FAILING BRITAIN
After a 1,900km drive from Spain, we’re finally back at our summer home in the UK and within two days of our arrival we were suffering from severe hay fever.
We exchanged living in what is becoming a semi desert in our part of Spain, to the UK which has “enjoyed” rain on most days during the winter, and temperatures above normal have resulted in a huge growth of grass, weeds, tree and bush branches.
So if you are planning a return to the UK in coming weeks, be prepared for horrible hay fever symptoms. We’ve never experienced anything like it.
As for what we have found so far in the UK, I am saddened. Britain is fast looking like a Third World country! Potholes in some roads are dreadful. Lack of maintenance of grass verges has resulted in grass going to seed everywhere and grass and weeds several feet high.
And it’s just plain bonkers to let this happen on the approach to roundabouts, restricting visibility, allowing foliage to grow over road signs and also signs not to be cleaned for months so they have green algae covering them. It’s examples of the financial cuts which has damaged Britain so badly.
And I must share this with you. We saw a refuse lorry emptying bins in a public car park and then saw men having a drink before setting off elsewhere. But surrounding them, on the ground, were piles of rubbish that had fallen out of the bins. We assumed that would be cleaned up before the men left.
But no, when we returned to the car park the dustcart had gone, but not the rubbish. I suppose it’s the age-old nonsense “not our job mate!”
Oh, and the standard of driving? I thought Spain was bad, but it seems Britain has sunk to new depths. For example, we followed a car which indicated in the opposite direction on every roundabout. We finally managed to overtake, to see two young women in the front seats chatting away.
Oh, and as a final shot on this – guess how long it takes to get a doctor’s appointment in the UK? My wife has been told she will have to wait 5 weeks! Yesterday she went for a hearing test and was told she had an ear infection, perhaps brought on by the hay fever, and was advised to see a doctor. Yes, that’s a joke. Welcome back to a failed Britain.
PETTY FRANCE
Watching the recent 80th anniversary remembrance of D-Day was extremely moving, and particularly so the parachutists depicting dropping behind enemy lines, a reenactment of what actually happened.
What I learned next really angered me – because all those parachutists had to carry their passports with them and show them at a desk in a French field and presumably to have them stamped!
I then imagined an alternative version of what happened 80 years ago. Instead of all the horror on the beaches, when the troops landed they were greeted by rows of German customs and passport control jobsworths checking all the “invaders’” documents!
If those servicemen men could see 80 years into the future and see all the ridiculous nonsense we are now having to live with, they wouldn’t believe it.
Thank you so much Farage and all the Brexit campaigners who have helped ruin Britain.
LOOKING FORWARD TO MORE OF THE SAME
So much has been said and written about Rishi Sunak’s decision to quit the D Day remembrance in northern France and return to the UK early for rather spurious reasons.
I must agree with Nigel Farage (wow! that’s a first!) when he says that the prime minister’s action showed he was “disconnected by class [and] by privilege” from ordinary people, and that he did not understand British culture.
Firstly, I do question whether non British people should be in leading roles in parliament or at local level. But apart from that, Sunak’s decision was simply crass. He should have worked out that it would not be accepted kindly by British people. His failure to do that demonstrates to me he is not a fit and proper person to be Prime Minister.
And also, it demonstrates to me the Tories, from top to bottom, are totally devoid of common sense, they are a party of self-interest, favouring and looking after the rich and to hell with the poor. That’s why the rich are richer and the poor poorer in Britain after 14 years under Tories and why so many people are now looking forward to change.
Right wing Truss economics which wrecked Britain like nothing else, demonstrates this so well. Her nonsense suggested if you make the rich richer their extra wealth will trickle down to the poorer. If you believe that you will believe anything. Reality is that multi millionaires and billionaires have an obsession to get ever richer and then employ an army of financial advisers to not only protect their wealth but to save themselves from paying tax on it.
So any political party which protects them has my total contempt. The Tories will suffer huge losses in the election. Serves them right – and one of the first thing they will do is to get rid of Sunak – just like they did with total ruthlessness to Churchill after he won the war for Britain. To call the Tory party as the nasty party is no exaggeration.
Now let me turn to Labour. It looks like they are in line for a massive victory next month – some predict up to 147 seat majority.
That will be as much of a disaster as the huge Tory majority in 2019 which allowed the Tories to lurch to the right and all the crass decisions since.
