I spent nearly twenty years working for an IT services company contracted to local government. The council officials we had to deal with seemed to do their best to avoid making individual decisions, as that would come with some accountability. Better to have a committee, so that the responsibility is diffused. Really knotty and expensive problems are best dealt with by delays and subcommittee. Finally, events take over, something breaks and they are forced to declare "Circumstances now dictate that we must ......". Actual decision-making skillfully avoided, accountability nil, cost double to treble what it would have been if they'd got the finger out at the start, and service to citizens creaky and slow. There are heaps of people like that in local government, all hanging on to collect their tasty index linked final salary pensions. A friend was bemoaning the state of infrastructure and services here in Edinburgh, and the 'lack of money'. He was horrified when I suggested that they could probably ditch 25% of their staff and spend the money elsewhere, and that things would be better.
The companies I worked for suffered from similar bureaucratic drag, but there was better accountability, and we did fire the duds. In the end though the bureaucracy got too much for me and I retired.
Process vs outcome. It seems to me that a lot of what ails our government at all levels is an obsession with bureaucratic process. The outcome seems not to matter, as long as the process is followed. Process followed ? Good, I cant be fired! The problem is that taxpayers want useful outcomes.
I too worked for an outsourcing company who did lots of local government work. What an horrific waste of money there was and the level of competence in the local government staff was so low I wondered how anything ever got done (which it mostly didn’t). It would seem that our public service employs the unemployable in many cases from our experience. We were unable to replace them due to TUPE rules so ended up putting more competent private sector staff in to do their work so they did even less, but at least we met our KPIs
I've been wondering for a while at what point bridges and buildings are going to start collapsing. Not long now. "Nothing works any more" is what we're saying every day about one thing or another.
I find it hard, from where we stand now, to imagine a circumstance in which all the problems identified in this post are solved and local government has the money to e.g. demolish the flyover and build a new road through the middle of Gateshead. Maybe I am too pessimistic.
I was born in 1962. I cannot think of a single thing any government has done since then to make life better. Appalling architecture (Brutalist tower blocks the poor were forced into until replaced by poorer immigrants), appalling education (1960s progressive ideas whereby children weren't taught but were expected to magically absorb), an NHS that appears to have started to crumble in about 1950, closure of asylums and institutions and the introduction of "care in the community" but without the care bit, joining the EEC, seeing it turn into the EU, leaving the EU but not really, red tape in almost every walk of life from schools to farms to taxes, ridiculous micro-managing of food production whilst allowing cheaper imports, unasked for and uncontrolled importing of migrants for jobs that didn't exist, the said migrants being from all corners of the world and not wanting or be required to even try and fit in, the blaming of the native population for being proud of their country and history and not wanting mass immigration to wipe them out, the crazy Net Zero Climate crap that is unscientific, illogical, unasked for and dangerous. And that's not to mention imaginary Covid Pandemics, Pride in Gayness, Transgenderism, Black Lives Being More Important and all those other things with capital letters.
I think collapses happen slowly, then very, very quickly, don't they? I agree, we are at the slow stage now - the crumbling around the edges. The Tyne bridges are a huge example of government failure, but we all have dozens of examples local to each of us I'm sure. In Marlow we've had a footbridge over the Thames, part of the Thames Path, closed since 2020 - structurally unsound - nothing done to remedy it, and the potholes in the fast lane of the M40 nearby have to be heartstoppingly experienced to be believed. The worst, visually, are the mountains of rubbish along the sides of the dual carriageways and motorways and side roads through woodlands in the Chilterns AONB - full of fly tipped rubbish. The riverside park is full of it too.
It's on every scale. Our local park had lots of conveniently placed rubbish bins dotted about. Thease have been removed an replaced by one bigger bin at each of the three entrances. The result - you either carry your waste through the park with you or you abandon it wherever you can, which sadly more and more people seem to do. The knock on - no doubt even more clearup costs than emptying the original bins.
Like the A1, the A303, the main trunk road from the Home Counties to the South West is one lane then two lane and repeat. Hell in the summer or with roadworks (often scheduled for Bank Holiday weekends).
Public transport is largely conceptual, and as for transport improvements, ha ha.
They have however cancelled the planned reopening of the Portishead to Bristol railway line (running along the Avon Gorge under Brunel's glorious bridge), which would have significantly reduced traffic on a very busy route into Bristol.
