Benefit Scroungers?

The term benefit scroungers came up at today’s excellent PUMA meeting at The Asturias. (Torrevieja) This being a reference to comments made by highly placed Spaniards about fellow citizens who exercise their right to re-locate to OUR country’s Mediterranean coast. (Europe is now a nation).

One wonders; do Floridians in America refer to neighbours who hail from say Nebraska or Wisconsin as scroungers? God forbid the Americans should be more civil than Spaniards.

I would remind certain Spanish commentators that tens of thousands of Spaniards, for business, social and educational reasons, choose to live in the United Kingdom. There they are treated equitably in all areas of life, including FREE access, without discrimination, to all the services provided by the British health service.

It is unthinkable that any Briton would refer to Spanish users as parasites. Fellow Europeans are unfailingly treated as honoured guests. The British make excellent hosts to fellow Europeans.

It would be absurd for Spaniards living in Britain to be treated as kaffirs in apartheid South Africa; as second-class citizens. The British who live in this region of their Europe, to which they have provided enormous subsidies through EU governance, are not parasites; they are assets. Remember that when you drive on roads built by the taxes of your northern European fellow citizens.

I write as an Irishman whose father fought bravely at the Battle of Jarama during the Spanish Civil War; and who buried scores of his multi-European comrades there and at other Spanish battlefields. My mother was a friend and correspondent of Dolores Ibarruri (la Pasionaria). You didn’t discriminate against fellow Europeans then.

To a man we love your country, respect your traditions, and share your pride in your nation’s great achievements. Please don’t spoil it.

And I speak as a Welshman, whose forebears fought and died during WWI and WWII, and whose uncle fought in Benghazi and Suez only to come back to the UK and get run over on a zebra crossing, less than a week after being de-mobbed, by a car being driven by the local chief of police, and the passengers were a desk sergeant from the same local constabulary and a local judge!!!!

My uncle was dragged for over 200 hundred yards under the vehicle before they came to a stop, and the said occupants of the vehicle claimed that he had stepped out in front of them, 300 yards further down the road than the vehicle had stopped!!!!

And they got away with it!!! So don't talk to me about the British Justice System, nor the British 'Bleeding Liberal Heart' Social System!!!!

Yes! The Spanish are correct!!!!

At least in Spain you must pay into the Spanish State before you can take out!

The amount of state scroungers that purge so much money from the UK Government coffers every year, without any intention of actually working for a living.

And in that I am just talking about the lazy S.O.B's who scrounge of the UK State system who are themselves UK citizens, and who have never, ever given anything back to the UK... other than a massive, public tax bill just to house and feed those lazy, good for nothing @_sh___s!!!! Those who have never worked, and never want to work!!!!

Mind you, if you are an EU citizen, you have equal rights to transcend UK shores and then demand to be housed, clothed, fed... need I say anymore?

How many EU citizens have done the same because the UK is such a soft target????

And don't say that haven't, or they can't... because they can and have... how????

Because they arrive in the UK stating they have a job and/or housing, and then the job and/or housing does not materialise, so they then need to claim Social Security to house and feed them.... but there never was a job and housing for them in the first place!!!!!

So, if you are a EU citizen, go to the UK... they will feed and house you for nothing, and you have to do nothing for it... other than become like so many UK citizens... a unemployed scrounger who wants, and gets, the same!!!!!!!
 

Technoape

Could quite be that is the reason why most hard working tax payers leave the UK. What with the benefit scroungers, endlessly knocking kids out for the tax payer to support, then to train the offspring in the fine art of how to beat the system, yes their are generations of them.

In my local paper this week was an article concerning a widow pensioner who had worked all her life, scrimping for years to get by, using all her savings to make ends meet, to later be told she was entitled housing and council tax reduction. Over the said period of time she had over paid by £20,000 was told she can only claim back 3 months overpayments. It seems that people are more informed from distant shores.

No wonder so many leave the UK.    

I agree whole heartedley with Roddy1,

England, the UK, Great Britain, is not the Great and has not been for a very long time......a laughable "Justice System", a ridiculous immigration system, a health care system where you have more chance of contracting something more serious than your original ailment and a governement who has consistently hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.....

It is 8.00am grey and overcast (again) on the Costa Del Sol, but I would not swap it for my "Homeland" in a million years......

