# Life ?



## sTTu (May 7, 2002)

Whats it all about ? ???

Why is everything so much fcuking hassle...stress, customers, stress, staff, stress, suppliers,stress, neighbours,stress, supermarkets,stress, people in general !

I'm sure that back in the 50's & 60's people were less healthy, died younger, had less money, but at least they (appeared) not to be consumed by this monster of a society that we seem to live in now that just seems to have everyone aggravated [smiley=argue.gif] [smiley=computer.gif] [smiley=dizzy2.gif] [smiley=freak.gif] all the time.

It's doing my head in !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sTTu


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## mike_bailey (May 7, 2002)

I'm with you on this one sTTu.

This was a very thought provoking article that I read at the weekend comparing our lot with Spain's.

_*
Personal view
Theodore Dalrymple counts the cost
of Britain confusing money with wealth*

We are often told that the British economy is doing far better than those of its European competitors, that it continues to grow while they stagnate and that our economy is now the fourth-largest in the world.

I have long-since learned to be sceptical of official economic statistics. I went to Romania after it had experienced many years of allegedly headlong economic growth but you still couldnâ€™t buy any potatoes there, or indeed any other food. Either the figures were bogus, or they didnâ€™t measure anything very important.

Having just travelled more than a thousand miles through Spain, I came to be sceptical of the alleged superiority of our economic performance. Either the figures are misleading. or we have managed the trick of failing to turn economic prosperity into a better quality of life â€"as the Spanish so manifestly have done.

Spain looks considerably more prosperous than Britain. It lacks the squalor that is so widespread in Britain. This is not just a question of sunshine: it looks better in the rain too. Its provincial cities are not ugly dumps, as so many British provincial cities are, the product of the efforts of our corrupt councillors, incompetent and stupid town planners. and brutal and tasteless architects. You have only to compare Oviedo with Coventry (cities of roughly the same size that both suffered terrible war damage) to understand the difference. Coventry is an appalling and now irredeemable eyesore, Oviedo is very attractive, even in its modem parts. One is brutal, and the other is civilised.

The road system is incomparably better in Spain than in Britain. In part, no doubt, this is due to Spainâ€™s larger size and smaller population: but when one thinks that, only a few decades ago, France could still condescend to Spain by saying that Africa began at the Pyrenees, this is a very startling change. Moreover, it isnâ€™t only the roads that are better:
the hospitals, too, and the medical care, are greatly superior to our own. Their hospitals are not, as so many of ours are, convened Victorian poorhouses with jerry-built additions, to accommodate dispirited queues of permanently pauperised people. They are modem and efficient, and have clearly had the kind of sums spent on them that it has been impossible for our decrepit system to spend in over 50 years. The Spanish, perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, now live several years longer than the British.

There are differences in public behaviour, too. I saw more litter in a hundred yards on my return to Britain than I had seen in a thousand miles in Spain (this is the most literal truth): and I couldnâ€™t help recalling the title of a book about the Spanish as seen through Nazi eyes, entitled lntrepidos y sudos, Intrepid and Dirty. But it is now Britain that is well and truly the dirty man of Europe.

Spanish youth. while disagreeably noisy, certainly does not behave with the hideous, determined vulgarity of British youth. It does not eat in the street, is not menacing in appearance. nor does it display the egotistical malignity of its British counterpart, that turns almost any social interaction into a potentially violent confrontation. Spanish youth does not look, nor has it any need or wish to look, brutal, aggressive, dangerous and filled with hatred.

The Spanish crime rate is a fifth of ours.

The superior conduct of the Spanish naturally translates into superior services: not an unimportant matter in an age when services are the backbone of an economy. In provincial cities in Spain, you can stay in an hotel for considerably less than in a British provincial city but there is simply no comparison in what you receive for your money. The fact is that you cannot run a decent establishment with British staff, because the kind of people you are likely to get are simply not up to the task, educationally or temperamentally.

The general level of culture is much higher in Spain than in Britain. It is true that it is the land of the inextinguishable television, winking in the corners of bars and cheap restaurants, and there is a fair amount of pop music in shops and elsewhere but even small towns such as Lugo have their theatres where good concerts are given; the classical music station of Radio Nacional de Espana has not undergone the centrally decreed vulgarisation of its British counterpart. In some isolated petrol stations it is possible to buy enough serious hooks to last an avid reader for a year. Presumably the supply answers a demand.

