It may not be a good tool for communicating between services implemented in different languages. But i’d happily use it to save stuff to disk where database is overkill.
Britain isn’t really poor as a country if we look at all the money/wealth in it. The distribution of the wealth is very one sided though. Recent decades of law making favouring the top few percent. Giving more to the wealthiest few doesn’t seem to trickle down apparently.. eroding middle class and diminishing purchasing power is what bothers me most. Privatised energy, water, public transport aren’t serving the public’s interest anymore but the shareholder’s. Housing prices getting out of reach of the average workers is rubbing salt on the wound. These are mostly symptoms.
You can live in London and never miss a car, but try it anywhere outside of big cities and it’ll be a different story. Not to mention the brutal train ticket prices.