Basically every new law, piece of news or media I see coming from the UK paints a picture of a beat-down, cynical & scared society that's complacent to or in support of increasing surveillance and control by the government. Like maybe Adolescence or basically any mention of the NHS. The crimes they cite like child grooming or terrorism/hate being incited sound pretty terrible too, but I wonder why the UK specifically…
The UK is becoming increasingly authoritarian in ways that feel increasingly antagonistic to the majority of the population, regardless of political party. Taxes are rising (with tax take falling), crimes are going unchecked, just mentioning increased immigration gets a lot of people's backs up, but as GDP per capita continues to stall and even fall, the pressure it puts on services is a factor for many. And we're se…
That I could have multiple negative NHS experiences relating to missed cancer diagnoses of friends in that relatively short span of time is suggestive of a real problem. The institution seemed to have less of an issue with elder care (in the US, the phantom menace posed by Obamacare or any governmental involvement in healthcare was meant to be "death panels" deciding the fate of grandparents) than with avoiding at all costs detecting potential long-term problems in the young. It's a 'rational' fear in the sense, as you note, that such cases put tremendous pressure on services, but there's no world where the best health outcome is refusing to screen your working age population.