@whatyadoinsucka That number will have been produced by a tendering team at the contractors, a salesman will have made only initial contact to ask what they can tender for. That number will have been the cheapest of those that provided a price. A large chunk of that pricing will be for access equipment and welfare facilities to allow the job to be carried out safely (LEA's are sticklers for ensuring everyone can go home in one piece at the end of every day). The materials will be a small part of the cost.
IMO It isn't, but it's been getting worse.
I haven't read the entire thread but it seems a lot of these issues are the direct result of a combination of things, the lack of trickle down economics I feel has played a large part.
thanks @sandwich true, i assume thats why changing a lightbulb can cost so much money
Ultimately we are over spending as a country but like my council on things we don’t actually need living in a fantasy shaped by special interest groups…and people who are looking for quick profit and or nepotism.
We're not overspending. We are very much under-spending. There is not a finite amount of money which we can use to spend on public services and infrastructure. Pretending there is leads to the under-investment we now experience. The trouble is spending money on 'the basics' like schools and hospitals is very expensive and requires massive investment, whilst putting up a few arty statues costs next to nothing and can be done with some random arts council grant.
the lack of trickle down economics I feel has played a large part.
Trickle down economics is a myth, a gargantuan lie designed to fool people that they would benefit from the rich getting a lot richer. We've never had trickle down economics, just tax and deliberate wealth redistribution, and that's what we need more of.
centralisation of IT with appropriately skilled and paid professionals would save a metric tonne of cash.
in for insourcing where possible / appropriate is the answer.
centralising has got to be better than the current model of hundreds (thousands?) of badly tendered and managed contracts costing us millions we currently have
and keep the ministers out of it, I think the idea a politician can be parachuted in with bugger all experience and make important decisions is flawed
like I said just an example of how we could improve
dazh
We’re not overspending. We are very much under-spending. There is not a finite amount of money which we can use to spend on public services and infrastructure.
So which country do you suggest we invade to steal their resources?
Or do you just subscribe to a belief system with unicorns and horns of plenty?
We have become a country who wants everything but to pay for nothing.
why we are becoming one of the poorest nations on earth
we are not becoming one of the poorest nations on earth. Anyone who thinks so is clearly uneducated about how the vast majority of people on this planet live. "poverty" in the UK for a single person means a weekly income of £227 per week (source - https://observatory.leeds.gov.uk/leeds-poverty-fact-book/relative-and-absolute-poverty/), which is approx $15,000 per year. That puts someone in poverty in the UK ahead of the average income in somewhere like greece, twice the average income of somewhere like Brazil and 6x the average income of someone in india (source - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income)
the average (median) wealth of a UK adult is $140k, making us in the top 5% of all countries around the world. That is 10x as wealthy as someone in serbia (which is in the middle of the list) and 100x as wealthy as someone in a proper third world country like suriname or Rwanda and 500x as wealthy as someone in a poor 3rd world country like Sierra leone.
We should be concerned about the way things are going, but we are massively massively rich as a country.
@molgrips is it an engineer quoting this price or is it a dodgy sales man, who thinks **** it I’ll give them a crazy price and see what happens
In my line of work, the engineers say 'the job will cost X' and the salespeople say 'no that's too much, our competitors will under cut us' however the same thing is happening at competitors so none of the deals the customer is offered can actually work. So when the project starts it goes wrong or the results are bad. And we have to employ loads of people just to clean up the mess. This happens almost every time in the UK and from what I can tell it happens in other industries as well.
It's because no-one respects the engineers or designers or the people with the actual knowledge. Knowledge is not respected, we're anti-intellectual in the UK. Kids who do well at school get mocked and we even get politicians saying that they've had enough of experts. Sure, that was a stupid line to trot out, but like all politicians he's saying things that people are receptive to - that statement was a product of our national culture.
the average (median) wealth of a UK adult is $140k, making us in the top 5% of all countries around the world.
Two things:
- Actual cash sums for income aren't a good indicator of economic security and happiness. That comes from discretionary spending ability. £227 a week is no good if rent is £200 a week. But even if rent of £50 is available, that's no good if it's a shit flat in a shit area where you fear for you safety.
- The MEAN wealth is not the issue here, it's the distribution of that wealth.
Anyone on here who thinks the UK is, or is becoming a third world country is showing themselves up as arrogant and self-entitled, in my opinion. To even consider that there are equivalencies between the like of Sudan, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe etc is crass, and demeans the issues faced by many other countries.
