Addickted - That is way off from my experience. In Spain the vast majority of older expats have no health insurance and don't pay taxes there. If my memory serves my right if you are retired you are eligible to all the services but if you are not you must pay, although often this is overlooked. I would also say that in Spain most people are in the 50 to 65 bracket and are not yet retired but living on savings/house sold in UK proceeds.
Generally if you're an ex pat you will have private health insurance anyway and if you have kids they're either dual nationality or the company you work for pays for their education. So sillly statement that you need to be 'very rich'
Ex pats returning has always happened and always will - I bet more have left these shores than returned over the past few years though. Most of the 3m ex pats are retired anyway.
So telecoms companies 'may' put up their prices? Another 5p a minute on your 'phone call really isn't a constructive arguement for not voting for a particular party.
American Coorporate arseholes don't pay their taxes anyway, so what's the difference?
Will you be voting today Ormi?
Utterly wrong on so many levels.
As far as mobile roaming charges go we are absolutely NOT talking about a "few pence." Before the EU stepped in the telcos would let users unwittingly run up massive roaming charges when overseas and would DELIBERATELY not tell them or even alert them - and then send them a bill for £1,500+ when they got home.
The EU stepped in and by law the telcos have to cap your roaming bill at £50 unless you authorise them otherwise - saving lots of consumers from getting ripped off for hundreds if not thousands of pounds. Not a few pence and you can only do that if you have a pan-continental body.
As for the American corporates the EU is now collaborating on how to enforce a new tax regime and bring them to the table, this is a huge advantage because Google et al cannot ignore what is the worlds biggest trading bloc, it would be commercial suicide.
If the UK tried to take on these companies alone it would have very little leverage at all because it's a small market of 60 million - compare that to 500 million people in the EU and 350 million Americans and 1 billion Chinese. The UK is small fry by itself.
As for the health issue, there are people on this site who have lived in France and Spain, to name but two, who could very well tell you that they did not take out private insurance for health care when they lived there because it was totally unnecessary as they were eligible for the normally excellent state system.
In fact, if you look into the issue, you will see that the Spanish government in particular have complained very strongly about the number of old aged British pensioners living there to whom they are legally obliged under the EU to provide free health care - a very expensive commitment.
I spend a lot of my time up in Asia on business and I can't tell you the number of times that government ministers or officials from countries like Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia tell me that they wish they had a body like the EU because as things stand they are totally at the mercy of a fast rising and increasingly belligerent China.
The EU is imperfect for sure but if a country like the UK walks away from it and gets sandwiched between the Yanks and the EU then there are going to be massive implications. Who will the Yanks or Chinese want to deal with the person in 10 Downing Street or the one in Brussels? It's a no brainer.
But I guess, if we are fair, people like you and I and @Cordoban Addick know all this because we have made the move from the island. When you move away you see and feel Britain's strengths, and weaknesses, more clearly. Like I said to @Addickted way back in this thread, people in the UK have many good reasons to be unhappy but most of these reasons can and should be addressed by national government. They are being fed a line by people like Farage.
Generally if you're an ex pat you will have private health insurance anyway and if you have kids they're either dual nationality or the company you work for pays for their education. So sillly statement that you need to be 'very rich'
Ex pats returning has always happened and always will - I bet more have left these shores than returned over the past few years though. Most of the 3m ex pats are retired anyway.
So telecoms companies 'may' put up their prices? Another 5p a minute on your 'phone call really isn't a constructive arguement for not voting for a particular party.
American Coorporate arseholes don't pay their taxes anyway, so what's the difference?
Will you be voting today Ormi?
Utterly wrong on so many levels.
As far as mobile roaming charges go we are absolutely NOT talking about a "few pence." Before the EU stepped in the telcos would let users unwittingly run up massive roaming charges when overseas and would DELIBERATELY not tell them or even alert them - and then send them a bill for £1,500+ when they got home.
The EU stepped in and by law the telcos have to cap your roaming bill at £50 unless you authorise them otherwise - saving lots of consumers from getting ripped off for hundreds if not thousands of pounds. Not a few pence and you can only do that if you have a pan-continental body.
As for the American corporates the EU is now collaborating on how to enforce a new tax regime and bring them to the table, this is a huge advantage because Google et al cannot ignore what is the worlds biggest trading bloc, it would be commercial suicide.
