As a vegan, you can imagine the money I spend on food!! Keeping a supply of fresh veg and fruit in is so expensive...no cheap convenience meals...i easily spend £60 a week, and that's for me!! I ended up getting an allotment last year and its one of the best things I ever did - lots of exercise, outdoor space and FREE FOOD. I can't wait for spring so I can get out there and get planting, nowt better than harvesting a bucket of food and knowing it cost you about £1 in seeds and about 10lb in fat to produce!!
The royal family are a scam - they put nothing in (I don't agree with the tourism argument, if you took them out of the equation people wouldn't suddenly stop visiting London would they!) the wedding alone cost millions in policing, security, bank holidays (which I don't get off anyway, so I ended up being paid £10 an hour for 15 hours EACH bank holiday - you do the maths !)...they are vultures, and when people moan about immigrants and scroungers I say 'who can blame them, when one of the most recognizable faces (the queen) on the planet is also one of the biggest tax swindling scroungers ever?'
With regards to immigrants, I think more can be done, but I don't blame people for coming over here and doing it. Same as I don't blame people like Jimmy Carr for using offshore tax accounts. I blame the government, and its consistent failings to recognize that it is them that create these laws and loopholes for their OWN benefit, while passing the blame onto innocent people who are doing EXACTLY the same thing as a lot of the rich do in this country. If you lived in a country with no NHS, no jobs, substandard living arrangements, and had the opportunity to get a bus somewhere down the road in europe and have a pop at living a better life, you would! Sounds familiar? The English are leaving this country for Europe and further afield at a rate of knots as we, too, have found better places to live our lives in line with our own standards and aspirations. I have numerous friends relocating to Asia, particularly China, these people are young, work in business and are career driven. Opportunities for people like this do not exist in the UK any more, so they are doing exactly the same ! Yes you get immigrants come over and not declare things, have people take advantage of the NHS...but so do the English. And until we put a stop to it, ie but shutting loopholes, being more stringent, following up people on jobseekers, independent inquiry etc, then people will continue to do it, because it is very, very easy to do so.
This is the problem with being in the EU - we too are entitled to move where we want and seek out new places to live, just as Romanians are welcome to come here...problem is the things that make our country great are the things that keep us here - I for one would love to live abroad but I couldn't live without the NHS. I once looked into medical insurance in the USA and how it worked, and if I was to relocate there, I couldn't get medical insurance at all! The things that keep us here are the things that other people in europe might not have - a NHS, good quality of life, decent schools...and while I agree everyone should have free access to these, it means that the burden on our system to provide people with it is too much, and it means we ALL suffer as a consequence. What I think can be done - stop chasing imaginary oil in other countries, stop wars, trident...stop giving 'aid' to India and corrupt African nations (instead give money DIRECT to the people who need it, and cut out the corrupt middlemen - if this had been done years ago a whole load of African countries would have been lifted above the breadline already), and maybe put more into helping our neighbors in Europe to improve their own conditions so things are not so desperate that people feel the need to migrate across many borders into an unknown country and risk imprisonment, beatings and worse along the way.
Basically to cut a long story short I think the UK government, past and present, has a lot to do with this!
Another thing while I'm on the soapbox!! Is some laws being passed...such as repealing section 6 which is basically squatting laws...while squatters get a lot of bad press from the sensationalist media who love a good story about the middle classes being done over by the bad working classes, the majority of squatters are homeless, desperate and conscious in their choice of building to live in - 99% of squatters do not break into 'lived-in' houses but stake out buildings for weeks, or even months, do research as to who owns it, why it is empty etc and chose buildings that are derelict, unloved and unused. i bet a lot of people have lived on roads with squatters without even knowing, as 'good' squatters look after their environment and buildings, some even making home improvements, cleaning, sorting out the garden/gutters etc which is to everyones benefit. Now there are enough empty buildings in the UK to house all of the homeless, and countless more, as well as providing a free roof for those that need it, including immigrants.This would cost us NOTHING yes nothing, to just open a door. Yet the government chooses to cover buildings like this, brick in the windows and doors so access is denied, repeal section 6...then discourage people from sleeping rough by practicing washdowns on the streets of london (basically, they hose down people sleeping rough in the early hours if they are 'visible' enough - imagine someone hosing you down midwinter, all of your bedding and personal possessions wet!). It stinks of hipocracy and a lot of the 'answers' to the things on this thread are already in our hands - housing, food, tax, money, benefits, NHS...it just needs shaking up, and for someone to come in and stop brushing over and spending money on new things to look and see that everything we need is pretty much here.
Cut beurocracy. Cut red tape. tighten up on benefits claimants EQUALLY (new benefits forms - makes it harder to make a genuine claim and easier to scam!! what is that about!). Create jobs by renovating existing buildings and lands to provide a shelter for the homeless and needy and to provide low cost housing. And get rid of the tories
and the royal family
