I think a key part of the 'poor' feeling in day to day experience comes from councils' inability to do maintenance, things like pot holes, children's play equipment, public toilet, general upkeep on public spaces and services like libraries. In the grand scheme of things this isn't too expensive but it's been cut to the bone due to way local government funding works. This is explored in the article:

> in large part because they’re mandated to write blank cheques for social care with no support or strategy from central government. Individual cases in Central Bedfordshire are now costing up to £750,000 per year, a quarter of the entire libraries and leisure budget and an amount that is rising rapidly with no apparent ceiling. As I wrote previously, “In a single year, residential care costs for children have increased by £2,000 per child… per week,” taking the average cost for a single case from ~£200,000 to ~£300,000 per child per year, again with little explanation as to where the money is going or how this is even possible.

> Similarly, “school transport costs have increased by over 100% - from £9m to £20m - in just 4 years” - that’s driven by an unexplained rise in the number of SEND pupils eligible for support and it amounts to roughly the same as - deep breath - the transport, roads, parking, libraries, leisure, housing benefit, public protection and safety budgets combined. Central Bedfordshire Council is not an outlier here - collectively, council overspends on SEND services are set to hit £2bn in the next year, risking further bankruptcies. Again this is not about pitting children against libraries, but asking if we seriously believe we’re addressing either of these things well?

Local councils have to pay the very large bills for social care and supporting SEND children but have basically little control over how it's spent or levers to help control the bills.

Fixing this so councils can once again spend relative minor amounts of money improving the public realm could go a long way to improving day to day experience. Definitely some other large structural problems (see the huge costs of HS2) but it would provide a noticeable improvement in people's lives and potentially isn't too hard for a government willing to make some bold changes around taxation, local government funding and providing proper national strategy and funding on social care.

The unfunded mandate system for councils is extremely stupid. Local democracy has long been bad in the UK, but mandating policy centrally and then letting that destroy any connection between local taxation and local budgeting is even worse.

> "In a single year, residential care costs for children have increased by £2,000 per child… per week"

and child is being looked after by barely qualified minimum wage worker (often actually paid below minimum wage if you add unpaid overtime and foreign workers not knowing the laws), meanwhile owners of care services live opulent lifestyles in places like Dubai. UK services market is not free, which is part of the problem.

For anyone else unaware:

SEND = "Special educational needs and disabilities"

To make matters worse, there's also litte evidence that the increases in spending on SEND provision have led to better outcomes.

I can't help feeling like this is a vicious cycle - the lack of community facilities is causing greater isolation, causing a rise in health needs and so on.

There's bad policy in other areas. Councils are going bankrupt due to court cases and equity laws that say any gender pay gap is the result of discrimination. Therefore they were found guilty because they are paying e.g. bin men or sewage workers more than mostly female jobs like nurses and librarians. They obviously have to do this because those jobs are dangerous and unpleasant so if you paid the same as other jobs nobody would want to do them. But the courts disagreed and now the councils have to pay huge sums out in equal pay lawsuits that they can't afford.

All this is a direct result of bad, ideological law making combined with a biased judiciary that interprets it in bad, ideological ways. Unfortunately it's the ideology Labour is in thrall too and they're in power for several years at minimum and maybe much longer if the right stays split, so the state of Britain's infrastructure will continue to sharply decline.

> general upkeep on public spaces and services like libraries

This is also a cultural issue. In large cities, people often don't feel as being part of the community and they don't take pride in their surroundings. They put rubbish everywhere, vandalise. There is little done to change that. They see neighbour has nice flowers in the garden? Instead of admiring, they will cut them off.

Somehow, this isn't called corruption.

For some reason Britain's migrant population is disproportionately reliant on government services. This is a common talking point in American politics, but doesn't seem a common one in English politics, but in England the data is pretty incontrivertible, whereas in America it's a bit harder to ascertain.

This is because America's alleged welfare queens are undocumented, whereas Britain's are there legally and the government actually has very good data on which groups are a net boon and which are a net draw on the economy.

I'm not a Brit and I could care less at the end of the day, but it does seem kind of bonkers to me to be importing people while your own country suffers.