Algarve, for those who don't know it ...

I know, the master of wandering off topic, like a Yorkshire Fog thats seen some Fescue that it wants to mate with but then meets Timothy on the way (only botanist geeks will get that bit)

I can put me managers hat on sometimes but I still like a cup of tea with the tea bag left in & 2 sugars with the lads as well.

 

Not cheap any more as most things are the same price as in the UK. Doubt if I would return as SA will go the same way as Zimbabwe eventually as Julius Malema will end up being president and that will be the end. Crime is very bad an we have lost a few good friends who have been killed in their own homes. The wife went back for visit 4 months ago and ended up being a victim of crime as they broke into the car. I am SA born and lived in cape Town, Johannesburg and lastly in Durban!
Agree though it is beautiful country. Just a pity that it will end up on a downward slide.

 

Why do people wish to criticise and even denigrate Britain and the British - i find many of the comments in this thread quite offensive and unnecessary.

Live and let live and treat others as you would wish to be treated,

 

Barnaby, You do not give much away in your profile
Though for starters
It is cold, wet, miserable, poor climate, and open doors to anyone who wishes to come here and abuse our benefit system
On Friday I got abuse from a Somali femal with eight children, who complained that we only gave her £28000 (twentyeight thousand pounds) last year, and her Range Rover was not big enough to take the children to school
I got into serious trouble for suggesting she ditches the Range Rove and hired a BUS
I then viewed on the News pictures of Somalia, where they move about in carts drawn by Oxen, Then again Somalis Kill two white people as the family did not pay the Million Ransom
AND WE ACCEPT AND PAY THESE PEOPLE ?

We accept everyone from the EU, the A8 and A2 COUNTRIES and pay them CHILD BENEFIT for the children left at home as it is £18 more a week than their Government pays them
We have THREE MILLION Unemployed Yet accept immigrants to take the jobs and pay them an additional £84 per week working tax ontop of their wages

They can not speak the Language yet they know how to claim benefit
Do you know how to claim benefit in Somalia ?
We provide Intepretors at £84 per call plus £1 a minute for each call they make asking stupid questions, Why was I twenty pence short this week in my payment, Yet they do not know how much they earned the previous week when asked

We are broke, we have no life worth living anymore
We can not emigrate as other countries need you to have a specific trade AND speak the language

You and I do not have long left to put up with this
I weep for my Grand children

I only hope that the money left to them will enable them to ESCAPE THE UK

Jack McHammocklashing

 

Oh dear Jack,what a sad miserably negative post,I feel for you.
What a sad miserable life you must lead .:WINK1:.

 

there are millions of british that live in other countries ... they too take advantage of the tax loopholes on offer

as for immigrants taking the jobs in the UK, the jobs are there for the taking, but many British refuse to work at the rates offered ....

I am a mechanical design engineer (ex south african) .... not much work in this field in the UK, so now I do gardening/landscaping just to get by

it's going OK, and loads of work from word of mouth ... I'm poor but reasonably happy

many umemployed in my village are even too lazy to mow their own lawns ... I do it for a tenner ... gardens are small and takes me 15 minutes to mow the front and back

we have farms on the outskirts of cambridge ... all/most workers are eastern european .... they do a fine job ... the unemployed in my village could walk to those farms in 5 min, but refuse to work there, and rather go to jobseekers every 2 weeks

most of the builders in my area are eastern european .... they do an excellent job at a fraction of the cost of UK builders ... in my small street, there are 2 houses currently having additions/renovations ... both of these home owners have contracted eastern europeans .... they even work in the rain, and at night with floodlights

so my friend, life sucks and you have to make the most of whatever you can .... life has taught me to stop worrying about what others do .... it's each one to their own

:(

 

Can this really be true, *dim*? Are the unemployed spending the largesse provided by working taxpayers on getting others to trim their lawns? Obviously 'poverty' is now defined not by whether you have shoes on your feet and bread to eat but whether or not you can afford a gardener. Still, it's good news for you. :D

 

When a lot of houses were being built in my village Mc Alpine employed a lot of Eatern Europeans to do a lot of the work and none of them followed Health and Safety rules and as most of them had none done any type of Apprenticeship in the building trade a lot of the work they did was shite and had to be redone by skilled British workers when they had finished the houses they were building on other sites.

This was ten years ago when it was a question of building as many new houses as fast as possible to try and keep up with demand,plus most of the British kids wasn't intersted in Apprenticeships in the building trade because they had been nambie pambied by their parents who would rather they went to Uni to get degrees that half of them would probably never use.

I read blogs from people who live all round the world and it seems to me that every country on the planet seems to have it's own problems with corrupt goverments and spongers so it isn't just the UK.

It seems idillic to go and live abroad in a warmer country but after paying tax and NIC all my life why should i go and live somewhere else where as a foreigner i would probably be treated as an outcast in the work place as they give their jobs to their own people plus if i needed medical treatment I would have to pay for it so in actual fact would be paying for it twice, over here and abroad ...

And another thing,the brits would pay someone £10 to cut a couple of tiny lawns that only took five minutes to do they would want their house windows cleaned inside and out for that price:D

 

When it come to employ staff for me only two kind of people exists...those who are willing to work and do a decent standard job (sometimes a brilliant job) for their money and
those who just want to sit on their *ss and exploit the employer and the customers, with no consideration for the consequences and welfare of the society.

I am only talking to the first type...

 

T'is true .... but they only call you to mow the lawns when it is 12 inches high and their neighbours complain ...

I do loads of these ... they phone when they need it done ... mowed 5 lawns on sunday

I have a strong petrol mower ... their flymos can't cope :o

I see several hedges that are getting way out of hand .... time to knock on some doors

sadly, when winter arrives, work dries out, so need to look at alternative jobs to do over the cold months

 

Awww Jack, I do hope you feel better about things soon, we all have our down times you have to really try to be optimistic that things will get better, not easy I know.

Val

 

Hang on mate.
This country has been overun by cheap foreign labour, the kind that moves around a lot.
The ordinary British worker needs a living wage, this bunch take the money and run.

Most farm labouring jobs have gone down that road and now the building workers are getting it in the neck.
Most East European building workers I have come across have been total rubbish, but you get what you pay for.
We have our own cowboys we dont need to import them.:D

I dont go along with all Jack says, but he does have a few good points.

I think having left a country that is declining as rapidly as SA is, this must seem like some kind of haven, until they sort out the crime that is.....................

First plane back and all that?:WINK1:

 

Quite a few live in my street. Yah-hoo!

 

I am truly sorry that this was a thread about where I live and the beauty of the country ...

It is very sad that some people came along who have never been here or know anything about the country but have so much to say about it .. I find that very sad as one person has never left the UK and the other only goes to 5* holidays all included for one week a year and never leaves the complex.

As this thread as gone as it has .. I shall delete everything I put up ... because nothing has to do with the Algarve.

Thank you to those who enjoyed it.