It's not a "nulabour" insanity, it's what governments do, the last Conservative regime was responsible for some seriously nasty legislation and the next one will be too, but while some areas get curtailed others get relaxed so the jack boot doesn't seem to be getting bigger, it just stamps on different bits of your anatomy from time to time ;-)
Also how legislation impacts you depends on what you like, for example I was talking to an RAC chap recently when my audi had some trim ripped off, he was from portugal and was moaning about how he can't take his 101FC or his 109 ambulance (IIRC) to portugal because they don't allow people to own military vehicles over there. Whenever I speak to people from overseas who are living in the UK they usually start going on about how few restrictions there are here and how the police are much less of an opponent than they are back home (where home is places like Spain, France and Germany), which is the polar opposite of what UK residents say.
I know all about that, my Range Rover is pretty much impossible to register in a lot of european countries because of the turbo conversion. The Germans want everything to be TUV, which I'm pretty sure the Janspeed setup isn't, the Czechs want it to be RHD but it's possible to register it there, the Polish would let me register it without them noticing the turbo, the French don't like engine mods at all etc etc.
And you think it's only the UK that does these? The LEZ for example was lifted straight from Germany, and we don't have the world's first congestion charge, or the highest fuel costs. The LEZ and the congestion charge were also not government-introduced schemes, they were Ken Livingstone, proof of how bad an idea local government can be.
Whereas in Britain you can get away with most things and we do still have a rights-of-way network that we can drive, despite the best efforts of the Ramblers and sympathetic politicians --- the NERC act was a bill introduced by the tories BTW.
Rubbish they consult on most things these days but they tend to only ask those they want to ask (ie get the answers they want) and don't make the general public particulary aware of the consultations that are going on. If you look you will find, but you won't be told.
But even if they do widely publicise a consulatation they get very few responses from the general public:
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Though I think in that case they didn't ask specific enough questions or provide enough background information for people to form an opinion. I heard a radio report where the people who ran it basicly admitted to that.
A junior cabinet minister gets £105,000 + perks, IIRC on top of their MP's salary + expenses. It won't be much of a debt mountain at that rate, even if you do live in London.
On or around Tue, 04 Mar 2008 19:12:52 +0000, Pete M enlightened us thusly:
That's cos they rip us off not only with fuel duty AND vat on the fuel but also vat on the duty.
and it's balls that they can't alter the vat rate, all European countries have different rates. Besides, they could reduce the duty by a sum equivalent to the vat on said duty.
What gets me is the short-term view that's so evident. Raising fuel costs to about the highest in Europe makes the country uncompetitive and moreover raises the price of everything else, and it has no discernible effect on car usage - We've got petrol as expensive as it's ever been, road pricing schemes, pay-to-park, and car usage is about as high as it's ever been too. Wake up, you wankers, and see that the policy is fundamentally broken.
Oh I don't know, I work from home whenever I can and there's a lot of people who could work from home (pretty much anyone with a desk job and the space at home to do it) if management attitudes would wake up, however that then rears the problem of the associated rise in energy usage due to people heating their homes, which is supposed to be by far the largest domestic energy sink!
Rural locations have seen a rise in prosperity due to working from home apparently, and fuel costs are bound to be a factor, I know that I used to spend 400 quid on fuel each month mostly through commuting, dropped that to 200 quid by getting a more fuel efficient car, and dropped it to 50 quid by working from home. Upped it to 150 quid through buying the pinz ;-)
Besides, moving to another country and living in a city doesn't seem to change much, people would get more change out of life by just moving elsewhere in the UK and getting a job that gives a better lifestyle, and that's got to be easier than actually upping sticks to move to another part of the globe.
The German LEZ is done sensibly though. You buy a sticker with a one-off payment of around £5 and that's it. If your vehicle doesn't qualify you can either convert it so it does or pay £25 a day. Ken doesn't give you that option, as stated at the beginning of this thread. The German way gives you the environmentally friendly option of running on LPG, fitting particulate traps or whatever. Kens way is "Fuck off and buy a new car so we can stitch you up with that instead!".
Get away with most things? Criminals can, law abiding folk just get screwed at every possible opportunity whilst being filmed, on average,
130 times a day.
I know there are nice places to live in the UK, but house prices are now insanely prohibitive in most of the nice places. My house is currently worth around £250k, and I'm going to be spending a portion of that money on buying somewhere much much nicer in another country.
