Martin
you sum it up perfectly
if you are have some decent disposable income in UK it isnt a bad place at all. If you are rich it is wonderful since you can avoid paying tax on most of your income and enjoy all the good things about the UK
If you are Joe Public with no growth in wages for years , declining public services, failing infrastructure its not third world but ti is along way from what first world is supposed to mean.
But the truth inescapably is a lot of things are broken and need fixing and I am afraid nuclear weapons are luxury we cannot afford especially as they are under US control anyway.
To sum it up with a personal experience my daughter was told by here optician she had a small spot or growth at the back of her eye. probably Ok but if malignant she loses the eye. NHS- referral you get a letter in response saying they will be in touch but estimate 18 weeks before she can get an appointment. I can fortunately pay for a private consultation , see specialist inside 3 days and told all is OK.
Can such a gap ever be justifiable when its the same bunch of doctors operating from the same premises. And I live in Surrey-hardly Britain's most deprived area. And incidentally a very military part of Surrey and I think we are lucky to have the dedicated armed forces we do but from reading this site and others they are also regularly subjected to redundancy poor equipment political interference and penny pinching. I think scrapping the nukes would allow us to have a properly trained and equipped military force suitable for today's smaller scale wars and the money saved should be split between improving NHS and emergency services and the military . Incidentally including pensions as a cost for the government is very misleading as most of us pensioners paid in all our life for a state pension and that is not something that can just be treated as a cost since huge contributions were and are made directly from the public for it.