If the UK tried to take on these companies alone it would have very little leverage at all because it's a small market of 60 million - compare that to 500 million people in the EU and 350 million Americans and 1 billion Chinese. The UK is small fry by itself.
As for the health issue, there are people on this site who have lived in France and Spain, to name but two, who could very well tell you that they did not take out private insurance for health care when they lived there because it was totally unnecessary as they were eligible for the normally excellent state system.
In fact, if you look into the issue, you will see that the Spanish government in particular have complained very strongly about the number of old aged British pensioners living there to whom they are legally obliged under the EU to provide free health care - a very expensive commitment.
I spend a lot of my time up in Asia on business and I can't tell you the number of times that government ministers or officials from countries like Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia tell me that they wish they had a body like the EU because as things stand they are totally at the mercy of a fast rising and increasingly belligerent China.
The EU is imperfect for sure but if a country like the UK walks away from it and gets sandwiched between the Yanks and the EU then there are going to be massive implications. Who will the Yanks or Chinese want to deal with the person in 10 Downing Street or the one in Brussels? It's a no brainer.
I don't think anyone is going to argue that lower cost mobile roaming charges are a bad thing but the amount of times I hear this quoted as a benefit of the EU is completely at odds with it's significance. It's like arguing that the absurd and muddled EU cookies law (that requires any website using cookies to advertise the fact) is a reason to leave the EU.
With the Tax avoidance stuff for big companies, I'd agree that this is an area that the EU might be able to make a difference as it is something that will require multi national cooperation. It's contribution to the problem shouldn't be ignored however, it allowed Luxemburg (net beneficiary of EU funds, former President favourite for European presidents role and generally seen as one of the kingmakers in Brussels) to set itself up as a tax haven within the Free market and the Amazons of this world promptly diverted all of their transactions through it in order to avoid the higher tax rates in the real 'market' countries.
I always thought the Health stuff was slightly more nuanced than is being portrayed with money often being reclaimed from the NHS or equivalents by host countries but am happy to be corrected if wrong on that.
I'd agree that trading/political blocs are going to be important in an increasingly competitive globalised world and there is a need for pan European cooperation. My fear is that the army of civil servants, who are the real levers of power in Brussels, are utterly committed to full federalisation and will attempt to push Europe towards this model regardless of whether this has democratic support or not.
As for Farage, he was always a pretty eloquent critic of the European institutions when all of the mainstream parties were unwilling to engage on the issue, as he's tried to get a foothold in Domestic politics he has become increasingly clumsy and objectionable but that doesn't mean the issues should be sidestepped.
For example, I'm always amazed at the number of people on the left who unquestioningly support an economic model that involves using mass immigration as a tool to supress wages at the bottom to increase competitiveness and profits at the top.
Perhaps if there were coherent voices in the mainstream parties willing to set out alternatives we wouldn't be talking about UKIP and would instead be having a rational debate about the best way forward for the country with regard to very real issues such as population growth and increasingly limited resources.
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote for.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
But I guess, if we are fair, people like you and I and @Cordoban Addick know all this because we have made the move from the island. When you move away you see and feel Britain's strengths, and weaknesses, more clearly. Like I said to @Addickted way back in this thread, people in the UK have many good reasons to be unhappy but most of these reasons can and should be addressed by national government. They are being fed a line by people like Farage.
But Prague surely to address these issues costs our national government money, money that it is squandering on the issues raised on this thread and elsewhere - a vicious circle.
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote for.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
I am not telling anybody how to vote, you go ahead and vote for the UKIP mob, I could not care less who you vote for.
I travel a lot all over the world but come back to the UK at least three tines per year for work and pleasure and you know what? I just don't see the doom laden 'Gone to the Dogs' place that so many on here seem to see.
Even setting aside my personal biases, what I see when I am back in London and the south-east is an amazingly vibrant and exciting country, I see a place that is genuinely a truly global city in which you could stay for a year and still only scratch the surface.
I see a place that may not be what it once was but still has so much to share with the world, so much to offer in so many different spheres from the arts to science and from sports to finance so why on earth would the British people want to take their bat and ball home and close the door on their neighbours?
