Blocked paths and rude signs are all too common at present.
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Everyone is different.
Stereotypes are not helpful.
Some live for the weekends spent in country, whilst they exist in cities just to pay bills. I am not one of those, but I have known a few. They may spend less time there, but it is still their spiritual home. Not all are fortunate enough to have income in the country, but second home owners pay rates just like every one else.
Perhaps I’m unusual but I’ve made substantial donations (and helped with fund raising ) for some of the village halls/local projects In communities I visit occasionally. Indeed many such projects beg for tourists to help fund them.
It’s a two way street.
But it isn’t just about rude signs, there have been many of them. Or shops deciding they are arbiters of who they will choose to serve. Nothing excuses drawing pins on roads to frighten cyclists away ( seriously!). I’ve heard so much inflammatory rhetoric from some areas I will never set foot there again, and I hope nobody else does.
Like the Barcelona’s whose out of control youngsters , with apparent complicity of authorities tell tourists to “go home” I hope they turn into the derelict ghost towns, they deserve.
This is a worry:
"First day out of "lock down" in Texas. It's been even worse than I imagined. Almost no one wears a mask in stores. People stand close to each other and block the aisles and at the register they breathe down your neck. It's like never anything happened, the ignorance is astounding."
There is a lovely old property nearby that would make a superb setting for a wedding, and indeed that is their business. A short wide gravelled path with a gate at each end that runs through their property is an excellent short cut but is apparently not a right of way. Well before Covid I was going along this path with a group of fell runners when the owner came out and told us to get off. She lost so much potential business that day. Memories are long.
What I have feared is turning true.
It does not matter if supermarkets are stocked for those with no money to pay.
Fights are breaking out in southern Italy because of mass poverty. Those told they cannot work have nothing to eat.
Surely the most ardent remainer can no longer support EU, after the refusal to help southern states except on punitive terms. I’m allright jack say Holland and Germany. Germany allowing Holland to say it, but supported by Germany just the same.
Inevitably anti EU sentiment is growing, There is close to majority for leaving EU in Italy.
Another fault in construction of EU is exposed by this: the myopic liberal elite talk of the need for free movement , and cite our health service workers moving to U.K. to support their sophistry. Always it is about their health service , never the damage they do to those countries. These liberal elite are utterly wrong.
Do they know half of the medical staff qualifying in such as Romania or Estonia immediately move for a multiple of the salary to elsewhere in the block? Even Finland pays Estonians four times the salary. All that expensive training is funding richer countries. Still Romanians have few doctors.
It is killing these poor states literally, now some have 100k journeys to the nearest doctor. Those people didn’t vote for the well-being they thought the EU would bring, they voted to escape to elsewhere. Now with COVID the theft of east European medical staff by us is hurting those countries badly.
Just as our medical staff steal the training we pay for to take it to New Zealand or Aus. Worse still they sell it back to NHS on contractor not employee rates. It is wrong.
Staff moving or coming back as contractors within a period of say 10 years should pay the full cost of their training as it is in industry.
Free movement denudes countries of their professional classes , and with it any hope of recovery.
The EU should have been constructed in a way that makes everywhere in the block just as attractive to work, so that populations mix not migrate.
Meanwhile today’s absurdity.
The telegraph lambasted the government today for way overestimating the numbers of beds needed hence the nightingales are empty. Exactly the Same press that lambasted the government for not nearly enough ventilators or intensive care beds only a couple of weeks ago.
Meanwhile it isn’t the government anyway, it is a consensus of medical advisors headed by Chris Witty who are faced with a ten to one opinion difference from medical models at imperial or oxford and others. Even US universities are chiming in with figures that differ from those about us.
And whatever the government chooses from the mayhem of medics who can’t agree, the rest of the medics all feel empowered to say that whatever their peers chose to do was wrong, and the “ government” is making a pigs ear of it. All use the word “ could” not “ will” to avoid being told their criticism was wrong in hindsight.
Reality is nobody knows. It’s not an exact science. I have no argument with the variety of obinions BUT nobody has the right to play holier than thou.
It used to be said of economists, that get ten economists together you would have eleven opinions.
Epidemiologists have well trumped that. It is fun looking at journalists who look back through what they said and point out that these medics in all too many cases contradict what they said only one month before, I’ve seen a few.
Streuth.
If I were Boris I would lock them all in a room and tell them they don’t get fed until they come up with a consensus they all stand by, including BMC, and the insufferable lefty loony John Ashton, with no right to dissent later. If they all choose to starve “ on principle” , for the right to dissent, good riddance, there are plenty more where they came from!
What others think of the UK's response:
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/...28-p54o2d.html