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| Here Goes The Pound | |
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| Topic Started: 6 Oct 2009, 01:44 PM (5,758 Views) | |
| OzTennis | 5 Mar 2010, 08:02 PM Post #176 |
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Yep, good points. Ashcroft in news again for tax avoidance, had some polls done, asked for bills to be sent to Belize to be paid, avoided £40K in VAT, says they were private polls done for him, not for the Tories; yeah, pull the other one, you wouldn't pass on the results to the party. Anyone is entitled to live elsewhere to avoid paying tax; goodness knows how many sportsmen and women 'live' in Monaco for this reason; if however you want to sit in the Lords and promise to live here and pay taxes and you don't and it estimated that the sum involved is £170 mill since you've been sitting then I reckon that's a completely different ball park to Lord Paul. As it stands you can claim expenses in many, many jobs, the rules in the case of MPs obviously need to be reviewed and tightened. Basic MP salary just gone up 1.5% yesterday, still under £70K I think. FWIW, NED is a quaint Scottish term which means similar to Chav in England; many say it stands for non-educated deliquent (although you would probably need to be uneducated to say non-educated!). :Grin: Nedette is the lassie version but I don't hear it very often. |
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| Amanda & Simon | 6 Mar 2010, 12:42 AM Post #177 |
Braiiiiiinnnss
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Yes, I saw it in the Guardian. Off shore accounting cleverness. Funny, IIRC didn't the Guardian manage to pay no tax at all a year or so ago despite a turnover of I think the best part of a million? Did they use a variety of means including off shore accounting? Why yes, I think they did. Were they Tory bashing at the time for them doing much the same thing? :Grin: What do you think? Actually I think it might even have been Ashcroft again. And what happened to the Guardian Media Group as a result? Absolutely bugger all because tax avoidance is perfectly legal and, IMO at least, nothing to be ashamed of. At the worst it's like not leaving a tip at a restaurant. Why should anyone have to pay more than the law demands, especially when it demands too damn much from nearly much every layer of society, especially the poor who'd be doing exactly the same thing if they could afford Ashcroft's accountants (well, unless they're also batshit insane as well as skint). The Labour party and their tame journos like to muddy the waters and carefully say "tax avoidance" about activities they know damn well are legal while getting all morally superior and acting as if it's the illegal tax evasion that's going on. The fact that they're all up to it as well makes them the worst kind of hypocrites, but since it's just as legal for them too that's all it makes them. As for the Tories, there are plenty of things I'd like to see them bashed for (an even bigger number of things I'd like to see them bashed with) but this isn't one of them. Why? Where's it written down to say that a Lord must be resident for tax purposes? Clearly nowhere or he'd have had to alter his residency and tax status. Is it unseemly? Maybe, especially as he said he would and has apparently gone back on it. Big ****ing deal. All the party leaders are guilty of that and on matters that have far greater impact on real people. That's the main reason why I wish they could all lose. Generally the employees do not get to decide the terms and conditions of their expenses and change the rules as they see fit. Generally it is reimbursement for expenses incurred, not a salary top up. Generally employees get their expenses refused if they submit claims for things that do not directly relate to their work. Generally employees that make a habit of it get fired. Generally employees get arrested if they knowingly claim for things that they didn't actually pay for. The MPs that can say they did none of these things seem to be in a minority, the Lords not much better. Lord Paul apparently claimed 400 or so quid for every day he showed up. Does anyone really believe that his incurred costs had to be as much as 400 quid? Ashcroft, whatever else you want to say about the man, apparently does not believe he needs to tap the taxpayers for £400. I think I'm going to be sick. Edited by Amanda & Simon, 6 Mar 2010, 12:43 AM.
