Noticing the signs of decline in the UK

Only a teenager or a blind person could miss the signs of the decline of the Yookay. Just last week I was on the Bakerloo line heading out to South England for a well earned respite from the city and got into a carriage that had been spray painted with graffiti. A very bad sign all around. Lack of respect from the people that did it - sure, but a symptom of the malaise of the people at TFL who let the train go out or the lack of funding because they had no choice and the lack of attention that anyone else on the train paid it.

I could bang on about the broken windows theory but I think most people are familiar with it. And it coincides with the bin crisis in Birmingham, reminiscent of the 70s but I think so much worse because I think we are in much worse shape that the 70s.

We are watching a gradual collapse of the UK and the West as a whole, as I have outlined before. I came across a new word to describe it today. South Africanisation. Its not new but it fits the bill. Not a fast collapse, not instant anarchy, but the transition from a high trust society that functions, not perfectly but functioning, into a low trust society where some of it functions and some just doesn't work anymore. As Ernst Van Zyl discusses in his podcast on the Lotus eaters, every day is 0.01 percent worse than the day before. Of course, that doesn't take long to make very significant changes for it's citizens.

I have been out a lot lately socially and I have met quite a lot of new people (this is generally unusual for me) and I have been struck by how may people are leaving and so many that are now considering it. Evidently, I may be moving in elite circles but it doesn't feel like it! It feels like the middle classes and their offspring.

I spoke to a friend about this and he said he didn't believe the statistics and that it is right wing propaganda. I expect that further down the line we will find out one way or another from somewhere like the Adam Smith Institute but one think I did notice was how dejected and pessimistic everyone is about the state of the UK. The immigration issue is really getting everyone down. I think for most people they don't understand why it is happening and why it cannot be stopped - I do, but then they don't listen to as many podcasts as I do!

What I think people are coming to realize is that there is no stopping this train. It simply has too much momentum, as Mark Steyn - didn't actually say apparently - 'I used to worry there was going to be a revolution, now I worry there isn't'. There is a nihilism here, an acceptance that we are going to de-rail and there is nothing we can do about it.

And among the people I spoke to with kids in private schools I was struck by just how much extra they have to pay now with both the VAT, the business rates and the National Insurance increases. Combined with the fact that some of them are small business owners who have to pay this as well and the others who are now paying even more tax , there is a just so much resentment. The younger their kids are, the more they are going to have to pay and it seemed to me they were the ones who were considering an exit.

I also have some older friends whose two children have been offered teaching positions in Dubai - and although they are in their 60s, they are going to re-locate with them - they are pretty wealthy so they will be taking their tax contributions with them.

I don't know if the statistics are true and whether they can even be trusted. And I don't know whether I have a larger circle of friends and acquaintances than most (I doubt it), but I now know of two families that have actually left, four families that are at various stages of actually leaving and another four families that are seriously considering it.

I can't remember hearing of anything like that amount of people leaving before, at least in my lifetime and I can't help thinking that these are the guys that actually pay tax in the UK and the new people that are coming in don't. So, even if you get to net zero immigration - which looks like it will never happen, you're still losing your tax payers and the smart kids they educated at their own expense. Doesn't sound like a winning policy to me.