Expats? No thanks!

Now that the snow has reappear with a vengeance,I've started to think about how good it would be to emigrate to a country where the only thing to worry about is what shorts and sunglasses to wear.Only one thing stops me and that is the dreaded Expat.

I'm sure that you've all met one.

There you are,standing at the bar minding your own business,when suddenly you feel a presence next to you and the waffle starts something like this:
" I'm so glad we moved away from the UK.It's gone down the toilet back there you know"

The next thing you know,you have been subjected to a rant about how much better it is in ..... (insert the country of your choice).They then normally ask to borrow your newspaper,just to catch up on how things are going.

This is going to sound harsh,but if I was offered the choice of being castrated with a broken cider bottle or spending a night with an expat there is only one request I’d make.

Can you make it a bottle of Magners and give me a slug before you smash it?

Obviously there are some decent types who left Blighty for a bit of sun, but judging by the vast majority I’ve met, retired expats are disloyal, deluded, perma-tanned, bigoted, Considerably-Richer-Than-You bores, who whine constantly about a Britain that’s “gone to the dogs” when they mean “gone to the foreigners”. I’ve never understood why those who are keenest to leave Britain shout loudest about the need to stop people emigrating here.

Especially when most foreigners arrive with optimism and a desire to integrate, work and build a life for their family.

Most go to the Mediterranean filled with bitterness, and a desire to moan, sunbathe and build a wall around their Sky dish (so they don’t miss a minute of Britain going to the dogs).

Still, good luck to them. So long as I don’t have to sit next to them in a depressing Benidorm bar watching an EastEnders omnibus, I’m happy for them to spend their lives loathing the old country while fearing retrospective planning applications from embittered Spaniards. But I’d prefer it if they did so without sponging off British taxpayers, by claiming their new home isn’t hot enough. I assume that’s why 63,740 expat OAPs claimed £14million fuel allowances last winter.

While our poorest pensioners go without food so they can afford an extra bar on their electric fires, we’ve been handing over up to £400 payments to nearly 64,000 expat OAPs currently warming themselves in balmier European climates.

There are 5.1m Britons living in fuel poverty (defined as spending more than 10% of income on heating) and cancer patients under 60 have been refused this allowance during the harshest winter for 30 years.

Yet we freely subsidise expats lounging in the sun. It is, as the Taxpayers’ Alliance points out, economic madness to pay this with savage spending cuts round the corner. Worse than that, it’s immoral. The spongers will defend their greed by saying they’re legally entitled to the cash because they paid into the system while working.

But by their own, self-anointed standards of behaviour, they’re wrong, and they know it. This allowance was introduced to shield pensioners from cold British winters, not to allow people who are already warm to buy new sunbeds for their patio.

How can you claim from a system you turned your back on when you emigrated and took away the very spending power that keeps the system going.

How can you desert a country because you believe the benefits culture has spiralled out of control, then thrust out a grasping hand in these desperately stretched times when you’re snug as a bug in a Mediterranean rug?

No wonder this country’s gone to the dogs.