bobd22

Chris yes you are right re the JSA in the UK two types, means tested or the basic contribution based one which is now £71 per week for up to 6 months depending on contributions. The means tested 1 you get free prescriptions dental etc contribution based you don't. As for housing allowance well that's also not so straight forward. We have our daughter at home with us she gets very basic JSA allowance but gets nothing towards housing as she lives with us. So suppose as in Spain we are expected to subsidise her nothing towards her living costs. wife just made redundant as well but that makes no difference either. Only way daughter would be able to get anything for housing would be for us to kick her out and who's going to do that. Although again many people and those that make a living off the system have no such qualms. It has been said before no system is or can be perfect just have to take what help you can in these dire times. Can't speak about all of the UK but we are in the North East and work wise things are now getting quite dire up here and as I've said before that is not good for youngsters that want to work.

mikelincs

I fully agree, don't forget that Hong Kong was merely leased from China, and was never really British, Gib and the Falklands are British, even though other countries think they aren't. The people living there believe they are British, and have shown so in various referenda by a huge margin. As for Spain using force to take Gib, then as Spain and the UK are both members of NATO and the EU it would be impossible as both the EU and NATO would block it.

bobd22

Yes Dick fully agree with you much like Argentina is trying again with the Falklands, smoke and mirrors.

HBG

The credibility with the voters issue is what's dragging Europe down. Merkel has a problem with her masses who don't want to pay another penny to Greece, without understanding what's involved.

Similarly, UK voters don't want to pay anything towards the Eurozone, we're not in it, are we?

I listened to a Spanish demonstrator in Madrid arguing that she didn't want to pay anything to help the banks out.

I'm trying to imagine life without banks; impossible, isn't it?

alecalgo

My 'it could well happen' La Linea scenario is, in the end, a distinct possibility. Whether it'll be slow fused or fast burning will depend on the emergence of charismatic leadership of what the multitude of bored and work less Spaniards will come to believe is the only worthwhile and exciting game in town.
It'll be fast burning if the Spanish media suddenly gets all patriotic and a Daily Mail & Sun type alliance emerges and starts to pour forth anti-brit/gib 'let's sort it once and for all' patriotic vitriol .... the UK will then have to take the scenario very seriously .... as will a beleaguered Gib ! .....and uk expats in Spain.

cricketman

Actually the issue in Spain is more about the Spanish fishing rights around the rock which apprently are worth only about 50k per year

The PP are posturing as a smokescreen to the economic issues but I wouldnt think there is any support from the people. The issue is also being highlighted much more in the UK press than in Spain

bobd22

Yes in short, but without the Euro? something has to give shortly one way or the other and when it does you know what? the world will still be here. Whatever happens may be grim or should I say grimmer for some but life will not end.

Dick Dasterdly

In your dreams, Comrade.

Dick Dasterdly

Well actually the idea has always appealed to me, impossible as it may seem in this day and age.
There again I am just a country boy used to bartering, swapping, wheeling and dealing, whatever,..... the further away from the bwankers the better, ...taxmen as well come to that.
I imagine it would be a tad more difficult for the townies, but given time I'm sure they'd get the hang of it.

alecalgo

Friend ... your 'Repsol' takeover point is a red-herring ! Spain would in no way hold it against Argentina in the long term .... and it's the long term UK future that's at issue here. Not so much the future of the Falklands and the possibility of oil .... rather the future of the UK under the three threats of further Islamisation, Scottish breakaway and eventual EU breakup - when it will be every man for himself. So all I am advocating is a clear-the-decks policy ! Shed ourselves of the last of the ages-old external shackles in order to be the readier to withstand the internal shocks that are sure to come.
---
Anyway, do you really think that we will be able to hang onto the Falklands and Gib forever ? ... what's your time line ?? And the oil that you say may be found which will make the Falklands ever so 'useful' to us .... ? Not to us my friend; not with greedy China and again-to-be naval Russia looking on. Who could say that they'd not be ready in 20 years or so to do Argentina's foot soldiering in the field and in the UN (don't forget ... Putin's 6 year term will turn into 12.... and he has vowed to make his submariners a world wide force again). Anyway .... in this world of global entities, could you say, even if an ostensibly Brit company like BP got a hold of it for a while, that there'd be any drip-down usefulness in the oil to us ?
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Lastly ....do you really really think, now that we have mistakenly rid ourselves of our harrier force and it's carrier, leaving us with just the one miserable helicopter carrier, that the two so-called super carriers being built on Clydeside .... will ever, and I mean EVER, be equipped and ready to sail with the pie-in-the sky ever changing spec planes ? The expense will just be beyond us. Some on here reckon they will soon be seeing pigs flying in formation - well .... they will see many such formations before they see another working UK carrier equipped with the correct planes.
It'll soon be a no brainer ... we will have facing us the get-real choice of whether we should prop up yet more collapsing banks and employment. Of course the bitter corollary of such action will be that of finally having to scrap off our outdated pretensions, the next phase of Trident and mothball forever the two Carriers.

petew

We used to live near Hastings - the "Costa del Dole". Young people with no intention of getting a job living a relaxed life by the sea, all expenses paid by the taxpayer (including housing benefit for their rent of course). Most of them chose to be "homeless" rather than stay with their parents. The point was that they didn't have to be homeless to claim housing benefit.

alecalgo

Hi there Mr Dasterdly,
Yes, a useful exclamatory introduction to your counter argument. Unfortunately though your supporting details seem to have gone missing .... could it be that you found you would have too much trouble assembling them in an impactful way ...??

Dick Dasterdly

Humble apologies, but I thought your various scenarios were so short of common sense, logic and more obvious alternatives that I didn't think it deserving of serious consideration.

rugbymatt

Yeah, I mean its not like Spain needed the revenue from Repsol or anything eh?
You need to read up on your military information, we will have jump jets on our carriers after all and as I have said a dozen times already, the Dauntless is already in the South Seas and even by our most ardent critics it is considered one of the most advanced of its class in the world.
Believe what you want about the likes of China and Russia, we were told 20 years ago that Russia would rule the world, we have been getting told about how India will take over as one of the worlds greatest Economies and for just as long we have been told how powerful China is going to become but all these economies are in recession, China artificially controls its own currency at the cost of everyone else in the world and is beginning to come unravelled, Russia is one stop one way from a dictatorship and the other from all out civil war and the likes of Brazil, another emerging super power, is only as strong as the countries buying up its natural resources.
I could not care less about the "New World Order" but I also don't believe one bit of it!

bigglesworth

Dick be nice to the little chap. Imagine how disappointed he will be when he discovers Gib has been British for longer than it was Spanish. And Moorish for longer than both.