Bill Sykes' Newsletter
from America.
(Midsummer 2004)
An ex-Brit gives his views-(without fear
or favor)---of the American Scene
Observations on current day Britain by an ex-Brit
outsider .
I make these observations with
great care after talking to a number of British citizens
and reading what I believe you call the broadsheets and
the gutter press, in order for me to provide a respectable
view of life in Britain and explain as accurately as I
can how the British people feel on the subjects of the
cost of living, taxation, and other facets of life in the
UK, and whether they think that the welfare give away programs,
currently available to immigrants and asylum seekers, are
fair to the original born and bred British citizens.
More about potential problems that could be associated with allowing mass immigration
into UK in a later paragraph.
 In a discussion with one learned gentleman I broached
the subject of the problems of the mass migration of
lower income people from Eastern Europe, Pakistan, India,
China, and other far away places into Britain. He informed
me that it was a good thing as many of the British systems
such as hospitals, transportation, etc, require cheap
labour and would not be able to function without hiring
such labour. So, is that what the current immigration
influx is really all about, the usage of cheap labour
in order to fill lower echelon jobs that the British
people disdain of being associated with. Your comments
are sought on this very important subject matter, as
it is vital for me to get your inputs in order to ensure
the accuracy of my observations.
 We found the UK to be very expensive, especially London,
and don’t know how the British people manage to
survive financially, as they appear to pay as much in
UK Pounds as we pay in US Dollars for most items - but
there again wages, unemployment and welfare benefits,
must be considerably higher than I imagined as even the
people on welfare and unemployment in many cases seem
to be able to afford to take two vacations abroad each
year.
It would appear that in UK you don’t necessarily have to have a back-up
savings account, as we in the United States do, in order to take care of medical
or other emergencies that can literally bankrupt you and your family overnight,
and so we suspect that in the UK, as the money comes in from whatever source
it is spent with expediency under the reason or excuse that it is better to
have spent the money that is available and possibly go broke than have the
government take it away in taxes.
Which brings me to the next subject, taxes. Correct
me if I’m wrong but in talking to people living
in UK I find that there is a strong belief that the middle
class are a rapidly disappearing breed as they are being
taxed out of existence.
 On the other side of the coin, houses are still selling
at premium prices in Britain and people are still securing
large mortgages to purchase homes in say the region of
up to and beyond the 400,000 UK Pound price range, which
appeared to us to be way overpriced are as many of the
properties in certain parts of the United States.
The
bubble of course will eventually burst when "negative
equity" appears on the scene, (i.e. when the home
owner’s existing mortgage exceeds the depreciated
resale value of the property), or when housing become
totally unaffordable and first time buyers are priced
out of the market - a situation which in our opinion
has already been reached in many parts of the UK. You
can only stretch the bubble so far before it eventually
bursts.
We welcome feedback about any of the contents of these
newsletters. Please send all correspondence to bill_sykes@huddersfield1.co.uk
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