Of course globalisation is rough and tough but you can't have it every which way, you can't buy a flat- screen TV from China for £100 quid and then complain we don't make things anymore.
The UKIP people can jump up and down all they like but they can no more stop this process than you could stop the incoming tides of the ocean.
The world is getting smaller and smaller and we will very soon be living very much in a global village where big corporate and Geo-political interests dominate - you really think Nigel Farage can stop any of this? He can't even control his nut bag councillors in Gloucester.
The only realistic way ahead for the UK is to look outwards not inwards, to embrace globalisation not seek to run away from it, to look for opportunities and not for barriers.
The UK is actually very well placed to embrace the globalised market, we have the advantage of having so many people from all over the world already as part of our country so why not seek to use that to go out into those markets in Africa, Asia the Middle-East and beyond and bring business and prosperity back to the UK?
Our company has already done this in our own small way, we have a Bradford raised Pakistani based in Riyadh (he speaks Arabic and Urdu) and bringing in lots of new business and a Rochester raised Nigerian based in Lagos doing the same - and helping to keep Britons employed in London.
There is so much opportunity on the table for the UK to grab but you can only grab it if you are looking outwards to those opportunities, you can't grab it if you are shutting the doors on the world and are paralysed with fear.
Ultimately Farage and company want to convince everyone that it will all turn out great if we could only turn the clock back to 1955 in Tunbridge Wells, but he can't and he knows it - and Tunbridge Wells in 1955 wasn't all that anyway.
But I guess, if we are fair, people like you and I and @Cordoban Addick know all this because we have made the move from the island. When you move away you see and feel Britain's strengths, and weaknesses, more clearly. Like I said to @Addickted way back in this thread, people in the UK have many good reasons to be unhappy but most of these reasons can and should be addressed by national government. They are being fed a line by people like Farage.
Thanks, much appreciated.
As the great CLR James once said, "What do they know of Cricket that only cricket know?"
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
Left these shores.....
I pay UK income tax.
I have a standard UK bank account
I have already qualified for the paltry UK state pension
I am on the UK electoral roll for national, and optionally this, elections
My Mum, brother and sister and their dependants are all in SE9
I have been consistently at the Valley for 5-6 games each season, be it FAPL OR third Division.
I listen to the Today programme on R4 every morning, PM most evenings, Newsnight last night, Andrew Marr on Sunday mornings. My browser home page is a UK national paper. No wonder I'm still not fluent in Czech! But I think I qualify as much as you, on the above basis to have a say in the direction of the UK.
I'm not saying this for any other reason that to show that the world has changed. It's not the black and white, in or out relationship with "Europe" that UKIP fanatics wish it to be, and it's not coming back.
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote for.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
So it's okay for you to make massive assumptions from your armchair with no basis in fact - most ex-pats I know here do not have private health cover, do not have dual nationality children and are not retired. I don't know of anyone at all whose company pays for their children's education. But because some of us have moved away, we have no right to cast an opinion on a country we lived in for many many years and still keep in regular contact with, where some of us may still maintain business interests and have family and friends that we care about living there?
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote for.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
So it's okay for you to make massive assumptions from your armchair with no basis in fact - most ex-pats I know here do not have private health cover, do not have dual nationality children and are not retired. I don't know of anyone at all whose company pays for their children's education. But because some of us have moved away, we have no right to cast an opinion on a country we lived in for many many years and still keep in regular contact with, where some of us may still maintain business interests and have family and friends that we care about living there?
Yep...still pay UK income tax, still repatriate funds to family members to reduce their burden on the State.
Perhaps it would advantageous to learn and incorporate people who have experienced other systems rather than ruling them inadmissable.
you are happily encouraged to disagree but please dont tell me I dont have a right of opinion.
''and Tunbridge Wells in 1955 wasn't all that anyway.''
But it is much better than Brixton 2014 or Bradford 2014 - you know this!
Brixton 2014 is bloody brilliant. Just moved there. Would much rather live there than Tunbridge Wells in 1955.
Although I wasn't alive in 1955, so I am only guessing what it is like - probably in much the same way you are making assumptions about Brixton and Bradford.
I can only hope the whole post was a satirical parody of Farage's "you know the difference" gaffe.
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote for.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
and Tunbridge Wells in 1955 wasn't all that anyway.