There is only one consolation in this. Labour have signed their own death warrant.
Yes. There hasn't been a vacancy for an NHS dentist in Somerset for over two years I believe. Happily, having had my teeth fixed wonderfully in Budapest in 2022 (indeed, were I 21 and not 73 with Grandkids, I'd be there now), I have no need. Others do
Excellent analysis; as Brits have accepted this ‘state knows best’ patronising treatment for generations, I fear it is literally hard-wired in our DNA. Watching the US since the election is stirring courage and determination in many. May that tipping point spark a fundamental overhaul of our whole rotten system.
A word from our Lord and Master (By the way, this makes me SPIT - Starmer always refers to "My government". It is not. It is the Monarch's government. That he either does not know that or does not care is appalling.
Anyway, I digress. He's clear. He will love and take care of us, so no worries...
Just what can we do about it? We have just had an election and everything seems to be getting worse. Democracy is the problem because elections do not resolve anything. All we hear is left and right of politics, with perhaps some thinking a centre position is the best. What we have is a political system that is based on division of the voters and as a consequence control of us by the political parties. The politicians are useless and as far as I can see are in the pay of the bankers and commerce. They have an objective as a policy, say grow the economy, but they haven't the slightest idea how they will achieve it. The have no idea about the risks involved in anything they propose. Hence the nonsense of HS2 which somebody mentioned, add to this the belief that we can change the climate, that we had a dangerous virus and had to close down the economy. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum and the education system is turning out imbeciles who understand nothing and are confused about their gender. We have passed the point at which things get dangerous.
Alexander Tytler got it right with his circle of freedom. We have gone through the stage of Apathy and are now well into the final stage of Dependence on the state. Most people cannot survive without state support. It is the point of no return and Bondage is the next stage.
I expect that the elite (Government, Civil Service, the clerisy and local councillors) are reaching the end of their particular cycle. All the elite jobs are filled, mostly by patronage, and many of those jobs are more about career progression rather than public service.
What's to be done? Regrettably there is no Trump or Milei to rescue us, so we are reduced to encouraging a new elite (whatever that will be) to reset the public service.
What we can do to hurry the reset is to campaign to undo the patronage jobs. As an example support the calls to defund the BBC (and object to switching the licence fee to general taxation) - and not pay the licence fee if you do not use live broadcasting. Campaign for the 'bonfire of the QUANGOs' (good luck expecting a Labour government to do this), wind up the Arts Councils, heavily revise foreign aid. Do not contribute to any charity that appears to support well paid jobs rather than the original purpose.
One big thing I would be prepared to contribute to is transparency of government spending. The numbers are mostly available but opaque by design. Imagine (say) an offshoot of the Free Speech Union or some other non-political think tank that maintained a database of detailed government and council spending. It would be a much easier job to compare spending on 'prestige' items with the lack of spending on local projects. It would expose the imbalance between new projects and long term maintenance.
Transparency is the one thing the current exhausted elite fear.
There does seem to be a weird soviet, pre collapse, feel to the country. Like we are all just waiting for the hammer to fall? It's a huge tell for clapped out regimes that they retreat into producing endless new rules, regulations and laws without
1) Checking that people are broadly in agreement with the direction of travel (they aren't)
2) Providing adequate resources and funding to check rules are being adhered to (see shit in our waterways as an example)
I would give good odds the 'very bad thing' will involve significant loss of purchasing power of the pound, followed by an inability to keep the lights on, followed by a frantic effort to bounce the UK into a shooting war. What about you?
I think you're right about the first two. I don't see us being bounced into a shooting war - aside from anything else, the resources aren't there to do it. More likely is another IMF bailout a la 1976 with brutal terms.
David, have you seen the Twitter account Yookay Aesthetics? It documents the decline in photos and videos. One thing I noticed over and over that reminds me of the Soviet era is the ever-increasing amount of signage. Whether it's Idealogical signs and posters on the Tube or else values / behaviours signs 'please do not ___ ' , there's something so telling . That the Regime seriously believes it can magically transform people's behaviour (no leering) with a well-positioned poster. This level of madness does convince me we are nearing the end of the Regime.
