Friday 4 October 2019

RUNNING OUT OF TIME







Outside the house a furious gale force buffeting of wind is throwing things about and the power is dipping on and off as electricity wires are momentarily touching and cutting off the supply. I have been in and out tying things down, retrieving umbrellas, removing sun blinds and closing shutters to keep most of the furious onslaught of hot winds from the south at bay. However, inside the house everything that is not fixed down is swaying about and the noise is a bit scary! We will await going out and about for an hour or two, to see if things calm down a bit. I wonder if this is one of the tails of the hurricanes which have been in the news.


Mr C and Mrs C are enjoying some down time after a bit of a squash. A crisis situation in the UK brought a brother to stay for a couple of weeks to bridge the gap between looking for somewhere to live and pension arriving in the bank. Housing in the UK has become so prohibitive lately. We all spent a couple of days scouring internet sites with him looking for affordable places to rent which were few and far between.


This does not bode well for many pensioners here. The most recent posting from Gov.UK  (via the British Embassy) informed us definitively that S1 health funding would only be available for 6 months after Brexit. The rush of people returning to the UK for life-saving medication and health care will be an extra crisis for the local authorities to handle with little or no funding from central government. After the kindness we have received from the Greek system in spite of their financial difficulties, the attitude of the British Government has been chilling and I feel ashamed of what is happening. This is not the Britain I grew up in post WWII, these are not the values I hold dear, how can all this be? Everyone seems to be so frightened of mob rule that they are adopting a regime to encompass the line of least resistance, so that the country is to be run by tax evading mobsters instead of some statesmen holding firm with any sort of moral compass. I can barely believe it. I have now turned off and blocked all news from Gov.UK, because it has become a list of threats and no help to us.

While my brother was with us, we discussed Philotimo. A wonderful Greek concept of help, love, support for others without any expectation of reward. Entrenched within the Greek national tradition in their quiet and noble way, the Greek people we know demonstrate this trait and show their welcome and hospitality as naturally as breathing. We do hope some of it rubs off on us in the time we are here among them. We intend to stay put as long as we possibly can!


We have been trying to ignore Facebook and the Six O'Clock News, but things are now closing in on us. The folk who tried to live in a warmer climate and eke out a modest pension in their senior years are being denied what they paid into for all their working lives unless they return to the UK. The drop in the pound has made the cost of living higher here, even though Greek costs have stayed the same, our doctors and access to medication will cease and many of us will be forced to leave our homes here because of Brexit. If those at home are having a bad time already and think “Huh, serves them right!”, just remember that a new mass influx of elderly, homeless and poorly will make things worse for everybody in the UK. The housing crisis will not improve. Hospitals will still be under stress without access to medical professionals from Europe who have gone home in droves. None of this will be an improvement for the man in the street. The only people to win from this will be rich and super rich people who trade on the foreign exchange markets or who keep their mega bucks in off shore accounts and don't pay taxes. If they had been forced to pay tax (as the EU had recommended) it would have helped to cover the costs of schools, roads, hospitals and infrastructure. Avoiding paying tax by all the giants of industry, commerce and the media is what all this push for Brexit has really been about.

Don't be fooled, we have all been ripped off and so much damage done to our country in the process but there is always hope. My hope is that Britain resists threats from the mob, stands firm in the tradition of free speech in parliament and overcomes, confuses and confounds any malign forces that would try to destroy all that is truthful, responsible and right. 

In spite of all this pontificating, the wind is still gusting outside, the power twitching and the router needs rebooting for the third time today! Keep safe!



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