Where have we gone wrong in the UK?

[gazza57]

I ask this question simply because I recently spent four days in Berlin and the difference in many things was blatantly stark.
Take for example parking, everywhere in Berlin was €1,50 per hour, and despite popular belief the traffic wardens were courteous and applied some discretion in the enforcement of the regulations, you could park anywhere and could validate the ticket at any machine, buy four hours use two one place use two the next day somewhere completely different.
Buying longer tickets was cheaper, all the machines gave change as well as accepting credit cards.
A €15 underground ticket gave you four days unlimited travel and reductions on lots of attractions within the city.
The underground the U bahn was immaculate, clean, fast, cheap and completely free of litter both on the tracks and on the platforms, this could also be said of Berlin's streets clean and litter free.
Contrast that then with returning here to good 'ol blighty, paid £5.00 for four hours parking (recently up 19% despite the downturn) at home in Southampton, tickets are not transferable are zoned thus preventing use anywhere else, the machines do not give change and the credit card payment was not operational at the time due to server problems.
Had to go to a local shop to beg some change wading through litter strewn streets packed full of empty beer cans, discarded take away boxes, bottles, condoms, two or three piles of vomit and human excrement laying in the street it was absolutely disgusting.
It's not until you visit somewhere else that is so markedly cleaner that one realises just how filthy some of our streets have become.
I'm sure they'll be somebody who'll say if I like it there so much perhaps I should go and live there, but I like the UK and would like it's streets to be as clean as Berlin's.
Gazza57

[martin1810]

When you see teenagers sitting in a car in macdonalds car park throwing their litter out the windows when there is a bin provided you have to wonder what is happening to this country.

[B6Andy101]

You cant even get British apples in Tesco. Do I want apples from Chile, South Africa, New Zealand or the USofA. I think not.

[Crasher]

I would not even know where to begin to say what is wrong, I just wish we could wind the clock back 10 years and start again… I fear though that it is too late, the influx of immigrants can’t be reversed, people of low morals and standards cannot be re-educated and so what do you do that is legal? There is only one solution, emigrate!

[martin1810]

Over the last few years I have had alot of money stolen off me by non paying customers who just do a runner. It seems to me that too many people want everything in life but don't want to work/pay for it. Strangely the hardest working and most honest people I seem to meet these days are from eastern europe.

[Crasher]

I get a lot of eastern Europeans in for work on their cars. Overall the only difficulty I have with them is the language barrier but they try very hard to speak English. I also get a lot of other types in who literally drive me up the wall, rude, slimy, make appointments and don’t turn up-makes me angry! We are getting quite adept at knowing who will cause us grief now and we simply turn them away. The something for nothing brigade.

[bricam1]

For the last couple of years I have been considering leaving to go and live in Spain and as the months go by that urge is getting stronger. The less you do in this country the more help/handouts you get. But if you work hard for a living you get hammered left, right and center.

Regarding McDonalds I chined a couple of youths last year about tossing there litter out of the car when the bin was in front of there bumper. They looked at me as if I had 2 heads and some sort of nutter. But a least they got out and put there rubbish in the bin.

At the end of the day the parents have a lot to answer for my daughter has been taught from when she could walk to put all rubbish in the bin and if there is no bin to put it in her pocket.

[gazza57]

There you have it Bricam,
It's about moral standards and about teaching your children the difference between right and wrong, you obviously have but others sadly can't be bothered.
All children are born with a clean slate and behave in a way that reflects the environment in which they have been brought up.
Unfortunately, there is a section of society in this country who believe that doing as little as possible is a vocation. These are the sorts of people who see unemployment as a career choice rather than a temporary situation.
It is these same people who take no responsibility for the behaviour of their children and instil no moral compass in their offspring.
It is then not surprising to learn it is those same people who soil everything they touch, discarding litter where they stand.
Everything they come across they either seek to eat it or break it and then throw it on the floor and the sad part is that these peole procreate and produce offspring equally as amoral.
Gazza57

[Crasher]

You forgot the spitting on the floor bit.

[Combover]

This country has gone to the dogs bit style.

Most people I know work hard, long hours to provide for their families. They are decent people who have never claimed a penny in their lives and some have come from having nothing.

these are the people who i admire. I like to think I am one of these types of people. I am out of the house for 12 hours a day, hardly see the missus or my son, but I provide for them so they are safe and secure etc.

Then you get the Jeremy Kyle generation. Those who think the world owes them everything. Why should they work when they get money doled out to them for sitting on their a$$e$?

They have no desire to better themselves in life. No ambition, intelligence or motivation.

They then claim - oh yeah i had a rough childhood. No money, I had nothing growing up etc.

Take my dad. One of 6 kids from a very very poor Irish family. Kicked out of school at 14. At 16 got an apprenticship with an Engineering company. 39 years later he is Engineering Director, in charge of Europe, Africa, Middle East and USA. He is regualrly in Germany (where he spends 50% of his working week), and can't rate it highly enough

Contrast with his brother who hasnt worked a day in his life. The whole 'upbringing' thing is ******

Sorry, rant over!