The last thing Britain now needs is a massive Labour victory and which could result in the country being inflicted to a huge lurch to the left. Do we really want is for trade unions to have such a say as to alter politics to benefit their members to the detriment of everyone else? As a journalist I was constantly having to cope with left wing know it all oiks from universities in our newsrooms trying to promote their views. I still view left wing trade unionists as those people who want to earn far more for doing far less. For example, how crass is it that train drivers are still pressing for big pay rises when they earn 60,000 pounds plus?
Now let me turn to Reform and the snake in the grass Nigel Farage. He is playing the immigration card as hard as he can, because he knows that there are huge numbers of Brits extremely worried about the massive “invasion” of immigrants arriving illegally on British shores.
Many are economic migrants, many have paid 2,000 pounds plus to gangs to get on a boat from France. Where on earth did they get that money? Criminality? But we don’t know who they are, whether they have committed offences in their own countries…etc etc.
Of course, the do gooders rally around to try to help these “desperate people” without understanding that probably, for very genuine asylum seeker there are ten more on the bandwagon.
Farage and co are extremely clever and he is extremely astute. He comes over as very plausible, but he is almost as far right as you can get, and the last thing Britain needs now is yet another dose of right wing politics.
He calls his party the Reform party. Very clever name, because I want to see reform as millions of other Brits do – but not Farage’s idea of reform.
Now let me turn to the Lib Dems who want reform too – but their reform is to finally get proportional representation, to put an end to the two party system. I really hope that people wake up and vote for a centerist party which really could promote change, a change in the correct right direction.
A party which will make social care as front and centre of its policy, so that people can, once again, do not have to worry about care in their old age, can get care at home, releasing blocked hospital beds helping the desperate NHS, and boosting child care to release mums to earn money in work and helping the failing British economy.
Sadly Lib Dems don’t get a fair crack of the whip. Newspapers and TV news outlets ignore Lib Dems, concentrating on what the two main parties have to say. That puts the third alternative at a huge disadvantage and why its leader, Sir Ed Davey has had to go to extraordinary lengths, clowning about on water and in theme parks to gain attention. Thank goodness it’s working and Lib Dem profile is rising.
Finally, let me turn to the rise of the right in politics across Europe. It is very worrying. There is nothing wrong with having pride in your own country – but it can so quickly become something dangerous, when that nationalism spills over to obsession and the country is led by someone like Putin who lives in a parallel universe believing Russia has a right to seize back countries it once had in its “empire”. The worst example of this is Germany voting for Hitler.
What is mostly driving a boost in right wing politics in Europe, as in the UK, is immigration. And it’s clear something drastic has to be done across the continent to finally stop the wave of people, many ending up in ghettos in cities in European countries. Many of these people arriving in the UK do not understand or like British values and could so easily become indoctrinated into terrorism. Immigration has changed politics in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany and, could be about to in the UK too.
Britain needs desperately to work with all other countries in Europe to find a solution to a rapidly growing problem.
EMPTY HOMES
How’s this for the most appalling example of government and local government mismanagement.
There are 33,993 vacant council properties in England, the highest number since 2009 and more than 6,000 publicly-owned homes have been empty for over a year.
They include several homes that have been sealed off on an estate in Lambeth, south London, for more than two decades and 144 flats in a boarded-up tower block in Southwark that has been empty since 2015. It was due to be redeveloped but building costs have risen so much it’s set to be demolished.
A campaigner is reported as saying; “You’ve got people sleeping on the streets. You’ve got people who are sleeping in garages and storage containers. Yet we’ve got thousands of homes sat empty, council homes up and down the country, which aren’t being used. It makes no sense whatsoever.”
Instead of repairing houses they own, councils are paying millions each year to private landlords to house families in emergency temporary accommodation, including bed and breakfasts.
The latest figures show 145,800 children in England are homeless and living in temporary accommodation – a record high and 15% more than a year ago.
Britain faces the biggest housing crisis since the Second World War, with over a million people desperate for council houses and enough homeless kids in England to fill the O2 Arena more than seven times over – that’s 145,000 children.
It’s shocking that across England there are thousands of empty homes while waiting lists for public housing continue to grow.
Why? It’s the Tories damnable spending cuts lasting year after year and the result is that councils have been starved of money to pay for home repairs. Some are even facing bankruptcy.
It could so easily be sorted, if the government introduced more bandings in council house tax. But incredibly a multi millionaire living in a house worth millions pays the same council tax as someone in a house worth 320,000 pounds, and that is an utter nonsense.
It’s all part of the massive unfairness and it about time it was consigned to history. I hope voters wake up and do it.