The city in France where I fled to from the UK has in the past 10 years built two new tramways quite a bit of cycling infrastructure, ´greening´ of the city such as turning car parks back into public squares. This city shares much in common with Newcastle / Gateshead - post industrial decline, serious levels of gun / drugs gang violence. Somehow the authorities manage to get things done. The city is a liveable place where you could quite feasibly plan to be somewhere at a particular time using public transport. I think there´s a terminal rot in the UK which began in the seventies and has only accelerated thanks to close on 50 years of now discredited neo liberal economic policies. The rot is also due in no small part to an utterly dysfunctional pernicious class system that manifests in the contempt that the writer describes. Broadly if you´re a liberal you have contempt for those less educated and if you´re conservative your contempt is for those with less money. The fear of and sheer hatred of the lower orders from the likes of Johnson, Farage, 2 Tier, Reeves Khan et al is visceral and plain to see.
Plenty of money for HS2, third runway at Heathrow neither of which are wanted by most people. And both are devastating to the environment at a time when they never stop lecturing us about ´climate change´. Oh and lets not forget the billions spent housing Albanian and other criminals in nive hotels who´ve invaded our country illegally.
I'm expecting a societal breakdown within the next 3-5 years
The year that keeps being repeated over many news outlets, white papers, podcasts, predictions is 2030. It's everywhere.
It's no coincidence that we're at the end of a long term debt cycle and a fourth turning. Governments worldwide have left society completely indebted and face colossal debts that are simply unpayable - mainly in the form of pension liabilities
Councils are bankrupt, infrastructure is crumbling and we have 'government' using the same playbook as has been used before; tyranny, corruption, destruction of societal values, deference to behemoth corporations and war. All these link to end of empire behaviour
In short, they need a war to default on these debts and blame the bad guy for causing it (he lives in Russia). Democracy is an illusion and the current rule is based upon a constant state of continuous 'emergencies'. Mostly these are simultaneously existential and invisible (viruses, climate, inflation and 'bad guys'
It's all so predictable when you join the dots
If you can, protect your wealth with hard assets, turn off the TV and radio, cancel the licence fee and ignore everything they say. It's a web of lies
It will get better but only after it gets a whole lot worse first
I am very grateful that I live in Japan where repairs to infrastructure (and checks to make sure they are safe) are routine. It's a good thing because there's a lot of it, bridges, tunnels and more. Small bridges are everywhere and I have 5 major (~1/4 mile long but one lane in each direction) bridges with multiple piers in to the water in a couple of miles radius of where I live. The nearest tunnels are a bit further away but one of the closer ones - maybe 5 miles away as the crow flies - is 1.5 miles long.
When one of the local bridges was discovered to be on the shaky side back in 2018 or so, the decision was made to entirely replace it. That's probably for reasons of a bunch of pork barrel spending, but maybe not. Anyway, before they knocked it down and started to build a new one they built a fairly solid temporary bridge next to it (google maps has a view from the temporary one to where the new one is under construction - https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZXcLHwHNmwPzW2VA7 ) and redirected the road over it. No impact to traffic for the next few years as they leisurely knocked the old bridge down and built a new one that is due to open late this year IIRC.
When a local fishing community/sightseeing point was cut off by a landslide last summer, it took them days to make a footpath around it and less than two months to build the first temporary road to reconnect. That sounds bad (and it was tough for the residents who a) lost their summer tourists and b) had to use a boat to go shopping ) but the place where the road fell into the sea is fairly cliffy and there literally wasn't an easy flat way to get through. They built the first temporary road in under two months, then built a rather better temporary one in another 2 or 3. Meanwhile they are doing the mass drilling of pilings etc. to create the permanent fix.
There's a lot to grumble about in Japan (and let's not get started about the sinkhole in Saitama) but on the whole things work and when they don't they get fixed in a timely manner with suitable diversions as required.
Sometimes it seems as though the Japanese state won't be satisfied until the entire country is literally covered in concrete. There are a lot of boondoggles. In my wife's hometown they built a huge bridge definitely much longer and in its own way more impressive than the Tyne Bridge but that was totally unnecessary and actually ruined a beautiful, picturesque spot. With that said, there's no doubt which country has the better of the comparison!
Japanese concrete is not the same as the 1968 Soviet Union version. Not even the same as 1990 Soviet Union (which is roughly when I visited). The critical difference is that Japanese concrete actually works and doesn't spall or collapse in a decade.
