The UK is clearly in decline. Many ordinary people are being charged ruinous sums of money for in-person patrols by fire wardens due to risks from flammable cladding, installed by penny-pinching construction contractors. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55219607

Everything about the Grenfell fire paints a picture of decline. The fire service told people to stay in their flats to be cooked alive or choked because they were following policy (a rather stupid policy, it turned out).

This is a nice insight into what the breakdown of a society looks like; corruption, incompetence, ordinary hardworking people like teachers paying the financial costs from their own pockets.

Of course you could argue that this is not representative of the overall picture. But many things from this are just very familiar to me: large orgs taking all the money, little people paying.

But still, it's the year 2020. Why are people being charged £500,000 for a 24-hour walking watch?

Electronics and sensors are cheap.

The system is somehow supremely incompetent.

Is this the country that 120 years ago had a globe spanning empire?

And China got rid of covid-19 6 months ago, but we're in yet another lockdown....

We have become incompetent.

"the country has collectively given up and is burning through our large pension built up from the days of empire. The UK doesn't get anything done anymore"

https://twitter.com/AlwaysTooHot1/status/1339844783624302597

What was the last impressive thing that Britain did?

Deepmind is one candidate, though that's a product of a very small intelligent elite who could easily move anywhere, not really something that the country as a whole participated in.

Brexit? It's pretty pathetic; Britain should have exited in 2017.