This exactly. There's a lot of moaning about the roads and references to the third world. This betrays unbelieveable privilege and total lack of self-awareness by middle accounts receiveable managers at specialist glass distributors in Norwich whose greatest pain in life is that they hit a pothole two months ago in their second hand Korean SUV.
The UK has a massive (per capita), very safe, technologically advanced road network in which 99%+ is perfectly good to travel on at speed. It's a million miles away from the position in most developing countries.
it’s also informative to spend some time in another European country and see...why most refugees actually don’t risk their lives to come here and choose to stay elsewhere.
Most refugees choose (or more accurately, are only able) to go to the country next to their own: Turkey from Syria, Kenya from Somalia, Jordan from Palestine, and so on. A still larger number of people escaped danger at their home but aren't refugees because they didn't cross an international border and are "internally displaced persons".
"Most refugees don't come to the UK" is totally true and doesn't really tell us anything about anything.
Poverty is relative to cost of living, £227 a week in the UK is poverty. Switzerland is near the top on Spin's list (the list is bollocks as Hong Kong in fourth and Saudi above Portugal tells any thinking person) but there are about 30 000 Swiss living illegally in France and commuting over the border because they can't afford to live in Switzerland. 70 000 French pensioners live legally in Maroco, not necessarily rich in French terms but very rich in Marocan terms.
This is what happens when people lose their minds, believe the media drivel and vote Tory. They are the people to blame. Brainless cretins with blood on their hands who now deserve everything they get. Mortgage gone up and you can't afford it? Your fault.
Can't afford your utility bills? Your fault.
Can't afford a holiday this year? Your fault.
Don't vote tory you morons.
They basically voted to be financially raped and to make those corrupt Tories richer. Look at the covid contracts scam they pulled. And still some won't learn from the blindingly obvious and will be back at the polls soon with their pens, ready to plunge the country even deeper into the mire.
Probably the same idiots who lined the streets waving at the Royal family. See you next Tuesdays, every single one of them
Brainless cretins with blood on their hands who now deserve everything they get.
To what extent are people culpable for their own lack of intelligence?
We aren't taught how to vote or how to understand politics. People with brain power and curiosity to spare will do this, but not everyone does.
As with almost everything else, the bottom line is education.
Seems a lot of middle aged, middle class white men in this thread complaining… I wonder how many of them have actually spent any significant time in a developing country? You need to get some perspective.
Apart from the small fact that the middle aged white men have all said it is wrong to compare UK to a 3rd world country in response to the frankly stupid question from OP.
I can complain that the country has become worse in the last 20 years whilst also not saying it is like a 3rd world country.
I fear it's in terminal decline.
It's not just one issue, it's everything at once. No chance of Labour or anyone else being able to fix this before the media turn on them for spending too much.
I think people complain about the roads simply because the patched up tarmac barely held together with short term repairs is just a very visible metaphor for everything that's going on beneath the surface.
So which country do you suggest we invade to steal their resources?
Or do you just subscribe to a belief system with unicorns and horns of plenty?
Don't want to turn this into another MMT thread but you appear to be of the view that money is finite and pegged to real resources. It's not. If we want to spend 10bn on a hospital building programme accessing the money to do that is not a problem. The barrier is whether there is sufficient slack in the economy to meet the demand that 10bn spend will generate. That's called economic growth, which is usually understood to be a good thing. The reason economic growth is currently stagnant is because the govt is not spending.
Seems a lot of middle aged, middle class white men in this thread complaining… I wonder how many of them have actually spent any significant time in a developing country? You need to get some perspective.
What an incredibly problematic statement to make.
Are middle aged, middle class white men not able to have an opinion on the country they've lived in unless they've lived in a developing one?
And why have you brought race into it?
Disgusting post.
Isn't "becoming a third world country" just a turn of phrase that people are taking too literally? We all know what the OP meant surely.
I fear it’s in terminal decline.
It’s not just one issue, it’s everything at once. No chance of Labour or anyone else being able to fix this before the media turn on them for spending too much.
Pretty sure everyone was saying that in 1997 and 13 years later we had a country full of new schools and hospitals where class sizes were down and NHS waiting lists almost eliminated. You can debate how that spending was implemented (PFI etc) but you can't argue that it wasn't necessary. The problem now is that the current labour leadership appears to be falling for the tory austerity narrative. If that is true then yes things will continue to decline but I doubt that's how it will pan out.
