Prices in UK chase Brits out
It's not very often I feel compelled to write to my local paper, but to be frank, now is the time.
By this time next year I hope to have left the UK and moved to one of the EU's newer member states.
It is something that I am not doing lightly. I have been thinking about it for the last couple of years. The simple truth is I can't afford to live here.
When I meet friends from other EU countries they tell me how expensive it is in Britain. The present political administration has made such fundamental mistakes, principally to our NHS, that it is now probably too badly damaged to recover.
The Blair style of government was to throw vast sums of money at it, yet anyone with any common sense could see that only a fraction of the money gets to where it is needed the most - in the hospitals.
The only half decent thing that Blair and Brown have done for me, because I work in the public sector, is to let me retire at 60. Even then we had to fight for it, something the civil service unions are still doing in order to protect jobs.
Some people in the private sector now find that their pension funds will not cover them once they hit retirement age. I feel really sorry for them.
If Blair has been bad for this country then I can't wait to see what cure Gordon has in store.
The country I am going to rejoices in its EU membership. The EU is not some evil empire across the channel run from Brussels! Or would you rather we became the next state in the American Union?
Jim Craib, Wellington
