We are called ‘Uturn UK’ because we believe that Britain has ‘lost the plot’ - and that we need to rethink the way we live.

There is little real community – so many people don’t even know their neighbours.  An “I’m alright, Jack” attitude, where we each mind our own business and do our own thing, has left many of us not “alright” at all!  In fact, millions are lonely, isolated, depressed, directionless and fed up with a life filled with gadgets but no meaning.

It is time to make changes.  What can we change?

Introducing street associations

One thing we can do that will transform our lives is to form Street Associations, that put the heart back into local communities.  The idea is to gather interested people from each street and say “let’s make some real community here”.  This, we are finding, is welcomed wherever it is suggested.  In fact, in our survey, 98% said they would “welcome and increase in community spirit” in their street.

This is how it works: someone opens their home for an evening and invites people from other homes in their street to come and meet each other (we have a stock letter that can be used).  Typically, we have found that about 15-20 people turn up.  They love the vision!  So many say, “This is exactly what is needed”.  About half of them volunteer to be part of a core group to take the vision forward on their street.  We have another website, www.streetassociations.org, where a Street Association can register and download all sorts of helpful guides, including ideas for events, and roles for people on the core group.  One role, for instance, is for a Welfare Co-ordinator, who has the privilege of visiting every home over a period and asking: “What could you offer someone else in this street?  Could you go alongside a troubled teenager, mow an elderly person’s lawn, do a bit of DIY for a disabled person, do a bit of shopping for a single mum, or give someone a lift to hospital?  And do you have any needs?”   Offers of help and needs are then matched.

The core group works together to put on events, help lonely and isolated people to become part of things and generally to make the street a much happier place.

It is fun, it is very well received and it is deeply fulfilling.

This makes a massive difference to each street!  We don’t need to wait for the Government to do anything and there is no budget needed.  We can do this for ourselves!  Uturn UK stands ready to work with people who would like to get this going in their street.

We need communal values

The other side of the coin is: we need to waive goodbye to “anything goes” and start to redefine how we treat each other, reaffirm the values of integrity, commitment, concern for others – and work together to make doing good fashionable again!  As a society, we have tried going down the road of selfishness and everybody doing their own thing.  The result is lots of hurt, distrust, fear and a growing lack of hope and fulfilment.

This website introduces a lot of thought about which values we need, where we get them from, what the damage has been from trying to live without them, where we go from here.

It is a huge task to change a culture.  Any meaningful change starts with the grass roots – a movement of people who are starting to say “enough” – and starting to envision a better way of living.  There is a better way: the task is to start saying so and to raise awareness that we need to make a change – and to begin to chart a new course.  That is what this website, and Uturn UK, are about.

Join us

If you like what you read, why not join with us by subscribing to our occasional email bulletins, pass this website on to others – and start thinking about how to make a difference where we are.

Many people feel instinctively that something has gone wrong with British society.  Everybody appears to be busy doing their own thing, but in the process we seem to have lost our sense of unity and community – lost the shared conviction that we owe something to each other and that society is a whole lot better when we pull together.

But what is the truth of the situation?  Is “society in Britain broken”, as 70% of respondents in a 2010 opinion poll said?  Or is all this exaggerated, a harking back to a golden age that never existed, reflecting an inability to come to terms with change?

And if society really is in some way “broken”, then what can be done about it?  Do we merely cruise on, regardless of mounting evidence that we may be on a self-destructive path, or is some kind of a ‘u-turn’, in a modern democratic and liberal society, actually possible?

And how did we get to where we are today?  For, understanding what brought us here might help us better to chart a way forward.

These are some of the questions that Uturn UK seeks to answer.  This website, as you will see, has lots of articles on a variety of subjects, but they seek to build into an overarching analysis of why we are where we are – and what can be done about it.

We are not about offering a quick fix (although it is our conviction that the Street Associations Initiative will make a profound difference where it is applied); but we are wanting to raise subjects that have been almost taboo, obscured in a haze of denial (on the one hand) or aggressive blame-mongering (on the other).

We have come a long way in the last 50 years or so and many things are genuinely better than they were.  Society is less harsh and judgmental than it was, less class-bound and opportunities are offered far more widely.

But that is not the whole picture.  First, in this summary, we turn to the question: is our ‘social ecology’ really in trouble?

The trouble with Britain

Statistics can mislead.  However, under the heading of The Problem, in this website we bring together a mass of evidence, from many sources, that something has indeed gone seriously wrong.  The evidence covers almost every indicator of social wellbeing, from family breakdown, to loneliness, to addictions, to violence and antisocial behaviour, to international comparisons in the