The “Broken Britain” cover story in the November 2011 of Harper’s states that the overall condition of the UK in terms of socio-economics, infrastructure, personal freedoms, and general quality of life has deteriorated so much that the country is nearly unlivable. Granted, this is one author’s opinion but, as an ignorant Yank, I was under the impression that at least until the current recession, living standards in Britain were at least better than they were 30 years ago.
Is it really this bad?
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The standard of living is pretty high. Quality of life, which is subjective, I would argue is pretty low. But I would say that: I left.
Sorry about the linked article only being available to subscribers. Here are some noteworthy passages from it.
Everything above is true.
Heathrow is an embarrassment. I’ve said this for years on the SDMB too. Seriously shoddy.
Public transport is hellishly expensive - my girlfriend needs to travel from Heathrow to Gatwick in a few months. A one-way ticket on a coach for a journey of less than 1 hour between the two major airports in the capital city costs £25 (US$40)!
The last point is not necessarily a bad thing per UK citizens, however. We’ve got used to the CCTV and many people like it due both to crime prevention and to identify perpetrators.
But there’s a pettiness now that drives me nuts. Significant avoidance of risk, not necessarily because of the dreaded Health and Safety, but liability risk, like removing an unlit candle from an office where I worked a few years ago because it was a ‘fire risk’.
The attitude is summed up in a book I’m reading at the moment - Lights out in Wonderland by DBC Pierre, written last year. It’s satire but it’s right on the money - corporate entities with the decision-makers five or ten layers removed from the people who have to enforce the rules, but without the service culture of the US. It leaves the consumer feeling powerless and frustrated. Edited passage:
I would say the article seems to be politcally motivated. “Broken Britain” was a term used by the right wing in Britain during the Brown and Blair years, though this seems to be fairly left-leaning.
There’s a few slightly misleading aspects in the quoted sections of the article, though the situation is complicated Network Rail is essentially, if not technically, a public body and Transport for London is a local governmental body. The Potter’s Bar accident occurred whilst Railtrack were still responsible for Brtiain’s railways, Network Rail inherited the liabilty for the accident from Railtrack.
From the quoted sections of the article I would not say that it is particularly an accurate picture. Many of the problems quoted in IMO don’tamount to a hill of beans against rising unemployment and poor growth which is a problem most countries in the West are facing at the current time.
Britain’s not broken, far from it. Most of the complaints come from wanky London-based journalists, but London’s not representative of the rest of the UK (and journalists are not representative of the rest of humanity). I think you should view London almost as a state-within-a-state, and treat complaints about the Tube, or Heathrow (or house prices) in isolation.
Most Brits don’t have to cope with Heathrow or London transport on a daily basis. Yes, there are CCTV cameras around but it doesn’t stop me doing anything I don’t want to do.
House prices are expensive in some parts of the UK, but there are plenty of places where they are affordable. Where I live buses are cheap and frequent, there are plenty of houses to buy, and the economy in the local area (West Midlands) is very healthy. We have nice shops, good schools, green spaces and a decent cultural life.
We have many of the same problems any modern, post-industrial society has, but the French, Spaniards and Germans have just as many issues to work through.
Airports in general in the UK are hideous. I get depressed when I land at Birmingham International (my Parents live a mere 15 minute drive from there). Everything is dirty and nothing seems to work.
Regarding mainline trains, I haven’t met a single Brit that wouldn’t agree that the railways privatisation was an idiotic idea and a poster boy for how privatisation should not be performed (if it should be performed at all).
A bit harsh on the Underground. It was the world’s first underground rail system. They compare it to Stockholm’s, but the first line for that opened in 1950! Stockholm’s also has only three lines and one hundred stations, compared to eleven lines and two hundred and seventy stations for London’s. One would hope that Stockholm’s would be better designed and easier to maintain. Such is the price of being a pioneer.
Anyway, single tickets are priced quite similarly in Stockholm (and Oyster single trips are significantly cheaper than the Stockholm equivalent). The big difference is the cost of season tickets, but London is a metric fucktonne bigger than Stockholm anyway.
It is all relative. I compare to the UK a lot through talking with friends and family. From what I can work out, here in Sweden we pay a LOT less for housing, but everything else is a lot more expensive. Food for example, three quid for a loaf of bread?
So in the end, it all balances out but if one wants to make a point it is very easy to be selective about what you compare to make somewhere look better/worse.
Like large swathes of the Western World at the moment, the UK has its problems and is part of the sweeping recession that’s affecting everyone. But “quality of life has deteriorated so much that the country is nearly unlivable”? That’s just silly. I’m not sure an airport being a bit grotty, a train accident 15 years ago, and announcements on the Underground qualify as making an entire country “unlivable”.
Harper’s Magazine? I’ve never seen it, but Wikipedia tells me it’s a far-left American magazine. Possibly there’s some agenda there; dunno. But I find it just fine.
