- cross-posted to:
- europe@lemmy.ml
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How the UK hasn’t had a revolution yet is beyond me. Or even a more popular socialist party. The USA is one thing, but yknow settler colonialism or whatever. Britain has been in constant decline for like, 60 odd years now and its political parties are constantly infighting while the royal family flaunts its wealth like a billionaire who is compensating for something else.
Just like the U.S., alot of Bri’t’ish people have no goddamn spine or empathy. They love the fascism and dread.
I wonder why do they need more defense spending when UK does not have direct military threats? I can understand the economic stagnation as a consequence of bad management that need compensation from debt trapping by IMF, puppet governments, monopoly on foreign countries, and favoritism from global empires.
I imagine it’s the same reason as the US, it’s an easy way to funnel tax money back into the hands of the oligarchs.
“The problem with being an imperialist leech is that the oppressed start throwing salt on you”
paywall, cant read
added archived link
thank you
Yeah, this is why they hate Russia too. They need an injection of resources and money and there is only way britain/ Europe know how. It’s not like they can learn from China.
For anyone interested, UK poverty report 2024 by the Rowntree Foundation:
https://www.jrf.org.uk/uk-poverty-2024-the-essential-guide-to-understanding-poverty-in-the-uk
This is purposeful underdevelopment under capitalism and effectively it is socio-economic murder. By not guaranteeing economic rights since the bourgoise French Revolution the supposed political rights on offer are meaningless.
However, it is likely going to be a further turn into fascism as most people in poverty in the west see their salvation in the perceived offer of labor aristocracy and peitite bourgois sentiments to them at the expense of those from the global south.
This is not news. Huge numbers of people in this country have had terrible living standards for years. many people, from children to the disabled, even full time workers, going hungry regularly. A housing crisis, many homeless and housing insecure people, the NHS is crumbling so many medical conditions aren’t being adequately treated. This is a poor and miserable place to live.
Kinda relative aint it tho the median br**ish person still has an income an order of magnitude higher than most countries in Africa almost 2 orders of magnitude in some cases and several times higher than most other countries in the periphery, so are they really not rich?
Poor people in Britain can’t just walk over to a market in Liberia to shop. They have to spend their British currency at British stores and on British rent, bills, taxes.
This topic comes up a lot on Rednote where Chinese people keep being surprised by how dirt poor normal Americans are. Because the American dollar is worth 7x more than Chinese renminbi, Chinese people think each and every American is 7x richer than them. But reality is closer to the opposite being true.
Poor people in Liberia also often can’t got to a market in Liberia to shop. Like i get what yall are getting at disabled, oppressed, or just plain unlucky people in the core do sometimes live worse than average people in the periphery, i understand the feeling that yall are trying to put out that being poor in the core is brutal and its true but, its not a sensible comparison, capitalism is just as brutal and oppressive to poor people in the periphery except even more so.
Look im not saying that things arent bad in the core and especially bad in some areas and for some people, just that a little perspective is called for here, britain is rich by world standards, by any metric it is rich, in the article they weren’t comparing britain to any country in Africa, or Latin America but another country in europe. Pretending it is not rich obfuscates the reality of imperialism, there are 2 categories of capitalist countries core and periphery and britain is solidly in the core.
Also while its clear cut when looking at things like food, its simply cheaper in the periphery (tho ill point out in my personal experience i have found food to almost always be cheaper in the core as percent of income), other necessities are more complicated, if u look at housing for example yes in the core it is expensive but its also higher quality than in the periphery, the poorest people in britain may be living in moldy apartments with roommates or several generations of their families, but the poorest people in the periphery are living in makeshift shacks with no utilities.
As for China they call themselves a developing country and they share some characteristics with developing countries but in many regards they are closer to developed countries, so they make for a poor comparison with the core especially because it is a much more fair an equal society, to put it simply there is a reason that “second world” was a useful category and it applies here.
Income has to be considered against cost of living though.
Bizarre my personal experience full of privilege, I spend most of my time between NYC and London, and in the circles I’m in, everything seems great to everyone involved. Even though the illusion is shattered the moment you actually have conversations with average people.
(I’m a corporate lawyer in New York and my girlfriend is British and is doing a project back in London so I’m basically living on both sides of the Pond.)
Try living outside of the metro areas and working a non-labour aristocrat job; I live and work in Scotland working with vulnerable adults and my wage is like 25k a year while my rent is 1.2k a month lol.
I have a law profession and my partner works in art and we both have decent incomes and many of our friends have too. It’s a bubble. I deal with unemployed clients on a daily basis and only then you realize how many people in this country (Belgium) live. In moldy houses, in uncertainty, without food some days, constantly between sickness - unemployment - shitty temp jobs. My friends never believe my stories because they never see the misery.
So crazy that they used to be the most advanced country in the world and now…
They might go back to not wiping their ass at this rate 💔
Many already don’t.
I know what will help, 5% of the GDP towards military spending!
why not 100% of GDP and just replace everything in the economy with armaments? the best porcupine is made completely out of steel spikes facing both outward and inward, with the pleasing tertiary benefit of skewering any potential fifth column!
why not replace train carriages with mobile artillery, farmland with minefields, and hospitals with ICBM silos?
now that would really show the russians what’s what
Don’t give them any ideas.
Most of the uk looks like a silent hill map
I feel like at this point Silent Hill is straight up preferable to most of UK.
Silent Hill exists only in your mind. The UK, unfortunately, is very real.
Not for much longer if things keep going the way they are.
Probably more likely to get stabbed in the UK than in silent hill yes.
I swear, the current situation in the UK makes Margaret Thatcher’s economy look good in comparison.
This is the economy she wanted. I’m sure wherever she is she’s fucking giddy the old hag. What’s worse is that these people treat the situation like an act of God, as if they have no ability to change anything. As such “Managed Decline” rolls on- right next to its pal Social Murder
