Tuesday 18 March 2008

Brits Abroad

I have just spent a week in Tenerife in constant warmth with day time temperatures varying between 22 and 25 degrees. My wife and I have opted for this March holiday for the last few years because we can always guarantee the temperatures in the Canary Islands at this time of year.

What struck me this year however, was the sheer number of Brits who actually live on Tenerife. They are everywhere, running taxis, cafes, restaurants, hiring out apartments and generally living a very nice life in the sun.

Satellite television brings the English lifestyle into their homes and the English papers arrive regularly each day delivered to English style supermarkets which stock all the English products interspersed with Spanish and German food as well.

The English language is common everywhere and so here we have a superbly relaxed life style lacking nothing of English news and yet a million miles away from the misery heaped on so many by Gordon Brown and his cohorts.

The streets are shiningly clean, graffiti is non existant, the police motor cycle patrols are highly visible even along the proms and the collection of rubbish puts the emphasis on the householder. It is the latter which is so simple. Stragetically placed in each area, usually on a street corner are the 'Basura' (Rubbish) bins. They are numerous and appear to be emptied every night. They are all under cover so that rubbish does not smell or blow around and there are also convenient bottle banks. I cannot believe the fuss that the local councils in this country make about recycling.

It is the social atmosphere which is so refreshing because real English people can enjoy a real English lifestyle without any of the Marxist politically correct crap which we endure on a daily basis.

I arrived back to a drop of 18 degrees and a post bag which included an annual Council Tax bill for almost £1400. The councils lecture everyone on recycling and then produce bag fulls of socialist propaganda attempting to explain how they can waste so much money on so little! I don't mind the Fire Service contribution but a non existent Police Service is costing me way too much. The rest is a scandal when one compares the reduction in services which we have all suffered in the last decade.

2 comments:

bee16a said...

Tenerife is not the only place. I live and work in Istria in Croatia, much nearer than Tenerife. We too, have low crime, clean streets, people who say hello to one another in the streets instead of avoiding eye contact and looking nervously away.
Restaurants are good, inexpensive and often serve food that was caught or grown by the person serving! Most of our food is local, not flown half way round the world first. It actually tastes of something.
Streets are clean because Croatians are conditioned to not throwing stuff on the ground. Toilets in cafes are clean, unlike most British pubs where you hardly need to ask where they are as you can smell them first!
UK pensions can be taken in full, tax free here. Throw in some gorgeous countryside and you'll know why I'm glad I escaped from the UK.
We even have an online land registry that lets me check property before I sell it.
peter.ellis@croatiapropertyservices.com

bryboy said...

Tks for that because I have never given Croatia a thought! However enlighten me about the climate because I have always believed that the Canaries are the only place I can go and guarantee over 20 degrees in March! I have studied German and Russian but is there a language problem for the average Brit in Croatia?