Jolly well said old boy, the 3G signal was appalling..........
Most of them can - but currently 'the European' question isn't. Which is why I asked the question about who I should vote for.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
and Tunbridge Wells in 1955 wasn't all that anyway.
Jolly well said old boy, the 3G signal was appalling..........
...and the only take-away was Mrs Chomundley-Warner's Tea Rooms!
Because they are inner or city areas, nothing to do with colour or race, the left wings argument to everything, why knock a nice area like Tunbridge Wells with the Pantiles and Nevill Cricket ground. Doubt if you have ever been there?
Because they are inner or city areas, nothing to do with colour or race, the left wings argument to everything, why knock a nice area like Tunbridge Wells with the Pantiles and Nevill Cricket ground. Doubt if you have ever been there?
I travel a lot all over the world but come back to the UK at least three tines per year for work and pleasure and you know what? I just don't see the doom laden 'Gone to the Dogs' place that so many on here seem to see.
Even setting aside my personal biases, what I see when I am back in London and the south-east is an amazingly vibrant and exciting country, I see a place that is genuinely a truly global city in which you could stay for a year and still only scratch the surface.
I see a place that may not be what it once was but still has so much to share with the world, so much to offer in so many different spheres from the arts to science and from sports to finance so why on earth would the British people want to take their bat and ball home and close the door on their neighbours?
I don't think anyone's suggesting 'closing the doors on their neighbours'. However, we can be selcetive when it comes to our friends, whether they live next door but one or in the next town.
The world is getting smaller and smaller and we will very soon be living very much in a global village where big corporate and Geo-political interests dominate - you really think Nigel Farage can stop any of this? He can't even control his nut bag councillors in Gloucester.
The only realistic way ahead for the UK is to look outwards not inwards, to embrace globalisation not seek to run away from it, to look for opportunities and not for barriers.
The UK is actually very well placed to embrace the globalised market, we have the advantage of having so many people from all over the world already as part of our country so why not seek to use that to go out into those markets in Africa, Asia the Middle-East and beyond and bring business and prosperity back to the UK?
This is exactly what UKIP are saying. However because of your blinkered view on their leadership you seems to not want to actually hear what they're saying.
Yes you're right it was a massive assumption, but I can only go the half dozen or so people I know who are ex pats living in Europe and all but one of them fall into the 'assumption' I hade and the one that doesn't has just taken up French nationality (he was half French).
I don't in anyway suggest you shouldn't have an opinion. My original post was asking just that. Yet all I got was negatives about Farage and UKIP. It might have been useful for some ex pat to say that the Lib Dems work in close partnership with the German Democrats or The Tory group block vote with the Portugese Free Thinkers or The Labour Group have tied up with the East European Socialist movement. But no one has. I don't know what any of them actually do or achieve in Europe. Their electoral communications don't say anything. So how do I decide?
Tell us how the EU works where you are. What to the Locals feel about how it's working and what can be done to make it more accountable and to a certain extent, a stronger Union?
where I am, the mood is exactly the same, just expressed in even stronger terms. boot out aliens. trouble is, how do you decide an alien from a highly skilled and desirable economic migrant?
Comments
As far as mobile roaming charges go we are absolutely NOT talking about a "few pence." Before the EU stepped in the telcos would let users unwittingly run up massive roaming charges when overseas and would DELIBERATELY not tell them or even alert them - and then send them a bill for £1,500+ when they got home.
The EU stepped in and by law the telcos have to cap your roaming bill at £50 unless you authorise them otherwise - saving lots of consumers from getting ripped off for hundreds if not thousands of pounds. Not a few pence and you can only do that if you have a pan-continental body.
As for the American corporates the EU is now collaborating on how to enforce a new tax regime and bring them to the table, this is a huge advantage because Google et al cannot ignore what is the worlds biggest trading bloc, it would be commercial suicide.
If the UK tried to take on these companies alone it would have very little leverage at all because it's a small market of 60 million - compare that to 500 million people in the EU and 350 million Americans and 1 billion Chinese. The UK is small fry by itself.
As for the health issue, there are people on this site who have lived in France and Spain, to name but two, who could very well tell you that they did not take out private insurance for health care when they lived there because it was totally unnecessary as they were eligible for the normally excellent state system.