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| OzTennis | 6 Mar 2010, 02:00 AM Post #178 |
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Some fair points, think you've got it unnecessarily in for politicians who aren't all tarnished with the same brush, but that's just my opinion! Are they employees if they can vote on their terms and conditions; surely a bit more like employers? Have said tighter guidelines required and independent verification of expenses as well. Yeah, Gruadian may have it in for Tories but usually most papers have it in for Labour and some have turned this time in anticipation of a sweeping Cameron victory (possibly regretting that early decision now). You would actually think Gordon Brown is a mixture of Hitler, Bin Laden, Jack the Ripper and Peter Sutcliffe if you read the press here. Those who say yeah he is need a reality check. :Grin: We'll just keep going around in circles I think because we won't see eye to eye on this (although we do see eye to eye on a surprising number of things). :Grin: |
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| Amanda & Simon | 6 Mar 2010, 02:31 PM Post #179 |
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Braiiiiiinnnss
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Oh no, not all of them. Just the vast majority :Grin: Seriously, just the ones who are in it for the power and the opportunity to make a fat pile of cash or who tamely do what their party tells them without ever having a thought of their own or giving any consideration to what their constituents feel... so yeah, the majority :yeap: Bad enough when you can vote them out but most are in safe seats and damn well know it, which I feel is unforgivable. That's not to say there aren't some good ones even in safe seats: Kate Hoey springs to mind, Robin Cook was one, so was Mo Mowlam. I'm sure there are some Tories and LibDems who have the balls to do what they believe in rather than what the party tells them but for some unfathomable reason I can't seem to think of any right now. :wink: Who pays their wages? Who, in theory, selects and appoints them? What is their job description? A: Joe Public, the man in the street and representing their interests in parliament. Employees. But what they're actually getting is a quango that owes its existence to parliament staffed by people whose own continued income depends on the politicians they're supposedly monitoring. Independent? Oh, sure [insert cynical laughter]. Tighter guidelines sound good but aside from them being movable goalposts I'm not convinced we won't still see people taking the piss and then defending themselves by saying it was within guidelines. So much of what's been going on was within guidelines but so few of them ever stopped to think whether or not it was right. I think the guidelines should be tossed out altogether and replaced with a single, simple principle - if parliamentarian has to spend money that they wouldn't have had to spend if they were in another job then they get paid no matter how much it is, but if they can't justify it they don't get a penny back. Get on a plane somewhere if you must but if you flew First when there were Economy class seats available then the difference comes out of your pocket. Get on a plane when you could have stayed put and teleconferenced and you don't get paid at all. Isn't that how it works for the rest of us? How this should be overseen is a little trickier but leaving it up to people who owe their jobs to the people they're supposed to be watching is not an answer. Maybe something like just publishing all claims and giving constituents the power to force a by election if enough of them agree their MP is on the make. How it could be applied to a wholly appointed (apart from a relative handful of hereditary folks) chamber like the Lords I admit I have no idea. Possibly it can't in it's current form. Up to the point we left the UK I'd have said that most were left or centre left with the exception of the Torygraph, The Daily streets-aren't-safe-for-our-kids-send-em-back-now Mail and the Daily Express who'd go along with whatever they think Diana would have thought if the secret plot to secretly have her killed in secret hadn't got her. Post expenses scandal they all seemed to take a big step in the direction of my brand of distrust and cynicism. Other than that I think they've come to think that Brown's track record has been so poor that he absolutely deserves to lose the election, but also that Cameron doesn't deserve to win it. How the hell you're supposed to vote for that I don't know, but in some respects it might be a good thing because it'll be more about getting a decent local representative than which muppet ends up in Downing Street. Obviously it's always been about that and less than 100,000 people will be able to vote directly for Brown or Cameron, but people do tend to vote with the eventual PM in mind. Actually I rather like the American system where you can vote for a Democrat president and Republicans to represent your state/district or vice versa. It's safe to say that whoever wins out of Cameron and Brown they'll have way too much on their plate as PM to serve the interests of their constituents properly. :yeap: Agreed. More like Graham Taylor IMO. I'd laugh at him more if the job he was supposed to be doing wasn't so important. The only point I would make, and this applies more to Blair since he set it in motion, is that many of the powers that a modern day British Hitler would want are already in place and not only did Blair/Brown and the Labour party not prevent that from happening but the stupid bastards put them there. I think we might agree on more than we don't. They're not allcorrupt party yes-men and we might not agree on the numbers, but do we agree that some most certainly are and that any is too many? Does more than half seem reasonable? :Grin: Edited by Amanda & Simon, 6 Mar 2010, 02:37 PM.
