You ain’t wrong there. Al Murray has an excellent pod-cast about the history of WW2, with lots of guests to provide insights. One episode had a historic economist on. He explained that the US took advantage of the consequences & outcome of the war to finally bury sterling as the world trading currency and replace sterling with the dollar. They also abruptly ceased the lend-lease programme and then pushed the UK into massive debt. At they same time, recognising the threat from the soviet union, the US pumped billions into Europe to stop communism taking hold there. The UK got none of that. And the Bretton-Woods banking agreement firmly placed the dollar and US banks as the only way money could move about (that got changed later). So the UK helped defend against Nazi Germany and helped win the war - but got absolutely hammered as a consequence.
Although by late 1990’s / early 2000’s that had changed and prosperity was increasing again.
This seems abundantly clear. The tories decided that austerity was the only solution after the financial crisis. It was not the only solution - the financial crisis was simply an excuse for the tories to dramatically cut spending, especially local government spending, and deploy a programme of reducing public spending and shrinking the state sector. This was an ideological programme. The tories have no problem growing national debt as we have seen over the last 10 years. So austerity was never about reducing national debt. It was about reducing numbers of people employed in the public sector and holding down the wages of people who remained in the public sector.
Thanks for that Strathmore, I didn’t realise that it was worse than I thought.
We don’t just need yuppies now, we need “New Yuppies” 
I have no idea where the notion of ‘special relationship’ with the US came from. It looked a lot more like ‘kick out of the way’ and ‘take advantage’ over the last century.
But aside from that the Al Murray podcasts are often very good, with some fascinating guests and Murray himself is surprisingly knowledgeable.
In the interests of balance surely we want to see what the EU media is saying about the UK?
I’m confident that no translation is really needed as they are only stating the blindingly obvious.
[Very off-topic:] what a beautiful language the French is!
Oh gawd looks like France will go through what the UK went through when Liz Truss was PM:
The collapse of confidence in Macron’s France will be brutal and sudden
“I see no Ships”
While the UK growth this year is set to be the lowest in Europe, the EU bloc as a whole has done the near impossible. It is moving into growth whilst managing to flip from Russian supplied energy to other sources. This switch has been enormous - from around 50% of gas previously from Russia to less than 15%. This switch continues. And without the expected economic cost.
The UK, with its utterly incapable and frequently distracted government, managed to burden consumers with huge energy price hikes while letting the energy price hikes kill off so many small businesses and watch helpless as economic growth continues to be unattainable. World problems or mismanagement since 2010?
We ain’t doin that bad really, we just have to sort out the “Global Inflation” in which we are impotent. don’t matter what the B of E does with interest rates. 
Never liked Global really.
" Last month the chancellor duly issued a plea for 300,000 over-50s who had retired after lockdown to return to work to fill 1.19m vacancies" but there is no crisis.
This hapless and hopeless government dare not admit that immigration is needed in case it upsets its membership who hate them foreigners. Meanwhile economic recovery and the well being of our vulnerable all gets put on hold.
After years of Covid, and with inflation biting, many say chronic staff shortages and increasing demands are making their work impossible and threatening the French health system.
Some hospitals are reporting up to 90% of their staff on “sick leave protest” at the conditions.
And France’s second-largest health union has called an “unlimited walkout” this week, following a fortnight of strikes by French GPs.
Julia Venturini, eight years into her medical degree, joined a rally of GPs in Paris last week.
“I made this choice [to be a GP] but now I have a lot of questions about my future,” she tells me.
“We’re all in the same boat, and the boat is now like the Titanic. When the emergency services go down, the GPs go down, and the hospitals go down - the health system in France is really cracking.”
Julia says she and many of her classmates are considering whether to quit the profession entirely, or to try to work abroad.
“I’m worried as a future doctor, but I’m worried as a patient too,” she says.
I ask her whether she would rather be a patient in France or in the UK.
“Ten years ago, I’d have said France,” she replies. “But now in France, it’s so complicated, and if you have money in the UK, you can get care. So, I think I’d rather be rich in the UK, and have good care [there].”
The causes of France’s healthcare crisis are complex, but the long-term pressure of an aging population alongside a shortage of medical staff was brought starkly into focus by the Covid pandemic.
France has more doctors per head of population than the UK, and many more nurses.
But according to the World Health Organization, almost half of French doctors are above the age of 55 and approaching retirement. In the UK, that figure is around 15%.
Many younger medics are put off by the growing professional and financial pressures, which are also taking their toll on a workforce exhausted by Covid.
What is your obsession with France? Why do you think that sharing info about issues in another country in some way addresses problems in the UK? Please keep to the topic.
SHORTAGE OCCUPATIONS IN FRANCE – LIST
№ Occupation
1 Engineer (different directions)
2 Marketing Manager
3 Butcher
4 Machine operator
5 Carpenter
6 Programmer (different directions)
7 Worker in agriculture
8 Builder (different directions)
9 Social worker
10 Specialist in tourism
Note . The information is based on data from the French employment agency and international recruitment agencies.
Well you implied that the UK problems is because we’ve now not got freedom of movement, but I believe France does and they still have the same problems. So I’d say it couldn’t be that and also the UK’s immigration figures have gone up just not from European countries.
So if you want to help the UK I’d look elsewhere for your answers.
You always assume that all of the UK’s ails are brexit caused strath. Wendeey points out (and quite rightly so in my opinion) that whether you belong to the EU or not, these are global problems and not limited to the UK.