In fact, if you look into the issue, you will see that the Spanish government in particular have complained very strongly about the number of old aged British pensioners living there to whom they are legally obliged under the EU to provide free health care - a very expensive commitment.
I spend a lot of my time up in Asia on business and I can't tell you the number of times that government ministers or officials from countries like Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia tell me that they wish they had a body like the EU because as things stand they are totally at the mercy of a fast rising and increasingly belligerent China.
The EU is imperfect for sure but if a country like the UK walks away from it and gets sandwiched between the Yanks and the EU then there are going to be massive implications. Who will the Yanks or Chinese want to deal with the person in 10 Downing Street or the one in Brussels? It's a no brainer.
If I could give that 100 posts, I would.
But I guess, if we are fair, people like you and I and @Cordoban Addick know all this because we have made the move from the island. When you move away you see and feel Britain's strengths, and weaknesses, more clearly. Like I said to @Addickted way back in this thread, people in the UK have many good reasons to be unhappy but most of these reasons can and should be addressed by national government. They are being fed a line by people like Farage.
With the Tax avoidance stuff for big companies, I'd agree that this is an area that the EU might be able to make a difference as it is something that will require multi national cooperation. It's contribution to the problem shouldn't be ignored however, it allowed Luxemburg (net beneficiary of EU funds, former President favourite for European presidents role and generally seen as one of the kingmakers in Brussels) to set itself up as a tax haven within the Free market and the Amazons of this world promptly diverted all of their transactions through it in order to avoid the higher tax rates in the real 'market' countries.
I always thought the Health stuff was slightly more nuanced than is being portrayed with money often being reclaimed from the NHS or equivalents by host countries but am happy to be corrected if wrong on that.
I'd agree that trading/political blocs are going to be important in an increasingly competitive globalised world and there is a need for pan European cooperation. My fear is that the army of civil servants, who are the real levers of power in Brussels, are utterly committed to full federalisation and will attempt to push Europe towards this model regardless of whether this has democratic support or not.
As for Farage, he was always a pretty eloquent critic of the European institutions when all of the mainstream parties were unwilling to engage on the issue, as he's tried to get a foothold in Domestic politics he has become increasingly clumsy and objectionable but that doesn't mean the issues should be sidestepped.
For example, I'm always amazed at the number of people on the left who unquestioningly support an economic model that involves using mass immigration as a tool to supress wages at the bottom to increase competitiveness and profits at the top.
Perhaps if there were coherent voices in the mainstream parties willing to set out alternatives we wouldn't be talking about UKIP and would instead be having a rational debate about the best way forward for the country with regard to very real issues such as population growth and increasingly limited resources.
Labour are saying sod all, the Tories have promised a referendum - should they get elected, Lib-Dems are strongly pro, but can't really tell me why (though according to the local Lib-Dem leaflet pulling out of Europe could cost Kent 420k jobs - which is, to put it politely, absoute bollocks.
This is a European election - not local or national. I need to judge if we're better out, just in, fully in or driving for a completely federal 'United States of Europe'.
All I keep getting is same old tired rhetoric, without the really important questions being answered.
I'm also not exactly enthralled by a few posters who have decided to leave these shores telling us what's best for the UK.
I travel a lot all over the world but come back to the UK at least three tines per year for work and pleasure and you know what? I just don't see the doom laden 'Gone to the Dogs' place that so many on here seem to see.
Even setting aside my personal biases, what I see when I am back in London and the south-east is an amazingly vibrant and exciting country, I see a place that is genuinely a truly global city in which you could stay for a year and still only scratch the surface.
I see a place that may not be what it once was but still has so much to share with the world, so much to offer in so many different spheres from the arts to science and from sports to finance so why on earth would the British people want to take their bat and ball home and close the door on their neighbours?
Of course globalisation is rough and tough but you can't have it every which way, you can't buy a flat- screen TV from China for £100 quid and then complain we don't make things anymore.
The UKIP people can jump up and down all they like but they can no more stop this process than you could stop the incoming tides of the ocean.
The world is getting smaller and smaller and we will very soon be living very much in a global village where big corporate and Geo-political interests dominate - you really think Nigel Farage can stop any of this? He can't even control his nut bag councillors in Gloucester.