Its because of that whole shame thing and losing face in public. We don´t have the same culture, we´re too individualistic. No sense of honour which comes from fulfilling duty towards others.
Yes, which means it is inconceivable that a party would use immigration to swing the electorate in their favour. Hence they have the system they have and we have our current chaos.
I cannot tell you how true this is. There is a definite feeling in the air that something is going to happen and it won’t be nice. I think it’s going to start with the farmers and escalate. I have lived in the UK for nearly 70 years and feel it in my bones. It’s not the same country. British people (from whatever background or race) have had enough. Even friends who have emigrated here legally are sick of being ignored by successive government and paying the price. The elite never do, it’s just normal Brits who work hard and pay their taxes who are being spat on from high by a group of privileged individuals who believe they are ‘special’ and above the law. Look at this current government. A bunch of bigger liars and frauds I have never seen. No shame in them for taking bribes or lying on their documentation. It’s coming.
And let's not forget that coincident with the Tyne Bridge works, our wise leaders also decided to close one of the tyne tunnels every weekend for months on end. My weekend trips from the coast to Low Fell to visit my elderly parents have become utterly hellish.
Just wait for the electricity blackouts. That will be the spark that lights the tinder.
I spent nearly twenty years working for an IT services company contracted to local government. The council officials we had to deal with seemed to do their best to avoid making individual decisions, as that would come with some accountability. Better to have a committee, so that the responsibility is diffused. Really knotty and expensive problems are best dealt with by delays and subcommittee. Finally, events take over, something breaks and they are forced to declare "Circumstances now dictate that we must ......". Actual decision-making skillfully avoided, accountability nil, cost double to treble what it would have been if they'd got the finger out at the start, and service to citizens creaky and slow. There are heaps of people like that in local government, all hanging on to collect their tasty index linked final salary pensions. A friend was bemoaning the state of infrastructure and services here in Edinburgh, and the 'lack of money'. He was horrified when I suggested that they could probably ditch 25% of their staff and spend the money elsewhere, and that things would be better.
The companies I worked for suffered from similar bureaucratic drag, but there was better accountability, and we did fire the duds. In the end though the bureaucracy got too much for me and I retired.
Process vs outcome. It seems to me that a lot of what ails our government at all levels is an obsession with bureaucratic process. The outcome seems not to matter, as long as the process is followed. Process followed ? Good, I cant be fired! The problem is that taxpayers want useful outcomes.
I too worked for an outsourcing company who did lots of local government work. What an horrific waste of money there was and the level of competence in the local government staff was so low I wondered how anything ever got done (which it mostly didn’t). It would seem that our public service employs the unemployable in many cases from our experience. We were unable to replace them due to TUPE rules so ended up putting more competent private sector staff in to do their work so they did even less, but at least we met our KPIs
Great comment!
I've been wondering for a while at what point bridges and buildings are going to start collapsing. Not long now. "Nothing works any more" is what we're saying every day about one thing or another.
I find it hard, from where we stand now, to imagine a circumstance in which all the problems identified in this post are solved and local government has the money to e.g. demolish the flyover and build a new road through the middle of Gateshead. Maybe I am too pessimistic.
I was born in 1962. I cannot think of a single thing any government has done since then to make life better. Appalling architecture (Brutalist tower blocks the poor were forced into until replaced by poorer immigrants), appalling education (1960s progressive ideas whereby children weren't taught but were expected to magically absorb), an NHS that appears to have started to crumble in about 1950, closure of asylums and institutions and the introduction of "care in the community" but without the care bit, joining the EEC, seeing it turn into the EU, leaving the EU but not really, red tape in almost every walk of life from schools to farms to taxes, ridiculous micro-managing of food production whilst allowing cheaper imports, unasked for and uncontrolled importing of migrants for jobs that didn't exist, the said migrants being from all corners of the world and not wanting or be required to even try and fit in, the blaming of the native population for being proud of their country and history and not wanting mass immigration to wipe them out, the crazy Net Zero Climate crap that is unscientific, illogical, unasked for and dangerous. And that's not to mention imaginary Covid Pandemics, Pride in Gayness, Transgenderism, Black Lives Being More Important and all those other things with capital letters.
What have I missed out?
