effectively now another tax. Sadly for most entry level jobs you now need a degree. The value of which is debatable. UK universities are amount the best in the world but they are now more and more being run like businesses.
International influence. Soft power has been key to the success of the UK. It’s international standing is now weaker. The antagonism towards the EU while providing short term political capital is damaging long term. A global Britain is at odds with new trends of moving away from globalisation to reducing risks securing access to goods closer to home. (Mood on China very different to 5 years ago) International aid has for long time provided influence and trade, deep cuts undermine this. Military cuts mean by 2025 there will be fewer personal in the army than at any time during the past 300 years.
I love many aspects of the UK, but there are fundamental issues that need resolving. As countries go it’s currently the equivalent of Everton. Lack of coherent vision, living in past, and serious need for modernisation. There are positives. At the same time taking a step back, looking at the bigger picture. The UK has a hell of a lot of work to do to be the thriving country it should be.
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In fairness, a country with zero food banks and zero McDonald’s would be the ideal.
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It’s late so just to pick you up on this. The UK retained its ranking of 3rd in the global soft power index last year. Germany was top, Japan 2nd.
Also, despite the temporary reduction in the UK’s overseas aid budget, it remains the highest by proportion of GDP in the G20, and will be returning to its previous level next year.
Oi we’re here too!!
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Yay Cymru!
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Do you know that MacDonalds can’t get planning permission to build outlets in Eryri National Park.
Funny, cos I think it’s the responsibility of Governments to ensure that the planet remains a viable arena for life.
Who says I was arguing? I’m just trying to understand if you were posting that seriously or having a laugh.
If the electricity goes off tomorrow, nobody will give a shit about polar bears and their grand childrens’ planet. Not being able to charge phones and the internet going off would cause instant anarchy. Slightly more important and a searing indictment of first world problems.
Having a pile of coal and reserve power stations is a very sensible fall back position. Knocking down our local power station (as an example) is utterly ludicrous IMHO. Mothball it just in case. Turn off the main breaker in your house for 24 hours and see how quickly shit falls apart.
Sound eminently sensible, however the slight problem with the plan is around money.
There is no problem with retaining an emergency reserve. But when you have government and business working together to develop new fossil fuel avenues, the plan is to burn them. No-one is investing in a new massive coal mine or the Cambo oil field so we can use it just in case. That is all agreed in advance.
The sad reality is that we should have transitioned away from fossil fuels ten years ago. There is no excuse. The only reason we haven’t is because our politicians are ball’s deep in fossil fuel companies.
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Power stations don’t mothball particularly well - recommissioning is a significant process, and the maintenance during the interval is not zero.
Also worth noting that coal has not been regulated off most grids, it has been driven out by being economically uncompetitive.
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I think that is really an oversimplification - integrating intermittent renewables into the grid is a significant challenge, and energy storage has really only just become a serious contributor to that in the last couple of years. I don’t see a viable pathway by which the UK could have completely dropped a dependence on natural gas by now.
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Also, I didn’t mention bulldozing power stations. That was @Klopptimist’s strawman.
My point was that no-one (@Kopstar in this case) can seriously claim the government is doing a good job on climate when they are trying to develop a new massive coal mine in Whitehaven, the cambo oil field off Scotland, oil reserves in Surrey, as well as ploughing millions of our money in to funding fossil fund projects in Africa.
Yes the government have set targets. They should be stronger, but they have got some. The problem is that the pathways needed to reach those targets are completely out of kilter to the actions of the government. But that’s OK, because this government knows that by the time they are missed it doesn’t matter because they will have long fucked off into their cosy corporate consultancy jobs.
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I had already questioned Kopstar’s claiming of climate laurels for BoJo, and the comment re-mothballing was responding to Klopptimist. In practical terms, mothballing for extended periods gets you most of the way to bulldozing anyway - and your point about no one building coal assets as reserves is quite right.
One really only need to look at the emissions trajectory of the UK, and the Government’s own described pathway to see how far off course from the much-vaunted targets it already is, and that pathway left all the heavy lifting for the 2030’s. When the flagship initiative to date is electric cars (moving transport sector energy consumption to the electrical generation sector) but there is no real plan to produce the required low emissions electricity, it isn’t much of an initiative at all. Right now, the electrical sector in the UK is under rising pressure to increase emissions as a side product of short supply. If you use all the lovely Teslas but burn coal to do so, the cost per tonne of abatement is astronomical, the carbon savings between burning petrol and using coal-based electricity is underwhelming.
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It’s nuclear or bust then in the UK. Or cover the country in wind turbines.