Are middle aged, middle class white men not able to have an opinion on the country they’ve lived in unless they’ve lived in a developing one?
All lives matter. 😂
We still have fresh water on tap.
We- being Scottish. Whose water is like fresh nectar, but down south, it might be fresh, but it tastes like tar.
Pretty sure everyone was saying that in 1997 and 13 years later we had a country full of new schools and hospitals where class sizes were down and NHS waiting lists almost eliminated. You can debate how that spending was implemented (PFI etc) but you can’t argue that it wasn’t necessary. . The problem now is that the current labour leadership appears to be falling for the tory austerity narrative.
TBF, a key part of the 97 Labour election winning strategy was to stick to the outgoing Tory governments spending limits, as it was the only way to stop the Tories whacking them with the 'typical Labour, tax and spend' stick'. They only opened the spending taps later.
We don't often agree, Dazh, but in economic terms you're right, it's first year economics. The consequences are usually increaded growth, but inflation and a falling currency so you then have to work out the impact of those on the various classes/social groups or whatever you want to call them. Overall the impact is likely to be a positive for the little people and a negative for the very rich. So when Starmer wants to run a "tight ship" you know that a Lbaour government won't be and end to the decline.
we are not becoming one of the poorest nations on earth. Anyone who thinks so is clearly uneducated about how the vast majority of people on this planet live. “poverty” in the UK for a single person means a weekly income of £227 per week
molgrips
wo things:
– Actual cash sums for income aren’t a good indicator of economic security and happiness. That comes from discretionary spending ability. £227 a week is no good if rent is £200 a week. But even if rent of £50 is available, that’s no good if it’s a shit flat in a shit area where you fear for you safety.
– The MEAN wealth is not the issue here, it’s the distribution of that wealth.
This ^^^ I'd go further and say "money" as such in absolute terms has nothing to do with it.
This exactly. There’s a lot of moaning about the roads and references to the third world. This betrays unbelieveable privilege and total lack of self-awareness by middle accounts receiveable managers at specialist glass distributors in Norwich whose greatest pain in life is that they hit a pothole two months ago in their second hand Korean SUV.
The UK has a massive (per capita), very safe, technologically advanced road network in which 99%+ is perfectly good to travel on at speed. It’s a million miles away from the position in most developing countries.
If we exclude nations at war and those FUBAR from corruption beyond the UK then we are near the bottom in real terms because we prioritise spending money on (for example) roads over (for example) feeding kids.
It's the distribution of and priorities of that wealth/resources makes us poor as a nation.
I've lived in developing nations with mostly little more than cart tracks where 'major highways' have massive fissures but everyone who wanted has a house, food and access to clean water.
Don’t want to turn this into another MMT thread but you appear to be of the view that money is finite and pegged to real resources. It’s not. If we want to spend 10bn on a hospital building programme accessing the money to do that is not a problem. The barrier is whether there is sufficient slack in the economy to meet the demand that 10bn spend will generate. That’s called economic growth, which is usually understood to be a good thing. The reason economic growth is currently stagnant is because the govt is not spending.
A "sovereign nation" can do whatever it wants with it's fake money but a nation with a negative balance of trade that cannot meet it's own population's requirements is not sovereign it must pay for goods in something with a value to whoever is selling.
The UK has to buy food from outside the UK... it isn't something over which we have an option because we don't have the capacity to grow enough to feed our population.
If we were an island rich in resources we could use conch shells... and if noone wanted to sell us luxury goods in exchange we could just do without luxury goods but food isn't something we can just do without.
The UK is definitely moving in that direction.
In real terms LA funding by central gov has been cut by 50% since 2010 and there’s a continuing devolution of responsibility from central to local gov – do more with less.
Tory gov has no interest in slowing or stopping the decline – they’ll be out at the next GE so, from their perspective…cream it while you can.
Starmer & co don’t, I fear, have any real grasp of the scale of the problems they will inherit – nor does anyone else.
I’m not convinced by MMT but it’s clear that adherence to ‘balancing the books’ will do nothing to help a Lab gov.
In some senses the dismal state of the UK and an electoral shagging for the tories could well lead to their return next time around – starmer/corbyn/wilson have had a go but we still haven’t got to the sunlit uplands so…let the other lot have another go.