I work in the motor trade and cover around 1000-1500 miles a week, I'm based in a small, semi-rural village but I live in Liverpool. I can't work from home as to find cars for the right money means travelling.
Heh, the Scorpio drinks around £200 a month, the Rangie somewhat more..
I love my job, I love where the garage is, but to move house from here to there would cost me an extra £250k for something similar. I'm not willing to spend that, not when if I move to Czech - as is the plan, I can buy a nicer house than this, with a larger garage / workshop / showroom included for £100k. I'll also be in a beautiful rural location, with bugger all crime and plenty of places to play in the Range Rover - I just need to work out how to get it registered there.
That's bollocks, you can convert your current car to comply with the LEZ rules, the only real difference is that the german fine is about one eighth of the size of the Ken fine. Running away from a problem is not usually the best idea, especially if it's not even real.
Yes and overseas criminals either don't exist or are always caught, we're so craaaap! Try not to be so unrealistic and tabloid-headed.
BTW you've not mentioned the hooman rites act yet, surely you've got lots of phlegm to spout about that? If so, try reading it sometime.
All of your stated problems with the UK, like most of those I've heard from others, are either make-believe (like your LEZ complaint above) or are worldwide issues.
It depends on what you regard as a nice place I suppose, my house could buy me a much better house elsewhere in the country, or it could buy me somewhere much crapper in a city. It could also buy me a decent house in some parts of the world, but then I'd probably have to learn another language, check out the legal situation, find out what gotchas are present overseas (e.g. restrictions on maximum house size in switzerland or the land being stolen from under you in spain meaning you lose the house, or not being able to use my vehicles, or do my job legally, or afford the potential increase in taxes, or take a massive wage cut etc etc). Basically if you move overseas you'd be a fool to do so without first making sure that the issues that piss you off here aren't issues there too, and that there aren't even worse issues that you don't yet know about. Given that your issues seem to be make-believe I'm not sure you've done a good job.
Best bet is to figure out where you'd like to move to then start getting the local papers and reading them every day as if you were already there, that'll give you the same view of their country as people seem to get from our papers. And if you can't read the local language, WTF are you thinking of moving there for and becoming one of the immigrants "coming over here taking our houses, jobs, wimmin without speaking the language" etc etc etc...
Seems a bit odd, when I bought my house I had the choice of a 2-bed semi in central Basingstoke or a four-bed detached in rural Dorset, both at the same price, the four-bed dorset home is a really decent one too, the basingstoke house was a characterless shitehole in an identikit street. How you've managed to get into a situation where the difference in price between your city house and the country location is quarter of a million quid in the wrong direction for a similar property is hard to grasp..
So you've gone from two properties in the UK to one property overseas, not sure you're even comparing like with like there.
I also live in a beautiful rural location with no crime, and no problems registering my vehicles. Coincidentally there's a trade car sales place right next door (not that you'd know), and all the chaps who work there live locally and they're not rich.
Obviously you find your own way out but chances are you'll succeed, not because you're going overseas, but because people who pull themselves together enough to make such a move are the type who'd do pretty well anyway. Can't help but think you're taking the hard route though.
It's to do with the location of the village the garage is in. Small village, but in between Liverpool, Manchester, Warrington, St Helens and Wigan. Nice sleepy little place, but easy to get to any of the above villages, so house prices are insane.
I could buy a house of a similar size to this one for around £50k in Czech, garage for around the same. Rural(ish) Czech locations are pretty cheap, much cheaper than here.
My aim in life isn't to be rich, it's just to have enough money to tick-over nicely.
I know it isn't going to be easy, and I thank you for your support. I've worked hard to get where I am (which, tbh, is nothing special at all), but I've done it all in the last few years. It's given me enough to have the chance to re-locate to somewhere I'd rather be, and I'm young enough to not mind doing it all again..
On or around Wed, 5 Mar 2008 14:13:45 +0000, Ian Rawlings enlightened us thusly:
I agree, actually - which is the main reason I'm still here. Bad as this place can be, it's actually pretty good, still. And there's a severe shortage of better places, especially of better places you could credibly move to.
This is straying from the original point, though. It's not a question of where we are now, but of how we elect parasitic nest-feathering nincompoops who don't ever seem to contribute anything to our well-being, but just tax, regulate and close down sensible services.
What has changed is that we now have this self-appointed "political class" who have never had proper jobs and give the impression that mending a fuse would be way beyond them.
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