I think collapses happen slowly, then very, very quickly, don't they? I agree, we are at the slow stage now - the crumbling around the edges. The Tyne bridges are a huge example of government failure, but we all have dozens of examples local to each of us I'm sure. In Marlow we've had a footbridge over the Thames, part of the Thames Path, closed since 2020 - structurally unsound - nothing done to remedy it, and the potholes in the fast lane of the M40 nearby have to be heartstoppingly experienced to be believed. The worst, visually, are the mountains of rubbish along the sides of the dual carriageways and motorways and side roads through woodlands in the Chilterns AONB - full of fly tipped rubbish. The riverside park is full of it too.
It's on every scale. Our local park had lots of conveniently placed rubbish bins dotted about. Thease have been removed an replaced by one bigger bin at each of the three entrances. The result - you either carry your waste through the park with you or you abandon it wherever you can, which sadly more and more people seem to do. The knock on - no doubt even more clearup costs than emptying the original bins.
Like the A1, the A303, the main trunk road from the Home Counties to the South West is one lane then two lane and repeat. Hell in the summer or with roadworks (often scheduled for Bank Holiday weekends).
Public transport is largely conceptual, and as for transport improvements, ha ha.
They have however cancelled the planned reopening of the Portishead to Bristol railway line (running along the Avon Gorge under Brunel's glorious bridge), which would have significantly reduced traffic on a very busy route into Bristol.
There is only one consolation in this. Labour have signed their own death warrant.
Public transport is largely conceptual...! Good way of putting it.
Bit like NHS dentists....or GP appointments..... or police solving crimes 🤣
Yes. There hasn't been a vacancy for an NHS dentist in Somerset for over two years I believe. Happily, having had my teeth fixed wonderfully in Budapest in 2022 (indeed, were I 21 and not 73 with Grandkids, I'd be there now), I have no need. Others do
Yes, Budapest is lovely.
Excellent analysis; as Brits have accepted this ‘state knows best’ patronising treatment for generations, I fear it is literally hard-wired in our DNA. Watching the US since the election is stirring courage and determination in many. May that tipping point spark a fundamental overhaul of our whole rotten system.
Eventually it will happen, I think - the question is just how bad it needs to get before there's a course correction.
Would that this was the first manifestation...
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/farmer-protest-tractor-starmer-watch-b2697571.html
A word from our Lord and Master (By the way, this makes me SPIT - Starmer always refers to "My government". It is not. It is the Monarch's government. That he either does not know that or does not care is appalling.
Anyway, I digress. He's clear. He will love and take care of us, so no worries...
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/09/24/state-will-take-back-control-of-peoples-lives-says-starmer/
I wrote to him (yeah, I know, but I love windup letters to such as him) to note that actually the state is there to serve US, not vice versa...
Oddly, no reply
Just what can we do about it? We have just had an election and everything seems to be getting worse. Democracy is the problem because elections do not resolve anything. All we hear is left and right of politics, with perhaps some thinking a centre position is the best. What we have is a political system that is based on division of the voters and as a consequence control of us by the political parties. The politicians are useless and as far as I can see are in the pay of the bankers and commerce. They have an objective as a policy, say grow the economy, but they haven't the slightest idea how they will achieve it. The have no idea about the risks involved in anything they propose. Hence the nonsense of HS2 which somebody mentioned, add to this the belief that we can change the climate, that we had a dangerous virus and had to close down the economy. The lunatics are in charge of the asylum and the education system is turning out imbeciles who understand nothing and are confused about their gender. We have passed the point at which things get dangerous.
Alexander Tytler got it right with his circle of freedom. We have gone through the stage of Apathy and are now well into the final stage of Dependence on the state. Most people cannot survive without state support. It is the point of no return and Bondage is the next stage.
I expect that the elite (Government, Civil Service, the clerisy and local councillors) are reaching the end of their particular cycle. All the elite jobs are filled, mostly by patronage, and many of those jobs are more about career progression rather than public service.
What's to be done? Regrettably there is no Trump or Milei to rescue us, so we are reduced to encouraging a new elite (whatever that will be) to reset the public service.
What we can do to hurry the reset is to campaign to undo the patronage jobs. As an example support the calls to defund the BBC (and object to switching the licence fee to general taxation) - and not pay the licence fee if you do not use live broadcasting. Campaign for the 'bonfire of the QUANGOs' (good luck expecting a Labour government to do this), wind up the Arts Councils, heavily revise foreign aid. Do not contribute to any charity that appears to support well paid jobs rather than the original purpose.
