7 minutes ago, RayC said:

I spent 5 days there, which was 4 days too long for me. I thought that the food was terrible. Each to their own ...

Wrens, Rabbits, sun and sea, great place. 

I'm in the unusual position of having to return to the UK after about 21 years of living in south-east Asia.  During those 21 years I only made 2 trips to the UK for funerals, staying for just a few days.

 

I have now been living in the UK since early February and it certainly has been a shock to me ????  Here are just a few things that I have found different between the UK and Thailand, and not one of them in the UK is a positive:

 

- The cost of basic food is very high. 1.50 quid for a cup of tea in a cafe, 3.50 quid for a roll of sellotape, high prices for most foods.  When I go shopping in the supermarket I am that guy looking at the red label 'reduced' items! 

- The cost of accommodation is very high.  I refuse to pay 500 quid a month for a room in a shared house.

- Rates, electricity bills, water bills... crazy prices

- Homeless people everywhere, mostly seem either mentally ill or on drugs

- Huge numbers of people using motability scooters.  Some no doubt are very elderly, but the rest are either obese or lazy.

- Freezing cold weather!

- Large numbers of immigrants who do not appear to be educated professionals, and I doubt whether they are all genuine refugees either.

 

In short, what an expensive dump!!

 

4 minutes ago, simon43 said:

I'm in the unusual position of having to return to the UK after about 21 years of living in south-east Asia.  During those 21 years I only made 2 trips to the UK for funerals, staying for just a few days.

 

I have now been living in the UK since early February and it certainly has been a shock to me ????  Here are just a few things that I have found different between the UK and Thailand, and not one of them in the UK is a positive:

 

- The cost of basic food is very high. 1.50 quid for a cup of tea in a cafe, 3.50 quid for a roll of sellotape, high prices for most foods.  When I go shopping in the supermarket I am that guy looking at the red label 'reduced' items! 

- The cost of accommodation is very high.  I refuse to pay 500 quid a month for a room in a shared house.

- Rates, electricity bills, water bills... crazy prices

- Homeless people everywhere, mostly seem either mentally ill or on drugs

- Huge numbers of people using motability scooters.  Some no doubt are very elderly, but the rest are either obese or lazy.

- Freezing cold weather!

- Large numbers of immigrants who do not appear to be educated professionals, and I doubt whether they are all genuine refugees either.

 

In short, what an expensive dump!!

 

Where is that location ?

18 minutes ago, Mac Mickmanus said:

Where is that location ?

Blackpool.

Inflation has gone back up over 10% again.

 

 

On 3/20/2023 at 3:38 PM, youreavinalaff said:

Did you do the jobs search? Thought not.

The search you propose would tell us nothing about the state of the job market as a whole or how many high paying jobs there actually are.

 

On 3/20/2023 at 11:29 PM, youreavinalaff said:

I doubt very much there are government statistics for the month of March, which is the month I used when doing the job search.

So, can you point us to the data on totaljobs that compares current jobs to some point in february? I couldn't find any.

 

How to gaslight the British public part 2.

 

We are constantly told that the UK has the highest growth rate in the G7 especially on PM's question time by Softie Sunak. From Office of National Statistics.

 

Office of national statistics show that the UK’s GDP growth between the final quarter of 2019 (pre-pandemic) and the final quarter of 2022,
 was the lowest in the G7, at -0.8%.

This means the UK is the only G7 country in which the economy remains smaller than it was before the pandemic.
 For comparison, the US GDP grew by 5.1% over this period, with the second-worst performing economy, Germany, growing by 0.2% between Q4 2019 and Q4 2022.
In summary.

High growth is true when comparing the growth in annual GDP between 2022 and 2021. However, when comparing quarter-on-quarter growth in 2022/2023 to date, the UK is among the worst performing in the G7.