The only realistic way ahead for the UK is to look outwards not inwards, to embrace globalisation not seek to run away from it, to look for opportunities and not for barriers.
The UK is actually very well placed to embrace the globalised market, we have the advantage of having so many people from all over the world already as part of our country so why not seek to use that to go out into those markets in Africa, Asia the Middle-East and beyond and bring business and prosperity back to the UK?
Our company has already done this in our own small way, we have a Bradford raised Pakistani based in Riyadh (he speaks Arabic and Urdu) and bringing in lots of new business and a Rochester raised Nigerian based in Lagos doing the same - and helping to keep Britons employed in London.
There is so much opportunity on the table for the UK to grab but you can only grab it if you are looking outwards to those opportunities, you can't grab it if you are shutting the doors on the world and are paralysed with fear.
Ultimately Farage and company want to convince everyone that it will all turn out great if we could only turn the clock back to 1955 in Tunbridge Wells, but he can't and he knows it - and Tunbridge Wells in 1955 wasn't all that anyway.
As the great CLR James once said, "What do they know of Cricket that only cricket know?"
I pay UK income tax.
I have a standard UK bank account
I have already qualified for the paltry UK state pension
I am on the UK electoral roll for national, and optionally this, elections
My Mum, brother and sister and their dependants are all in SE9
I have been consistently at the Valley for 5-6 games each season, be it FAPL OR third Division.
I listen to the Today programme on R4 every morning, PM most evenings, Newsnight last night, Andrew Marr on Sunday mornings. My browser home page is a UK national paper. No wonder I'm still not fluent in Czech! But I think I qualify as much as you, on the above basis to have a say in the direction of the UK.
I'm not saying this for any other reason that to show that the world has changed. It's not the black and white, in or out relationship with "Europe" that UKIP fanatics wish it to be, and it's not coming back.
But it is much better than Brixton 2014 or Bradford 2014 - you know this!
Yep...still pay UK income tax, still repatriate funds to family members to reduce their burden on the State.
Perhaps it would advantageous to learn and incorporate people who have experienced other systems rather than ruling them inadmissable.
you are happily encouraged to disagree but please dont tell me I dont have a right of opinion.
Why Brixton or Bradford?
Although I wasn't alive in 1955, so I am only guessing what it is like - probably in much the same way you are making assumptions about Brixton and Bradford.
I can only hope the whole post was a satirical parody of Farage's "you know the difference" gaffe.
You have my sympathy pal, did you use to live in Peckham?
If you're not being satirical, then I'd be interested to hear your response to AddickUpNorth's question:
I'd much rather live in Brixton than TB now, let alone in 1955. And judging by their relative house prices, I'm not the only one.
Because they are inner or city areas, nothing to do with colour or race,
the left wings argument to everything, why knock a nice area
like Tunbridge Wells with the Pantiles and Nevill Cricket ground.
Doubt if you have ever been there?
Tunbridge Wells, thought that would have been obvious,
regular on the Valley Express!
I know it's not all black and white - hence my original question.
But like Ormy, all you seem to be doing is just canvassing against UKIP.
Yes you're right it was a massive assumption, but I can only go the half dozen or so people I know who are ex pats living in Europe and all but one of them fall into the 'assumption' I hade and the one that doesn't has just taken up French nationality (he was half French).
I don't in anyway suggest you shouldn't have an opinion. My original post was asking just that. Yet all I got was negatives about Farage and UKIP. It might have been useful for some ex pat to say that the Lib Dems work in close partnership with the German Democrats or The Tory group block vote with the Portugese Free Thinkers or The Labour Group have tied up with the East European Socialist movement. But no one has. I don't know what any of them actually do or achieve in Europe. Their electoral communications don't say anything. So how do I decide?
Tell us how the EU works where you are. What to the Locals feel about how it's working and what can be done to make it more accountable and to a certain extent, a stronger Union?
I'd never say you haven't a right to an opinion. Indeed, I'm not sure I've heard it on this thread.
Perhaps my sentance about ex pats was a little crass :-)
I have been swung by the idea of Proportional Representation though.
where I am, the mood is exactly the same, just expressed in even stronger terms. boot out aliens. trouble is, how do you decide an alien from a highly skilled and desirable economic migrant?