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| abertawe | 6 Mar 2010, 08:41 PM Post #180 |
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Hi guys at the end of the day, it doesnt matter, who is doing what or not. We just need the politican with the balls to put things right. Hopefully those who can vote (obviously not us lot in Oz) vote for the party with the policies that well take on the hardest policies not the wallpaper policies that Labour have had in the past. It will require someone who is not afraid to upset people to put it right. Whether it is Labour, Tories, Liberals and the Monster Raving Looney Party. |
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| abertawe | 6 Mar 2010, 08:43 PM Post #181 |
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....forgot to add. And as long as the Pound strenghtens. |
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| Amanda & Simon | 6 Mar 2010, 10:29 PM Post #182 |
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You can register as an overseas voter for whatever seat you last voted in when you lived in the UK and keep your vote for I think up to 15 years. Just european elections, general elections and by-elections if there is one. |
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| Amanda & Simon | 6 Mar 2010, 10:32 PM Post #183 |
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You can register as an overseas voter for whatever seat you last voted in when you lived in the UK and keep your vote for I think up to 15 years. Just european elections, general elections and by-elections if there is one. There's a choice of postal vote or proxy vote. Because of the possibility that a postal vote won't make it out here and back in time to be counted the official advice is that proxy voting is probably best. |
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| OzTennis | 7 Mar 2010, 01:55 AM Post #184 |
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OK, so let's say you are in power; you have to severely cut the UK budget deficit (in order to strengthen that pound, it doesn't just happen itself), how many schools and hospitals are you going to shut, how many wage freezes are you going to introduce, hich benefits are you going to cut, are you going to increase the retirement age, which taxes are you going to raise, blah, blah, blah? It's one thing to say you need balls to make the decisions methinks; reality is different. Just acting as 'devil's advocate'. Don't think for one minute that Cameron, if he gets in power, will live up to his promises (I think among all the flannel and bluff he has made some), life isn't like that. :Grin: |
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| koalakim | 7 Mar 2010, 07:35 AM Post #185 |
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Well I think just cleaning up the MP expenses system would put the country back on track - wouldn't it? :Grin: Then get rid of all those unnecessary jobs in Govt and Councils, bodies, committees etc and in the health service. Run the country as if it was a business which it is after all. The Gov really should provide it's people with end of year accounts to show where our money has been spent...the country is broke for a reason and they should know why! If the country needs more money to function then taxes have to go up - simple balance of the books but then we have to make sure nothing is being wasted on unnecessary items and jobs which is probably what is happening at the moment. However, it should be that when you have paid your taxes and then need help you get it which isn't the case for most Brits as it's all spent on people who come over and abuse the system. Did you see on the BBC that if someone comes over to work and then brings his/her family and then the breadwinner goes back the family now have a right to stay and get benefits because the kids are in education according to the European courts. Yet if I lost my job you'd get a measly 40 quid a week or whatever it is these days. So the British public are paying for people who have never paid a penny in tax and who are never even likely to work because they can't even speak English! You think you come to Oz and you'd have to been on your last cent to get any help in the first two years here and I don't think you get much more help once you are over that period. I think it's great that Britain is so helpful but not to the right people, the people who have paid their taxes but then can't get the right help when they are down on their luck. At the end of the day the public pay for all this mess and then moan and groan about it all when they never voted so at least Oz has got it right in that you have to vote. Get Richard Branson in to sort them out. Virgin Britain plc! |
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| abertawe | 7 Mar 2010, 09:09 PM Post #186 |
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Hum. And the Devil's reply would be. Set up an emergency tax. Over a 5 year period, the first year would be a 5% over the standard tax, the next 4% percent, the next 3%... All benefits would be cut if you haven't taken a job or been offered a job and not taken. (Unless for health reasons or family commitments like looking after children or the sick) Reduce the armed forces to just home defense and pull out of Afgan. NHS would have to become two tier, similar to the Aussie system. I would not close schools and hospitals. But would toll the roads, well motorways and all major cities would have an inner city toll change. And that is just off the top of my hand. Unfortunately since Tory Wet Tony, where personal approval seems to be the only think that matters, there is no hard nose politican. I think someone needs to stand and say look I dont care what you think. I am going to do the hard work become unpopular but will get this country back on its feet. |
