Yes if I could I would live in Spain, but must work to pay mortgage.
Having just read this thread I am suprise and some of the comments made about the baby boomers. I am one and also one of seven children, parents worked hard (no sick pay or holiday pay then - no work no money) to move from council home.
If you look at my original post, I said specifically that it is the war generation who worked to rebuild the UK, and also them who instituted the welfare system that you dislike so much. They built that system because it was realised that people did not have live on the streets, starve and die of treatable illness whilst others did not. It was realised that Britain had abundant natural and man-made resources that could end this problem. Upon realising this, action was taken.
Excusus: Know what you mean about the mortgage, but don't let it stop you. I brought a flat down south before moving up here, I just rented it out and rent here, with a fully managed rental agent. You could do the same easily enough in Spain, and you can get some rock bottom rents in Spain right now. The rent from my tenant pays the mortgage and leaves enough over to keep aside for any repairs, and insurance premiums etc., and I just pay the rent on my place here as if it were mortgage.
Had normal schooling, college. Worked since 12 years old, paper round, helped on milk round, stacked shelves, worked on building site - onwards and upwards, never been unemployed in 37 yrs.
Well I'm happy for you, and you are very lucky to have grown up and live through an era when work was widely available (my mother told me similar stories from when she was growing up - got bored with her job, left it one day and got another one the next). But the current generations don't have that luxury, and there is no reason to persecute and dehumanise them for being born in the wrong era - hemmed in by de-industrialisation policies dreamed up by a previous generation.
Look at Liverpool, Newcastle, Glasgow, the Welsh Valleys, East London. Millions of good jobs in industry were destroyed long before me, let alone the current school-leavers, even got our NI cards. I was 5 years old when Thatcher and the NUM faced off, but even then it was clear what was going on. I don't blame individuals (except those directly responsible), but I will say that it was your generation who voted for these policies and allowed the destruction to continue, and who now blame the victims of the economic fallout for being "lazy" when they cannot find work in an industrial desert.
What about the youth of Greece and Spain? Is laziness really increasingly rapidly like some kind of epidemic, as unemployment has soared since 2008? Or is the problem perhaps not with the unemployed themselves, but with the self-righteous bastions of morality (the PP and PSOE) that sit in mansions and demand we throw ourselves under the bus for the sake of their sacred bottom line?
I do what I have to do and go where I have to go to earn a living. Nobody has given me anything, whatever I have I have earned. It seems today work comes second, now everyone what's a degree....... most leaving school when I left never went to university as it had to be paid for, normally by the parents. We got jobs and worked our way up.
Oh not the "I am an island of rugged individualism" argument. That goes back to the Depression era, when Hoover opposed FDR instituting the New Deal, believing that some mystical "Spirit of Rugged Individualism" would save the day. It was fiction then and it is now. No one in an industrialised first-world society can possibly *not* take something from anyone. You use electricity, use tap water, walk on a pavement, make use of road vehicles, take the train, went to state school, state college, visit a GP, and have probably taken prescription medicines and been in a government hospital, may well have an NHS dentist, probably (hopefully) don't carry a gun at all times, don't test your food before you eat it. Perhaps had extended sick leave from work, or paternity leave.
Is *any* of the above true? then you are scrounging off the government, my friend. All of the above involves state-subsidy, or was originally built, upgraded or made possible by state funding. But you pay taxes, right? Well, so do I - so how do I know that my sacred tax dollars aren't subsidising your lifestyle choices, and vice versa? Do you count exactly how much tax you pay on absolutely all your activities, and then calculate exactly how much tax revenue has been expended on the portion of services you use, including such direct and easy to calculate costs as the security accorded to you by intelligence agencies as you go about day to day business? No? Then how do you know for sure you aren't sponging off my tax dollars? Or that I'm not sponging off yours?
We don't, and quite frankly, it doesn't bother me if you are, and perhaps you should worry less about the reverse. Just like the other great apes, we are not solitary. We live in a *society* which by definition means collective effort, collaboration and co-operation. To make this far more efficient, to make it less inconsistent and random, and to allow us to get on with our own lives without having to constantly command, submit-to, beg, ingratiate or bestow favour on a multitude of others, we delegate the vast majority of this collaborative work to the indirect democracy of government. Humans have done this for thousands of years with great success.
My father gave me peice of advice......... work hard, harder and longer than the person working alongside you. First you will get noticed and secondly if things get bad you won't be the first to go.
I see no problem with this. If one has a job and wants to keep it, then it's good advice. Having a decent union is best. My grandfather always told me to always do your best to get in a place with a good union, otherwise you'll be "Used-up, then tossed out with the rubbish. You need a good union"
Get rid of the handouts, something for nothing. If finacial help is needed and the social helps out... then contibute by working for the money..... nothing for nothing. The Eastern Europeans seem find work in the UK, why can't the British.
No one gets anything for nothing from the state, unless you never purchase any goods whatsoever that incur VAT, duties or tariffs.
it's a tough life - get on with it. Love Spain by the way!!
I see what you did there, well done!