Surfing Waves

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"In the eight years since London began sharply curtailing support for local governments, the borough of Knowsley, a bedroom community of Liverpool, has seen its budget cut roughly in half. Liverpool itself has suffered a nearly two-thirds cut in funding from the national government — its largest source of discretionary revenue. Communities in much of Britain have seen similar losses.

For a nation with a storied history of public largess, the protracted campaign of budget cutting, started in 2010 by a government led by the Conservative Party, has delivered a monumental shift in British life. A wave of austerity has yielded a country that has grown accustomed to living with less, even as many measures of social well-being — crime rates, opioid addiction, infant mortality, childhood poverty and homelessness — point to a deteriorating quality of life." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/28/worl ... rnalism-vi

It took a few decades, but now you're just like the U.S. Huzzah! Best wishes on saving your health care system.

I think it will take awhile to become like US. I've been to Liverpool couple of years ago and it didn't look that bad. Personal opinion, comparing London and New York is like apple and oranges. New York is like a third world country where the different between rich and poor is insane. Homeless and crazy people flood the streets. In additional, I think the British political parties are all trying to make the system work.

BaNZ wrote:I think it will take awhile to become like US. I've been to Liverpool couple of years ago and it didn't look that bad. Personal opinion, comparing London and New York is like apple and oranges. New York is like a third world country where the different between rich and poor is insane. Homeless and crazy people flood the streets. In additional, I think the British political parties are all trying to make the system work.

You may be right. I think there's a better chance that in 10 years their health care system will be privatized and the British government will be barred from negotiating drug prices. At any rate, the direction their in now seems to be going that way.