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| Amanda & Simon | 7 Mar 2010, 10:37 PM Post #187 |
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Braiiiiiinnnss
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Why should people have to pay for government profligacy? Hey guys, we've wasted your money and now we need to pay for all the debt we ran up in your name, so just vote for us and we'll take care of it with some more lovely tax. To paraphrase Blackadder I think the phrase rhymes with Duck Cough. Can you see an emergency tax being tempting for businesses to set up shop in the UK, or to not go elsewhere if they're there already. Cuts are the only way. Not essential services but just to stop pissing away vast sums on shit that doesn't matter or if it does should be paid by the private sector anyway. The old favourite is the quangos, though both parties have been promising a bonfire of the quangos since at least Thatcher's time. Still waiting for someone to have the guts to actually do it. IIRC the bill is something like £50 billion a year now, which is just one of those -illion numbers that get tossed around these days but if you want some idea of the scale of it then consider that the bill for policing and the criminal justice system is only about £36 billion. It would pay for those shiny new aircraft carriers the navy wants - including the planes - half a dozen times over, and remember we're talking about a single year here. On the plus side your 50 bill does pay for things like websites with instructions on how to make a chip butty (I am not making that up). Seriously they have to go, all of them. Not necessarily be ditched completely but if they offer any real value then the industries and businesses they represent should be paying for it. If they don't then why the hell is anyone paying? Either way it's very hard to justify why it should be taxpayers funding them especially when money's as tight as it is. Britain's debt interest payment alone is about 30 billions so the 50 billion a year saved by turning the quangos out to fend for themselves would more than cover the interest and take a healthy chunk off the debt itself without taking a penny from other state expenditure. One teensy little problem with that idea: Brown won't do it, Cameron won't do it and Clegg won't do it. So it's likely to be more tax and a slower crawl back to economic health. All I can say is that it had better be a truly spectacular chip butty. |
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| Gail.C | 8 Mar 2010, 02:10 PM Post #188 |
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We need a hard nosed woman like Maggie Thatcher to rise from the ashes of burnt out Britain and sort it all out. I didn't like her much personally or agree with the poll tax but by 'eck she didn't take any s..t and stuck by her decisions/policies whether they were good or bad. We need someone with back bone and Maggie is the only politician in my living memory that had any and for that she has my utmost respect. |
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| abertawe | 8 Mar 2010, 08:05 PM Post #189 |
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We need to get back on track. Lets wait and see what happens once the election is out of the way. In the meantime lets see what affect the employment figures will have this week. Getting back to 1.80 looks like a miracle at the moment. |
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| OzTennis | 9 Mar 2010, 03:38 AM Post #190 |
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Many would argue that the rot set in WHEN Thatcher came to power - the roots of the greed in the financial institutions which precipitated the GCC were sown then they'd say. As for stick to your guns even if you have the wrong policies! :Grin: Blair and Brown stuck to their guns (no pun intended) about Iraq for example. I don't think the Tory party itself was over-enamoured with the Iron Lady in the end let's not forget. Just thinking aloud, maybe nations have their glory time (Greeks, Romans ................ British, Americans) and new nations rise to prominence (Japan and Germany who started their rise after Britain and USA are a bit tired now) - 21st century will be remembered as China being the world superpower perhaps. But I digress. |
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| abertawe | 9 Mar 2010, 06:58 AM Post #191 |
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1.65 Is anyone exchanging now, or are most of you just sitting tight. Weathering the storm. |
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| Gail.C | 9 Mar 2010, 07:37 AM Post #192 |
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Oh yeah we were really doing well in the 70s before she came to power. Power shortages, coal strikes, general strikes, rotting rubbish in the streets, 3 day work weeks etc. The trade unions ruled the country not the politicians. Maggie had her faults but at least she put the country back on track for a while. I'm not saying she was perfect but she had iron balls and back bone and that's what the country needs right now. |
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| Gail.C | 9 Mar 2010, 08:12 AM Post #193 |
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Actually I take it all back, we need a proven businessman or women at the helm. These numpty politicians are all academics with no real business experience. Blair was a lawyer (not a particularly successful one and could only manage a second class honours degree) and a former rock musician promoter which meant he was a good talker and will have you believe anything. Brown was an academic with a PHD in History and was a former television journalist. Oh that really qualifies him to run a country!!! We need Sir Alan Sugar to take the helm and cut all the fat from poorly run government services. Should save us a few bob as that's probably where most of the money went along with the silly wars we went to. |
