The Future Britain

[Euro-commuter]

The few weeks / months / years has un-settled me for where i think Britain is going to be in the next few years / decades.

The amount of tax we pay on everything and the amount of crap that goes on is making me and Miss Cooperinliverp00l to really consider leaving it all behind and move to Australia / America.

Can house prices continue to raise, Tax continue to raise, introduction of road pricing, crap NHS and Transport,

Is the grass likely to be greener in another country ? What would you do

I think this is known as "white flight" ... and appears to be accelerating.
Unfortunately Canada & the US have similar problems.. only Aus appears to have braved the PC storm and maintained a sensible immigration policy, trouble is Aus is a desert

What do you mean, "similar problems"? The OP mentioned mainly money and fiscal problems, not immigration or race.

[OwlHoot]

The other day on the BBC website there was an article about NHS goals, full of the usual Birtspeak (management / social worker gobbledegook, for people who don't read Private Eye) and reading between the soothing lines and sanitised phrases I saw for the first time with ghastly clarity what the UK will be like in 50 years or less, if present trends continue, especially once robots start doing all the "useful" jobs.

Everyone will be assigned a social worker, or "life health monitor" or some such crap euphemistic title, and have regular visits to review their life, and of course round the clock monitoring by computers and other gadgets (possibly attached to or embedded in peoples' bodies) and far more powerful and all-embracing than anything around today.

There will be paltry patronising rewards for approved activity (such as informing on violations by others) and subtle penalties or deprivations for those who don't cooperate, even with the most trivial intrusive directions such as a detailed diet plan. (Forget smoking or drinking.) There will be less personal freedom than a medievil serf's, and without even the liberty to take to the road, or get pissed once in a while, or roll in the hay with whoever takes your fancy.

That's no exaggeration either - State-run health systems, as exemplified by the NHS, are the nearest modern equivalent of the medievil church, which ran everyone's life and oven ordered kings and aristocrats around. Look how governments jump like startled rabbits each time a posse of doctors (our revered modern priests of the body cult) issues some ridiculous report. State health systems are the perfect stalking horse for a gradual totalitarian takeover, a stealthy descent of a fluffy blanket to smother freedom in its comforting folds.

Reading over the above, I realise it only describes a corny picture familiar from a hundred SF films, like Logan's Run. But I still think most people are blissfully unware of the murky potential of the NHS and other government run social programs when money is no object and few have anything better to do than meddle in the affairs of others.

As historian Lord Macaulay expressed it about something else (quoting from memory) "Today's bright morning star may become by nightfall an ominous, glittering portent of revelation" ...

[pisces]

I think this is known as "white flight" ... and appears to be accelerating.
Unfortunately Canada & the US have similar problems.. only Aus appears to have braved the PC storm and maintained a sensible immigration policy, trouble is Aus is a desert

It's also full of Australians.

[crimdon]

I watched a film called "V" for vengeance where the houses of Parliament were blown up on Sky movies last night. There are a lot of "trash" moves that seem to become more realistic about the type of society we will be living in in the future (if you leave out the antics of Stallone & Wesley Snipes etc). Demolition man is one, Logans run another.

Any more?

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