Excuse me! I am horrified to find that this post has been hijacked by those opposed to (presumably) non-European immigrant access to the UK's benefit system. If that is a problem to you; and I am not in disagreement with your sentiments, then please start a thread of your own. Don't commandeer mine. Please! Please!

This thread, started by me, expressed the indignation many of us feel that legitimate European residents who have paid our dues from which Spain has benefited - at a profit, are being described as scroungers. It has got sweet f.a with non-European immigrants enterng and accessing the British benefits system.

Please! Here is a suggestion for a thread tof your own. 'I oppose non-European immigration into the UK and their accessing the benefits system'.

Leave our thread alone. Start your own!

Hi Mike

No problems, Roddy; it is I suppose easily done as it is such an emotive subject in which opinions run from strength to strength.

:o)

Please accept my apologies too Mike, I certainly did not intend my comments to come across like that, and maybe mis-read your original post wen I read it this morning.

Sam

Aww! You're a well mannered lot; far better than the other forums!

Gosh, Mike, could have done with you long ago on a few other threads!  Put them in their place!! 

Mike, I think I need to make you a moderator on here!

With regards to your post, I have only seen this a couple of times here.  Some friends of mine when they go to the hospital in Marbella they always make them use their private health care, instead of treating them for free on the state...and they don't get any preferential treatment for it!

I don't know of any other cases. 

Justin

Thanks for the compliment, Justin. As earlier mentioned in passing EOS posters tend to be a very civil lot; remarkably self-disciplined and restrained; especially compared to other forums where posters, sheltering behind anonymity, can be most disagreeable.

On Spanish health matters there is a definate patient apartheid that merits a thorough investigation. Where can we find an investigative journalist when one needs one? Fortunately I am pretty well connected through PUMA 22; a health lobbying group near Torrevieja. I am sure they would welcome the opportunity to apply pressure to other parts of Spain. It would certainly up the anti on those in the health service who seem to fly their operation by the seat of their pants.

If similar selectivity was applied on the basis of race rather than to less problematic nationality and status, at present a no-mans-land, there would be international outrage expressed.

Justin/Jan & Mike

Just like to say manners & politeness cost nothing and if someone is wrong it is better to admit one's fault to than to deny it!   

Pity it is not observed by more members on here. 

I just received this rather nice e-mail from a Spanish gentleman. I thought it interesting enough to share and in a way, revealing.

DEAR MR WALSH:

MY NAME IS THOMAS JUAREZ AND I AM SPANISH. I READ YOUR LETTER ON THE COSTA CALIDA INFORMER THE OTHER DAY AND I MUST SAY THAT I AGREE WITH WHAT YOU SAID, BUT THERE IS SOMETHING YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT SPAIN. BELIEVE OR NOT SPAIN IS STILL A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY.

BUT NOT EVERY ONE BELIEVES THAT BRITONS ARE PARASITES, THE MAJORITY OF THE SPANIARDS BELIEVE THAT BRITONS HAVE HELPED A LOT THE SPANISH ECONOMY BUYING HOUSES AND SPENDING THEIR PENSION MONEY HERE BUT THEY DO NOT KNOW THAT THEIR HEALTH SERVICES ARE BEING PAID BY THE BRITISH HEALTH SERVICE AND THAT IS DUE TO A LACK OF INFORMATION AND IGNORANCE.

IN SPAIN FREE ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICE DOES NOT EXIST. BEING SPANISH ONCE I FORGOT MY HEALTH CARD AND THE PUBLIC HOSPITAL WAS NOT VERY KEEN ON HELPING ME, AFTER ATTENDING ME THE BILL WAS POSTED TO MY ADRESS RECLAIMNING THE MONEY THEY HAD SPENT ON HELPING ME AND I GOT INTO SERIOUS TROUBLE BECAUSE THEY WANTED CASH.

SPANIARDS CANNOT REMEMBER THAT THEY DRIVE ON ROADS BUILT WITH NORTHERN EUROPEAN TAXES BECAUSE THEY JUST DO NOT KNOW IT. IGNORANCE IS SAID TO BE MOTHER OF ALL HAPPINESS, AND THAT IS WHAT HAPENS HERE IN SPAIN, JUST FORGIVE THEM AND BE PATIENT. REMEBER THEY WERE STILL RIDING MULES 30 YEARS AGO.

GOOD LUCK