How not to endear yourself to the locals

The difficulty is that from a quick glance you don't know the full picture.

That person with a fancy iPhone might have had a well paid job 18 months ago and taken out a 24 month £50/month contract for that phone. With covid (or from some other means) they might have since lost that job but still be tied into the remainder of that contract even though it's not really affordable.

Unfortunately we seem to have moved to a culture where we live month by month assuming that things will continue in the same way without thinking about the consequences if something happened that changed that. When such change happens (e.g. covid) people then struggle as they're tied into what's no longer affordable. (I've got the impression, although not tested, that this can also go the other way that affordability checks often only look at income and ignore that you might have enough in savings to cover an ongoing expense).

I thought the UK moved away from nationalised industry decades before Blair...?

As a weirdo ( Card carrying union member that often voted Conservative ) I agree with you.

however at the moment as I see it Labour is left of where it has been for the past 30 odd years the tories seem to be occupying most of the ground from the soft left to the hard right.

One of what I see as labours issues is the power of the unions, not so many these days that would be "anti green" ie the old heavy industries etc. but of course the newer industries tend to be less unionised.

And of course what are politicians remembered for ( and these are my recollections )

Jim Callaghan, the winter of discontent
Maggie Thatcher, standing against the NUM and the European parliament
Paul Foot, donkey jacket at the cenotaph
Neil Kinnock, falling over on the beach at the party conference
John Major, Edwina curry
Iain Duncan Smith, Nope nothing
Tony Blair , Cool brittania and making a fortune 
Gordon Brown, constant Prudence comments in the budget, putting money away for a rainy day, but when that rainy day arrived there was no
money
David Cameron, this is a great deal from the EU, clearly it wasn't, and he misinterpreted the countries mood, personally I believe if the EU had known the feelings of the British people the deal might have been different
Nick Clegg, Student Fees/Loans
Theresa May, Seriously I don't think she could negotiate delivery of a Pizza
Boris Johnson, Terrible brexit deal,and looking after his acquaintances
 

Oh @bobo , SPOT ON!

I want to scream every time I hear someone has a Degree in "Meeja Studies", or somesuch, and their spelling, grammar, geographical knowledge of the UK, *, etc, etc is beyond atrocious.

I know, because I used to have to interview and try and employ them. In their minds they're all brilliant and want to start as a "Manager".

And don't get me started on the FdSc Surf Science and Technology available from Cornwall College!


EDIT / PS - * and Basic Arithmetic.