One big thing I would be prepared to contribute to is transparency of government spending. The numbers are mostly available but opaque by design. Imagine (say) an offshoot of the Free Speech Union or some other non-political think tank that maintained a database of detailed government and council spending. It would be a much easier job to compare spending on 'prestige' items with the lack of spending on local projects. It would expose the imbalance between new projects and long term maintenance.
Transparency is the one thing the current exhausted elite fear.
You may be interested in this initiative: https://data.spectator.co.uk/spaff-research
Nicked outrageously from the Dogess, the wonderful Charlotte Gill. Openly. Gove, unscrupulous pustule.
There does seem to be a weird soviet, pre collapse, feel to the country. Like we are all just waiting for the hammer to fall? It's a huge tell for clapped out regimes that they retreat into producing endless new rules, regulations and laws without
1) Checking that people are broadly in agreement with the direction of travel (they aren't)
2) Providing adequate resources and funding to check rules are being adhered to (see shit in our waterways as an example)
I would give good odds the 'very bad thing' will involve significant loss of purchasing power of the pound, followed by an inability to keep the lights on, followed by a frantic effort to bounce the UK into a shooting war. What about you?
I think you're right about the first two. I don't see us being bounced into a shooting war - aside from anything else, the resources aren't there to do it. More likely is another IMF bailout a la 1976 with brutal terms.
David, have you seen the Twitter account Yookay Aesthetics? It documents the decline in photos and videos. One thing I noticed over and over that reminds me of the Soviet era is the ever-increasing amount of signage. Whether it's Idealogical signs and posters on the Tube or else values / behaviours signs 'please do not ___ ' , there's something so telling . That the Regime seriously believes it can magically transform people's behaviour (no leering) with a well-positioned poster. This level of madness does convince me we are nearing the end of the Regime.
Great examples and we all know of similar stories.
The Tytler cycle goes like this:
1. bondage
2. spiritual faith
3. courage
4. liberty
5. abundance
6. complacency
7. apathy
8. dependence
9. bondage. rinse and repeat
I guess we're somewhere around late 7 or 8. Not good.
Perhaps the changes across the pond will galvanise us into action but somehow I doubt whether we'll avoid 9.
We're not ready for the radical changes of 2 and 3 yet. Maybe after a century of slavery (like e.g. the Soviet Union) but not yet.
I have just made the same point before seeing your comment. I believe it was the end of the 18th century when he pointed this out.
This reminds me of the Buddha’s description of Dependent Arising.
The city in France where I fled to from the UK has in the past 10 years built two new tramways quite a bit of cycling infrastructure, ´greening´ of the city such as turning car parks back into public squares. This city shares much in common with Newcastle / Gateshead - post industrial decline, serious levels of gun / drugs gang violence. Somehow the authorities manage to get things done. The city is a liveable place where you could quite feasibly plan to be somewhere at a particular time using public transport. I think there´s a terminal rot in the UK which began in the seventies and has only accelerated thanks to close on 50 years of now discredited neo liberal economic policies. The rot is also due in no small part to an utterly dysfunctional pernicious class system that manifests in the contempt that the writer describes. Broadly if you´re a liberal you have contempt for those less educated and if you´re conservative your contempt is for those with less money. The fear of and sheer hatred of the lower orders from the likes of Johnson, Farage, 2 Tier, Reeves Khan et al is visceral and plain to see.
Plenty of money for HS2, third runway at Heathrow neither of which are wanted by most people. And both are devastating to the environment at a time when they never stop lecturing us about ´climate change´. Oh and lets not forget the billions spent housing Albanian and other criminals in nive hotels who´ve invaded our country illegally.
Good article, many thanks
I'm expecting a societal breakdown within the next 3-5 years
The year that keeps being repeated over many news outlets, white papers, podcasts, predictions is 2030. It's everywhere.
