Once-Great Britain

If you think that you have it bad, take a gander at what is happening in Once-Great Britain. If we are to believe James Snell, the nation is falling apart. (via Maggie’s Farm)

Nothing seems to work, beginning with the National Health Service. You will recall, wistfully, that when Britain hosted the Olympic Games, in 2012, it presented us with a ridiculous song and dance routine touting the greatness of its National Health Service. 

The triumph of socialized medicine, one might have said. Unfortunately, Snell reports, the bloom is off that English rose:

There’s a macabre joke in Britain these days that my friends and family also play. We compete to see who has had to wait the longest for medical treatment. It starts relatively innocuously. 

People talk of the ordinary things: like having to wait days to get an appointment with a doctor. They call up in the morning at 8 a.m., only to be told that all of the slots are gone. Best of luck tomorrow.

Then someone will say that they’re waiting for minor surgery. Perhaps a small corrective procedure. It was put off first for the pandemic, and now is lost amid a sea of backlogged work. They wonder if someone has lost their details in the slush.

Apparently, government services are not longer serving anyone:

Across British society, the same things are happening. I have heard from innumerable people over the past few months that whenever they encounter the state, it is found hollow and wanting.

A report today from the Guardian suggests that Britain is so short of capacity in dentistry — 90 percent of dentists are accepting no new patients — that people are resorting to performing necessary procedures themselves.

It gets worse:

Britain’s police force is desiccated and weak already. Under 6 percent of crimes are “solved,” according to statistics published in April. But now its members are required to act as paramedics, with reports that overstretched ambulance services are dispatching police to deal with people in cardiac arrest because local health trusts don’t have the ambulances to spare.

As for the economy, things are not looking very rosy:

The economy is also in poor shape. Britain has not had serious real wage growth in fifteen years. Its economy is shortly predicted to enter prolonged inflationary recession.

Projections indicate that Norway and Poland will have larger economies than Britain within twenty years. As the value of Sterling has slid (it’s now approaching the dollar), the purchasing power of Britain’s wages have fallen. Compared to Americans — who consider themselves hard-pressed — British workers earn a pittance.

So, there you have it. In a declining nation nothing works:

The country feels poor, weak, and increasingly bitter. It is hard to be positive when nothing works. Popular bête-noirs have been identified: at the moment, they are energy companies. British energy bills have been capped by the government for the past four years, but that hasn’t stopped them tripling. The fact that energy companies are allowed to turn a profit — that’s the problem, say the public (and nothing to do with the price of the commodity in question skyrocketing in value worldwide).

Britain can’t build housing, either privately or through the state. So beholden is the political system to property owners, that pre-existing residents have near total veto power on new developments. Naturally this makes young families poorer and young professionals less productive.

People are trapped living far from their jobs and their friends, or paying eyewatering rents.

A great howl of despair is audible in Britain, even on bright sunny days. The country is falling apart.

As Snell points out, the two current candidates for the prime minister’s job have nothing consequential to say about it all.