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| Amanda & Simon | 9 Mar 2010, 01:16 PM Post #194 |
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Heh. Just want to see him wandering round Whitehall going "You're fired" to people? :rofl: I'm with OzTennis about Maggie Thatcher, though for quite different reasons. She was another one who talked the talk about reducing the size of the state but when it came to walking the walk... :no: The best you can say is that when she was in Downing Street it grew less quickly. Yes, she did have the most almighty mess to clear up when she came in and that crack she came up with about Labour governments all eventually running out of other people's money looks prophetic now (or again really). I don't buy into "the rot started there" stuff because I'd argue that the roots of it are far earlier. Some of the attitudes that contributed to the collective brain fade were formed in the 1930s, e.g. when some bright spark thought it was everyone's right to own their own home regardless of if they could afford it and even if that meant encouraging banks to make loans they wouldn't ordinarily do because of doubt that the borrower could repay by telling them the government would be the ultimate guarantor. That's whatever everyone is now calling sub-prime lending, and Thatcher wasn't even born when it was invented. But she didn't pull the plug either and some argue that she made it worse with the council house sell off - so much for the free market champion. Business needs to be either completely on it's own or nationalised. There's nothing wrong with the greed that OzTennis dislikes so much - well, obviously there is because it's a pretty unpleasant characteristic and I'm kind of with OzT there, but it's human nature for individuals to want the best outcomes for themselves. The real problem is that greed should be tempered with fear of it all going horribly wrong and instead governments hope to temper it with obedience to lots of rules in return for which they provide a tax funded safety net (explicit or implied doesn't matter because the change in attitude to risk is nearly the same). That fails partly because people can't keep track of all the rules and regulations and partly because they assume that as long as it's within the rules and regulation it'll all be okay..... right before they go off and do something very stupid. And partly that %#@&ing safety net of course. It probably doesn't matter whether a government deals with this by deregulating everything - and I mean really deregulating as in having absolutely nothing to do with it beyond the usual action in the event of theft or fraud or other actual criminal behaviour - or nationalising the whole shebang. The first would mean turning all business loose to prosper, survive or fail on its own with the essential point being that there will not be so much as a penny of support if they screw up and bankrupt themselves (for banks this mean guaranteeing nothing more than deposits, and possibly having a cap even on those). The second would simply be recognising that if government wants to say how a business should be run then the state really ought to just own it and be done with it. But almost all sit on the fence instead, and as with sitting on a real fence it's a constant effort not to fall off. Going back to the point about getting someone like Alan Sugar in charge and reducing the waste in poorly run government services, I still think there needs to be a huge rethink about what should even be government services. At the bare minimum I'd say the state should define and defend borders and provide defence for its citizens to live their lives as they want to, which in turn means some kind of border security force, a military to stop the place being invaded and a criminal justice system to deal with the internal bad apples. The military and police would also be the ones to turn to in a natural disaster which is the other thing that government probably can do better for its citizens than they can do for themselves. That's the bare minimum and I'm not saying that's actually desirable, just that without those things there might not even be a government or even a country at all for very long. Beyond that we have things that are highly desirable like education, healthcare, pension provision and so on, and I could argue for or against all or any of those and more. Most people want that stuff provided by the state which is fair enough. But then we get on to a lot of very questionable things such as the £50 billion a year cost of quangos. As I said before if they're doing something productive for who/whatever they represent then their funding should come from there instead of the taxpayer. If they're not doing anything productive at all then they no more deserve to keep their jobs than a banker who pissed away billions on buying up loans to people who couldn't possibly repay them. Either way the taxpayer shouldn't be picking up the bill and it's the first and easiest place to make big savings. It just needs a PM bold enough to swing a very big axe. Unfortunately none of the contenders this time around are so it'll probably be the election after this one or the one after that, and possibly also after the IMF has had to bail the country out again. Or when the schools are teaching Mandarin because China called in all the loans :'( Edited by Amanda & Simon, 9 Mar 2010, 01:17 PM.