It's no coincidence that we're at the end of a long term debt cycle and a fourth turning. Governments worldwide have left society completely indebted and face colossal debts that are simply unpayable - mainly in the form of pension liabilities
Councils are bankrupt, infrastructure is crumbling and we have 'government' using the same playbook as has been used before; tyranny, corruption, destruction of societal values, deference to behemoth corporations and war. All these link to end of empire behaviour
In short, they need a war to default on these debts and blame the bad guy for causing it (he lives in Russia). Democracy is an illusion and the current rule is based upon a constant state of continuous 'emergencies'. Mostly these are simultaneously existential and invisible (viruses, climate, inflation and 'bad guys'
It's all so predictable when you join the dots
If you can, protect your wealth with hard assets, turn off the TV and radio, cancel the licence fee and ignore everything they say. It's a web of lies
It will get better but only after it gets a whole lot worse first
I am very grateful that I live in Japan where repairs to infrastructure (and checks to make sure they are safe) are routine. It's a good thing because there's a lot of it, bridges, tunnels and more. Small bridges are everywhere and I have 5 major (~1/4 mile long but one lane in each direction) bridges with multiple piers in to the water in a couple of miles radius of where I live. The nearest tunnels are a bit further away but one of the closer ones - maybe 5 miles away as the crow flies - is 1.5 miles long.
When one of the local bridges was discovered to be on the shaky side back in 2018 or so, the decision was made to entirely replace it. That's probably for reasons of a bunch of pork barrel spending, but maybe not. Anyway, before they knocked it down and started to build a new one they built a fairly solid temporary bridge next to it (google maps has a view from the temporary one to where the new one is under construction - https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZXcLHwHNmwPzW2VA7 ) and redirected the road over it. No impact to traffic for the next few years as they leisurely knocked the old bridge down and built a new one that is due to open late this year IIRC.
When a local fishing community/sightseeing point was cut off by a landslide last summer, it took them days to make a footpath around it and less than two months to build the first temporary road to reconnect. That sounds bad (and it was tough for the residents who a) lost their summer tourists and b) had to use a boat to go shopping ) but the place where the road fell into the sea is fairly cliffy and there literally wasn't an easy flat way to get through. They built the first temporary road in under two months, then built a rather better temporary one in another 2 or 3. Meanwhile they are doing the mass drilling of pilings etc. to create the permanent fix.
There's a lot to grumble about in Japan (and let's not get started about the sinkhole in Saitama) but on the whole things work and when they don't they get fixed in a timely manner with suitable diversions as required.
Sometimes it seems as though the Japanese state won't be satisfied until the entire country is literally covered in concrete. There are a lot of boondoggles. In my wife's hometown they built a huge bridge definitely much longer and in its own way more impressive than the Tyne Bridge but that was totally unnecessary and actually ruined a beautiful, picturesque spot. With that said, there's no doubt which country has the better of the comparison!
Yes. The ministry of concrete is a thing
I spent 6 weeks in the Soviet Union, 1968. School trip (14 of us and tents, etc. in a Bedford Dormobile and a convertible Moggy. Leningrad to Odessa.
My lasting impression of Moscow? Concrete and dust
Japanese concrete is not the same as the 1968 Soviet Union version. Not even the same as 1990 Soviet Union (which is roughly when I visited). The critical difference is that Japanese concrete actually works and doesn't spall or collapse in a decade.
Indeed. EVERYTHING in the 1968 Soviet Union was rubbish
Its because of that whole shame thing and losing face in public. We don´t have the same culture, we´re too individualistic. No sense of honour which comes from fulfilling duty towards others.
There's an element of that but in some ways it's simpler - the people who govern Japan love their country and its culture.
Yes, which means it is inconceivable that a party would use immigration to swing the electorate in their favour. Hence they have the system they have and we have our current chaos.
I cannot tell you how true this is. There is a definite feeling in the air that something is going to happen and it won’t be nice. I think it’s going to start with the farmers and escalate. I have lived in the UK for nearly 70 years and feel it in my bones. It’s not the same country. British people (from whatever background or race) have had enough. Even friends who have emigrated here legally are sick of being ignored by successive government and paying the price. The elite never do, it’s just normal Brits who work hard and pay their taxes who are being spat on from high by a group of privileged individuals who believe they are ‘special’ and above the law. Look at this current government. A bunch of bigger liars and frauds I have never seen. No shame in them for taking bribes or lying on their documentation. It’s coming.
And let's not forget that coincident with the Tyne Bridge works, our wise leaders also decided to close one of the tyne tunnels every weekend for months on end. My weekend trips from the coast to Low Fell to visit my elderly parents have become utterly hellish.