What a mess.
Terminal decline.
Yeah ^^this^^ aligns with much of my thoughts, Camaron/Osbourne and Austerity initiated many of the problems that we're seeing come home now (although I'm sure the Blair/Brown Gov' share some blame), the ERG/Right-wing of the Tory party takeover post 2016 hasn't helped the situation. My Missus works in LA and their long term 'defunding' and firm nudging towards the jaws of the private sector "Service delivery" outfits is obvious, the NHS is in the same boat.
My worry isn't just the state we find ourselves in as a nation now, it's the worry that a change of Government won't actually solve much, that SKS and Co' will be too constrained by the RW media narrative and all the "balancing the books" waffle, it's going to take any government at least two terms to even start to address things and I'm just not sure current Labour are even up to it let alone if they'll even get a chance with Murdoch and the (remaining) Barclay Bro chipping away at the nation's Psyche...
shittier ice cream
Yet another thing to blame Thatcher for 😉
(all IMO of course)
I would argue that the UK could feed itself if there wasn't so much waste at every level, enough to feed 30 million with the supermarkets being the main culprits. Then there's the appalling way people eat which is one of the main strains on the health service.
People not only voting for the state they're in at elections, they do it when they go shopping, choose how they get to the shops, leisure choices... . It's a society in which the media promote a way of life and values which are toxic to the people themselves.
No.
1. Ignoring the COL crisis our rates of poverty, child poverty and debt are slightly higher than France and Germany and less than Italy and Spain,
2. Our government is stable, if ineffective.
3. Mortality rates amongst all age groups whilst not improving are stable.
4. Fuel, food, water and energy are freely available and at stable prices.
Are middle aged, middle class white men not able to have an opinion on the country they’ve lived in unless they’ve lived in a developing one?
They're allowed to have an opinion however stupid, but if they can't see past their own prejudices and life experience despite being provided with actual facts, then maybe they should look inward as to why they're so monumentally wrong.
I await more wailing and gnashing of teeth as you compare yourself to the Yazidi, or something.
Third world country 😂
Some folk really need to give their heads a wobble.
Edukator
I would argue that the UK could feed itself if there wasn’t so much waste at every level, enough to feed 30 million with the supermarkets being the main culprits. Then there’s the appalling way people eat which is one of the main strains on the health service.
Perhaps .(probably not and not in a way without turning the UK into a big factory farm) but the UK couldn't feed itself for a lot longer than supermarkets have been a thing.
Quite how much of that was through choice or bad management is debateable so I'm not sure when I'd put a cut-off but pre-WWII we were already dependent on importing food and the population has exploded since.
I do believe we're definitely on the decline. To be fair, we've been on a steady decline since losing the Empire.
I believe we have a ton of problems like an over bloated state, poorly run (in every sense) public services, lack of investment in critical areas, a more divisive culture seems to be on the horizon, an education system that doesn't really set students up for the 'real world', a strange culture of entitlement from the younger, the political landscape is dire etc etc. It's not great at the moment.
That said, there are plenty of good things about the UK that i'm happy with. I'm not quite ready to sell up and disappear to Switzerland just yet.
A Labour government would be disastrous for this country. Will be interesting to see what plays out at the next GE.
2. Our government is stable, if ineffective.
Arguable.
3. Mortality rates amongst all age groups whilst not improving are stable.
They're actually getting worse (MrsIHN is an actuary, this is an actual thing that they're having to cater for now when pricing premiums etc)
4. Fuel, food, water and energy are freely available and at stable prices.
Have you been in a cave?
Have you been in a cave?
Still nothing like the scale of ****ups in some actual 3rd world countries though.
A Labour government would be disastrous for this country.
You're aware that 13 years of Tory government hasn't been a rampant success, yeah?
I'm absolutely a middle ground voter and no Labour zealot, but I'm firmly in the "we might as well give them a go, they couldn't do any worse than this lot" camp
A Labour government would be disastrous for this country.
Why so?
I’m not quite ready to sell up and disappear to Switzerland just yet.
I am - well, not Swtizerland, but somewhere else. Having lived and worked overseas there are certainly places more attractive.
The UK is definitely moving in that direction.
In real terms LA funding by central gov has been cut by 50% since 2010 and there’s a continuing devolution of responsibility from central to local gov – do more with less.
