Why we left the UK

You know I don't consider myself old at 56 though of course I guess many 'bloggers' will. I don't consider myself old fashioned, stick in the mud, spoil sport, prudish or any of the other attitudes I used, in my younger days, to think older people had. I've been around a bit, some service life, some business life both at the bottom and at the top. A social life that consisted of a pint (if I could afford it in my earlier days) at my local and really good dinners at good hotels and guilds in London with some well known people. Quite a mixture of life and experience.

5 years ago, almost to the day my wife and I ran away from the UK to Spain where we now live in a very small cheap old 'Finca' with 5000 sq mtrs of land, dogs, cats, chickens, ducks, a horse etc etc. Life is wonderful! Don't get me wrong we haven't reverted to nature completely we live close enough to the towns to still enjoy a good social life but we live day to day quietly.

Why did we leave the UK? Well it wasn't just for one reason it was really a combination of many. Money and the cost of living in the UK was getting depressing. The social and society aspects were getting worrying (more about that later). We had just come back from Australia with its laid back attitude and immediately found the UK expensive, upsetting and disturbing. So it was many things that caused us to leave and from here we have been watching what is happening and worrying about our family and the future for the UK.

Now I am not even sure that blogs or internet articles work, with millions out there the chances of this being read are pretty slim. It is however difficult if not impossible to see what is happening from the inside and if this article opens even one persons eyes and makes them think about the current state of the UK then it will have succeeded because from little acorns huge trees grow!

Let's start with a question, have you ever heard the term the silent majority? Who the heck are they, up until recently I couldn't quite figure it out but suddenly the answer came to me. You can basically divide the country up into three distinct groups, the poor, the workers and the rich. This is definitely not about class, it's about groups! The poor and the rich are the smaller groups but unfortunately, particularly in the case of the poor they are growing at an alarming rate. Guess which group is the silent majority, the workers, since many of them probably don't have time to consider politics or anything outside their family and earning enough money to keep them comfortable and happy. I now realise that politicians rely on this and court the votes from the other two groups. In one case the promise of leaving their fortunes intact is probably enough to get a vote. In the other case the message is simpler, more money will be available for you without more effort on your part and guess who is going to pay for it. It is also unfortunately a fact that it is easier for 'politicos' to convince / attract a group which is, often, under educated, lacking in experience, often unable to speak the language fluently and in many cases only cares about their very 'local picture'.

Now it is my opinion that for anybody to be a politician they should be dragged kicking and screaming into the chamber and volunteers should be shown the door. This way we might end up with a chamber with a majority of people who just want to get out having done the job right, without self profit or self interest getting in the way.

So what is going wrong? Well the immigrants situation is the one usually put up first but I am not sure that is right. I think that it is rather the way it is dealt with that is the problem. In Spain they get many immigrants from outside Europe, particularly North Africa. Generally speaking border controls are lax but if an immigrant does get in, which many do, they get NOTHING repeat NOTHING from the state. Not surprisingly many move on, North through France and end up getting in to the UK which is far more attractive. Now whose fault is that, Spain for saying you are getting nothing here or the UK for offering such luxury........

On the other side of the coin legal immigrants provide a wealth of labour, skilled and unskilled and pay taxes to support the economy. Unfortunately many of them also end up in the silent majority trap.

Do gooders...

Oh now on this it could get emotive, how did we let this happen to us? How did we let this minority of self seeking, self opinionated people get so much exposure and influence. How did we let them wreck our society to the point where we really no longer have any control over our own lives. How did we let them tell us that our children cannot be given a parental 'loving' smack or strongly admonished? How did we let them tell us that competition is bad for our children? How did we let them undermine the justice system to the point where the criminal often has more rights than the victim. How did we let them, in a country which prides itself on free speech, subvert it to the point where many things cannot be said even in humour. We are told what to eat, what to do, what not to do, what exercise to take and where to go. All this we are told is in our best interest. The list is endless and the result is clear for all to see if they take a step back and look. What has happened to self determination!

From the outside the UK is starting to look as if it is becoming a police state but is it really? We are certainly seeing more cameras which generate easy revenue, but probably less police patrols. We are seeing biometric passports and tighter controls at airports. We are seeing armed police more and more. We are seeing tighter controls on the populace in many different ways, mobile phone tracing, credit cards etc. When this is questioned or discussed the usual answer is something to do with terrorism.

Ok there is another way to look at this. Terrorism obviously exists and only a fool would deny it. However if a government wants to take tighter control of a populace without too much fuss a simple way to do it is to instil a 'fear factor'. Once a fear factor is in place getting the populace to accept or even ask for tighter controls is simple! So back to the statement about police state. When police officers of high rank are starting to question things one has to consider whether police state or state control are the operative words. Somewhere there is a balancing act here and one has to ask if the balance is being maintained or if the problem is being used for another purpose. I am not going to comment on this any further but simply leave you to think about it.

To quote the urinal joke 'the future of the UK is in your hands, throw it away'. Let us hope it is not true. If the silent majority could suddenly become the voracious majority the politicians at the next election would have a real hard time and the joke certainly wouldn't be true.

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