The grass isn't greener

"This country is going to the dogs.  I wish I could emigrate."

We've heard it all before. It's what the right wing press, like the Mail, wants us to believe.

We're being swamped by immigrants, everything is broken and nothing works anymore.  Crime is out of control, political correctness dominates (you can't even celebrate Christmas anymore, for fear of offending muslims, don't you know?) and the country is drowning in a raft of health and safety rules.  You can't even beat your own children or send them up chimneys anymore. 

And it's only this country that's going to the dogs.

Not Greece where 50% of its young people are unemployed and where their pensions have been cut, or Spain which has sucked in millions of immigrants from Morocco, China and of course the UK.

No.  The only problems are in England.  Go to Paris and it's lovely there, so long as you stay near the Eiffel Tower and all the smart hotels and restaurants.  And Barcelona?  Lovely, but watch your wallet.  No shitty areas anywhere else in Europe?  Dream on.

Of course there is a lot that's wrong with this country.

The austerity policies of this Tory government, enabled by the Liberal Party, have made no difference to the rich but they have hammered the working poor.  Iain Duncan Smith, an unpleasant man if ever there was one, pretends the food banks are not really needed, that the problems only exist because sometimes people don't get paid on time or those useless incompetents in the DWP don't pay them on time.

And there is still mass youth unemployment, especially in the sink estates which still exist, just as they do in every other major city on earth.

I could go on but the reality is that there is only one thing that really pisses people off about this country: the weather.

There's plenty wrong, of course, but I find that there are far more good people than bad.  I find that the streets are no more paved with litter than they are in most other countries I have been to.  There are issues with drugs and violence but that's hardly unique to us either.

No.  It's the weather and it's also that when we travel abroad we don't normally go sightseeing in their sink estates.  And people don't in ours either.  Rarely do I see coach loads of Japanese tourists travelling down Long Cross, admiring the closed down pub of that name and salivating as they pass the traditional branch of Greggs on Riding Leaze.  We see what we want to see and, as Paul Simon was fond of saying, we disregard the rest.

I see good all the time.  People doing good things, people helping other people, people keeping an eye on their neighbours and just being kind.

And when all these good things are happening, it's pissing down so we dream of somewhere hot and if we're really British somewhere hot with karaoke and English beer.

The slate grey skies and rain beating on the windows do have depressing qualities because it's dark and gloomy.  

But our country, far from being broken, as Mr Cameron tried to pretend when he was leader of the opposition, is actually doing all right, despite him.

So if you don't like it here, you know what to do.

The grass won't be greener because it rains so bloody much over here but you might be able to pretend it's better and some folk will believe you.  I won't.