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| Gail.C | 9 Mar 2010, 08:39 PM Post #195 |
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Some good points Simon. I agree business should be completely left alone. I'm vehemently opposed to nationalisation though. It's the quickest way of burning money and promotes government monopolies. It didn't work in Russia and it certainly won't work in the UK. The customers ultimately lose out due to high charges from lack of competition and to cover a high cost base from all the cash being squandered. Case in point, remember the exhorbitant fees BT used to charge before it was privatised and other telcos were allowed in to operate in the UK. The result after it was privatised and the telco market opening up was vastly reduced communication fees and advancement of technology to stay ahead of the competition. The problem with government services and nationalised companies is they set a budget and they have to spend it all by the end of the year or lose it. There's no incentive not to spend it all or reduce waste. In the business world it's the opposite. Strict budgets are set and if they are exceeded then management don't receive their bonuses. Well they shouldn't....however some fat cat CEOs still get something no matter how much the company earns which does need to stop. That's one of the reasons we need successful business people (excluding bankers based on their track record) to revamp government services and run them like proper businesses. Maybe Channel 4 should start a new reality TV show called 'Big Nanny State' starring Sir Alan Sugar firing all the wasters of public money. |
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| Gail.C | 9 Mar 2010, 08:49 PM Post #196 |
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Just read this interesting article about bankers from 5 banks refusing their million pound bonuses this year. Glad to hear it. http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=1024503 |
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| OzTennis | 9 Mar 2010, 11:48 PM Post #197 |
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There's just no black and white about the legacy of the Thatcher years (left wing New Statesman and the Torygraph): http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2009/02/margaret-thatcher-mrs-labour http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/themargaretthatcheryears/ |
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| brady bunch | 10 Mar 2010, 01:00 AM Post #198 |
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Interestingly Kim there was a Channel 4 series about a guy called multi millionair self-made businessman called Peter Robinson who was sent in to both the NHS and some nursing homes to see how they could be improved. The observations he made were that there was an institutionalised approach to problem solving and a real feeling of "why change it when we've always done it this way", despite their way not actually working. He immediately identified some of the management just wasn't working efficiently and thinking outside of the box ie, there wasn't enough post-op areas so patients were held up whilst patients recovered. Robinson discovered a store room and got it made into a recovery room and over a period of time, turnaround times improved a lot. When he went into old folks homes so many of the residents were just left in corners and staring at walls. He went to another nursing home where the place was being run like a domestic home ie, residents being encouraged to do sewing, cleaning up (where possible) and bits and bobs and they were soooo very much happier than their counterparts. Robinson took the managers of the "bad" home to see the "good" one and basically she decided that it was just too hard and she didn't bother. It finished with the home being shut and the final scenes were the old dears being loaded into vans and taken elsewhere - heartbreaking. I guess what I'm saying is that it may not be the numbers of managers at fault, rather, the quality and vision (or lack of) of them. Too many people have the sausage factory approach and I believe it is killing so many institutions. Sorry, gone off topic. As you were chaps! |
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| koalakim | 10 Mar 2010, 07:17 AM Post #199 |
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That is probably the problem of a lot of the Gov, NHS and other businesses - this is how it's always been done so no need to change and I guess something like the NHS is such a huge beast how do you go about changing it all. As you say it's too hard so people don't bother - after all it's not their money they are spending and as the British public never say anything (i.e. vote!) then it just goes on and on. However, when people do try to change things such as Obama and now Kevin for heath systems then everyone is up in arms about it. I haven't had chance to read all of the posts in depth as have been busy out earning a cent or two all weekend (and getting very wet!) but looks like the pound has dived again as there was a poll in the Sunday Times saying it's looking like a hung parliament at the moment. The trade balance widened in the latest figures so the weak pound hasn't helped there then but retail figures were up in February which was good news and can't remember if it is business or consumer confidence is up. So for every good bit of news there is some bad but from reading the currency blogs at the moment it is definitely the political turmoil at the moment causing the problems. So there isn't going to be much improvement until after the election and it may get even worse until whoever is in power tackles the mounting debt. I feel rather sick that we didn't now change everything at 1.80 but the week we brought the last lot over it was on the climb again but it's scary to think that it has now lost 15 cents in the last couple of months. We didn't think it would go any lower than 1.70 did we? So we really don't know what to do now - I'm sure the pound will rise again but if the UK produces the next quarter as negative on top of everything else then I can't see any improvement for ages. Arghhhhhh.................. I'm now feeling lucky that we brought it over at 1.80 so heaven knows what all you people who got 2.50 must be feeling! |
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| Gail.C | 10 Mar 2010, 09:48 AM Post #200 |
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Based on the rate, I reckon we'll never sell our house and bring the money over. We've got to start from scratch now and it'll be many years before we will be able to buy. I rationalise it as thinking our lifestyle is better here and we'll probably live longer with the outdoor life and sunshine. At the moment I'd rather be here renting than be in cold, depressing UK in my lovely big house. You only have one life and you can't take a nice house with you after you've gone. By thinking this way I've stopped being depressed now!!! The good news is we couldn't really afford this month's trip to the UK but we're going anyway and the exchange rate is going to give us much more spending power. So there is a little silver lining for us at the moment anyway. Oztennis - My point about Maggie is that she was such a strong character, refused to be bullied by anyone and didn't do and say things just to be popular and win votes. The UK needs someone like her not re-adopt her old policies. |
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