Interestingly, I heard an interview with this journalist on BBC London radio a few weeks ago – the interviewer was basically miffed at the article and invited him to explain himself (for Londoners listening, the interviewer was Vanessa Feltz - don’t look at me like that, she’s brill on the radio).
He’s American and had been in the country a mere three weeks (even though he talks about ‘we’ as if he’s a local), visited a couple of sink estates and dragged up a few ancient quotes to support his argument. He spluttered his way through the interview, backtracked repeatedly, tried to excuse himself by saying that Britain’s problems are universal in the western world and he was just using the UK as an example (something he didn’t put in the article) and admitted that he loves London, thinks it’s an amazingly vibrant city and is really looking forward to living here during his posting. Funny, I thought you just wrote that our country was ‘unliveable’.
I haven’t read the article but don’t particularly feel inclined to after that interview. He sounded like he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Maybe I’m misremembering, but… isn’t Heathrow in the hands of one of those Spanish public-turned-private companies? The ones which combine the worst of both worlds? manages to come up with the right google terms Ah, no, it’s Ferrovial - not quite as bad but still used to “my balls are bigger than your balls” as SOP. Those people would try to turn a sow into chorizos and end up with pasta salad.
I returned from the UK a year and a half ago, after two years in Scotland (one in Glasgow, one in Edinburgh): the Spaniards in my team found housing cheaper than in Spain, although we came from places which occupy very diverse spots in our own housing market. The banking system was also… nicer may be the right word (I’ve got no idea how they are about giving you a loan bigger than a CC or if you manage to default on payments). They didn’t give us half as many problems about needing to operate with the office with which our accounts were originally associated as Spanish banks do and their procedures were quite clear, even with the horrid English some of us had.
The state of the older parts of the London subway is similar to the older parts of Madrid’s or Barcelona’s, which I actually think is good since London’s happens to be older - Bilbao’s is nicer, but it’s also tiny and still has parts of the packaging ribbon hanging from the wagons.
I’ve lived in NY (Manhattan) for 10 years, Tokyo for 10, Hong Kong for four. Several years each in Minneapolis, San Francisco, Chicago and Houston. I’ve now lived in London for three years, and am just starting to feel comfortable having a general opinion of ‘how things are’.
I was both poor and better-off in NY, Hong Kong, Tokyo, so I have a decent idea of how different lifestyles get on in those cities. I haven’t been a student or under-employed etc. in London, and have only lived in one area of London since I moved here, so I am pretty sure my view of the city is one-sided.
And all is not perfect, of course. Taxes are hellaciously high. Rents are ridiculous. Thankfully we don’t have to go to the NHS that often, but when we do service can be very much hit-and-miss. Food culture isn’t all that great (particularly compared to Hong Kong or Tokyo).
Still, London is easily the ‘nicest’ big city I’ve lived in. I would probably want to be in NY if I were younger and/or single, but at my age and with a family & small kids, London is ideal. Both my wife and I love it here, and hope to stay as long as we can.
In addition, of course, London is not the UK (not to mention that different parts of just London are vastly different to each other).
Yeah, this article is highly tendentious and consists mainly of cherry-picking bad incidents and then blowing them out of proportion. There are kernels of truth, particularly in terms of the effects of rail privatisation and income inequality but this is in no way a coherent overview of life in the modern UK.
Although it pains me to say it, the quote from Peter Mandelson is a deceitful misquote. What he said was “we’re intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich, provided they pay their taxes”. The last clause is almost always dropped from this quote in order to paint Mandelson in an even worse light than he deserves - a commitment to journalistic integrity that Alisdair Campbell would be proud of.
Oh, and when he quotes the government spokesman as saying that the European childhood study was out of date, he should really take the time to point out that the European childhood study was in fact out of date. IIRC, by at least 5 years.
Labour didn’t do much to ensure the filthy rich actually paid the same rates of tax as the rest of us though. Plenty of stories* of CEOs paying less tax than their office cleaners.
*although I’m sure there’s more to it
It’s “far left” in the way the Guardian is “far left”.
I know. Like I said, I don’t enjoy finding myself defending Mandleson, but it is a pretty egregious piece of quote manipulation. And the point can be well made without resorting to cheap tactics like that.
I’ll try to read the article when I have a chance to go to the library. However, I do know there are conservative and libertarian sources with a similar attitude towards developments in modern Britain, though with a different focus. For instance:
As a Brit who’s been living in the states for a while (but gets back pretty regularly), I’d say its mainly exaggeration, or rather ridiculous extrapolation (Britains broken because the airports shutdown in the snow, since when has Britain NOT shut down in the snow ?).
In particular I’d say there is no where in Britain (or indeed the “western” world) that is as “broken” as the “broken” bits of the US. I’ve lived in some sketchy bits of the UK (Longsight in Manchester. and Bermondsey in London), and there is nothing to compare to some of the blighted urban areas of the US (Bits of Oakland, the Tenderloin region of the San Fran, or downtown LA come to mind).
Actually, they’re the best representatives-of-humanity you’ll ever find anywhere.