Grumble, grumble, grumble

[pliptrot]

I don't know just how far some of these comments are deliberately polemical, but there are some disspiriting views expounded above. If any of you are genuinely concerned that you are paying for other peoples' lives then I recommend you visit the world where Governments are dysfunctional or completely failed. Spend a week in Africa -in most of which everything comes down to your immediate ability to pay-and you may think differently.

Being British means you are part of a greater thing, a community, and I am dismayed to see this being deconstructed. I imagine that the (with all due deference) older demographic is disproportionately represented in these threads: That group of society which is viewed with great suspicion by the young, who won't have protected pensions, who won't get the free education their parents enjoyed and who see greater costs and less opportunity coming their way. Pull harder at the fraying threads of this society and paying council tax may become the least of your grumbles. Be careful what you wish for.

[pwa]

My parents moved to Wales from Ireland a couple of years back to be close enough for us to help them out. They have been amazed at all the financial support they get for my Dad's disability (severe visual impairment) and general old age health problems. In Ireland they had much less support.

[Flinders]

I don't know just how far some of these comments are deliberately polemical, but there are some disspiriting views expounded above. If any of you are genuinely concerned that you are paying for other peoples' lives then I recommend you visit the world where Governments are dysfunctional or completely failed. Spend a week in Africa -in most of which everything comes down to your immediate ability to pay-and you may think differently.

Being British means you are part of a greater thing, a community, and I am dismayed to see this being deconstructed. I imagine that the (with all due deference) older demographic is disproportionately represented in these threads: That group of society which is viewed with great suspicion by the young, who won't have protected pensions, who won't get the free education their parents enjoyed and who see greater costs and less opportunity coming their way. Pull harder at the fraying threads of this society and paying council tax may become the least of your grumbles. Be careful what you wish for.

+1. from an oldie.