Of course, it is clear that a part of the intelligentsia of Spain is engaged on the process of debasing the countryâ€™s culture by claiming that there is no difference between liberty and libertinism. But I donâ€™t think Spain is as vulnerable to this process as Britain was.

If prosperity is more than a matter of per capita GNP. as surely it is, Spain is incomparably more prosperous than Britain. Perhaps its current prosperity is a natural consequence of having emerged recently from an historical catastrophe of vast proportions: a catastrophe that taught the Spanish no end of a lesson as to what is important in life. I only wish we could learn this lesson without experiencing the catastrophe._


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## sTTu (May 7, 2002)

Says it all !!!

We've lost the plot, nice cars, big TV's, supercomputing mobile phones all have a place, I don't deny it !

I've not been to feed the ducks in ages :'(

sTTu


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## StuarTT (May 7, 2002)

I would say that there is a difference between living in a country and passing through it.

My parents live in Spain and I think that they would paint a different picture to that of Mr Dalrymple (is he related to Hugo Wattleseed, with a name like that?).

The end result is that after 3 years in Spain they are fed up, have sold their house and are trying a new start in France.

I do have to say that there are a few things wrong with Mr Dalrymple's article. Including the fact that the roads in Spain are better. I suspect that he never left the motorways (for which the tolls are quite hefty), otherwise he would discover some completely different roads (7 new tyres in as many months speaks volumes about the quality of roads in the South of Spain).

I could go on, but won't.


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## Steve_Mc (May 6, 2002)

Journos, don't you just love them!



> Either the figures were bogus, or they didnâ€™t measure anything very important.


...followed by........



> The Spanish crime rate is a fifth of ours.


Why say figures can't tell the full story, and then go and quote some of your own?

I have no problem with people waxing lyrical about the beauties of other cultures, but I hate whingers like Theodore Dalrymple running down the UK. Picking on the weak spots of the UK and comparing them to the experiences of a couple of weeks travel in Donkey-Goading-Land hardly merits his apocalyptic conclusions. To quote Mr Al Murray, this country's called Great Britain - it'd be called Fucking Brilliant Britain if it wasn't for all the whingers dragging the average down.

Enjoy all the that the UK has to offer, and rejoice in the fact that you live in a free society where it's easy to turn off your phone, and make leisure time to go feed the ducks. They're still there.


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## Rhod_TT (May 7, 2002)

> Spainâ€™s larger size and smaller population


I think that explains a lot of it. If you don't have so many ants crammed on one ant hill you don't have congestion on the roads, houses are much cheaper, as there is lots of space to build new ones as your population grows, etc, etc...

And let's not forget that Spain has in the last decade become a major tourist resort for the rest of Europe. Therefore lots of rich tourists bring in cash which the country can choose to spend how it feels. Be it better roads or health system. Britain has no such easy money sapping quality. We have to create our wealth by workingin other sectors.

It's the same in the US. Florida has lots of cash, cus it has lot's of tourists and people retire there. Louisiana, which is next to it is quite poor. Spain - wealthy, Portugal - can't even afford to pay its nurses the overtime they worked.


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## garyc (May 7, 2002)

Take drugs.


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## Antwerpman (Nov 4, 2002)

and dont forget that the EU has paid for much of Spain's revitalisation....a lot of the cash being generously dontated by the British Taxpayer....


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## FooK (May 15, 2003)

and the greedy bastards want to try and take control of Gibraltar


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## mike_bailey (May 7, 2002)

I enjoy chuckling at little Englander threads Â 

(that's not to say I support a federal Europe of course )


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## CapTT (Mar 2, 2003)

You think you are having a bad day ??.
Imagine this ..............
You are a Siamese twin joined at the hip and your brother is GAY and you are NOT !!.
His lover is coming round for the evening and you both only have one ARSE !!!.


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## mike_bailey (May 7, 2002)

> You think you are having a bad day ??.
> Imagine this ..............
> You are a Siamese twin joined at the hip and your brother is GAY and you are NOT !!.
> His lover is coming round for the evening and you both only have one ARSE !!!.


That sounds like flame room stuff, Vek - move this thread over their so we can all winge about the cruelty of life. ;D


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