Tory gov has no interest in slowing or stopping the decline – they’ll be out at the next GE so, from their perspective…cream it while you can.
Starmer & co don’t, I fear, have any real grasp of the scale of the problems they will inherit – nor does anyone else.
I’m not convinced by MMT but it’s clear that adherence to ‘balancing the books’ will do nothing to help a Lab gov.
In some senses the dismal state of the UK and an electoral shagging for the tories could well lead to their return next time around – starmer/corbyn/wilson have had a go but we still haven’t got to the sunlit uplands so…let the other lot have another go.
What a mess.
+1
The UK is starting to feel like 2000's Eastern Europe, the general feeling that everything is just about ticking along, but the infrastructure was built during some past heyday and is now crumbling.
Perhaps .(probably not and not in a way without turning the UK into a big factory farm) but the UK couldn’t feed itself for a lot longer than supermarkets have been a thing.
Quite how much of that was through choice or bad management is debateable so I’m not sure when I’d put a cut-off but pre-WWII we were already dependent on importing food and the population has exploded since.
IIRC the story is a lot more nuanced than the headline.
The headline is we're only something like 61% self sufficient, but that's based on the value of food we eat, i.e. on a £100 food shop, an average of £61 was from the UK.
The nuance is we are broadly self sufficient in grain, it varies by year depending on the weather, but imports and exports average out in the long term. So we are self sufficient. Same with livestock and dairy, we export some low value food and import higher value. So it's only consumer taste that isn't self sufficient.
Fruit and veg is more complicated. Clearly we're not self sufficient in bananas and avocado, but we're in the 70's% for more staple veg. Again there's a consumer issue that people want apples in June, they're going to come from Africa not Somerset. Same with a lot of veg.
If you cut off from the rest of the world tonight, we wouldn't starve, there'd just be less choice.
pre-WWII
Pre green revolution. Check out productivity now. The UK could feed a nation of perfect BMI people with a very low levels of meat consumption and low waste.
– Actual cash sums for income aren’t a good indicator of economic security and happiness. That comes from discretionary spending ability. £227 a week is no good if rent is £200 a week. But even if rent of £50 is available, that’s no good if it’s a shit flat in a shit area where you fear for you safety.
True, its not an exact amount, however £227 a week here gets you a lot lot more than £3 per week in africa. No-one here is walking 5 miles to get water.
This map shows average income adjusted for local purchasing power - blue is above $60,000, where we are. Red is below $2,500, where the third world is.
[img] 
[/img]
most people from third world countries would die for the standard of living that poverty here represents. This is why many of them risk life and limb to get here.
Our government is stable, if ineffective.
Arguable.
No, it's not. The UK hasn't experienced a revolution in over 100 years. The biggest domestic upheaval in the last 100 years was leaving a customs and social union - and while that was a totally stupid idea at great cost, there was no violence. There are no coups. There are peaceful transitions of power. Votes are free and implemented. The judiciary is independent and its decisions are implemented even when it doesn't suit the interests of elected officials. Government contracts aren't ripped up just because they were signed by the other party. The army doesn't intervene in politics. Assets aren't nationalised without compensation. And a hundred other things that don't look like an unstable state...
I’m absolutely a middle ground voter and no Labour zealot, but I’m firmly in the “we might as well give them a go, they couldn’t do any worse than this lot” camp
Can we give Jeff Bezos a go first! 🙂
Anyone who can get two books I ordered in bed last night at 11pm to my desk by 10.30am this morning is the sort of chap I want in charge of sorting shit out! 🤣🤣
Sorting shit out should be taken out of the hands of someone who was top in their debating forum at Uni.
Anyone who can get two books I ordered in bed last night at 11pm to my desk by 10.30am this morning is the sort of chap I want in charge of sorting shit out!
He does it by paying people crap money to work long shifts in rubbish conditions, and then paying as little tax as possible on the huge profits. I'm not sure he's really the example we should be looking to.
...well, we're currently doing it by paying inept people bucket loads of cash to screw it up. So there must be some middle ground somewhere.
Can we give Jeff Bezos a go first!
All Bezos does is transport goods from a warehouse to an address within easy driving distance after processing an electronic payment. If you're seriously comparing that to the massively complex task of building schools and hospitals, roads, railway lines, energy grids, water and waste infrastructure etc then you should probably have a think.
