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Guy buys and flies his own Harrier

Do you really think the masses are going to hold up a copy of the FT and declare, “Oh my, what a fantastic British icon!”?

Forever learning
EGTB

I think most people like the country they live in.

The “southerners” like the ambiguity (“richness” is the other way to look at it) in their social interactions and I am sure most of them do like the ceremony of giving a “present” to the local mayor or other dignitary when they want to extend their house. It just infuriates the “northerners” who come to live there and have to do this to get certain things done

It infuriates visiting pilots because without a very good grip on the language they cannot negotiate “benefits” available to the locals

The UK has a lot of things deeply wrong with it (starting with crap education) but on the whole it is pretty good. Most stuff “just works”. I would not want to live anywhere else that I have been – except maybe a Greek island but then I would need to find something to do.

Unfortunately the UK has a generous benefits system (which under EU law it cannot change just for visitors) plus a language which is easy to learn and is widely spoken around the world and this makes it a magnet for refugees. I am a refugee too (1969) so should keep my mouth shut but my family never drew a penny of benefits, and I have paid enough tax to send all the kids in my (small) village to school…

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Shorrick

John and Peter, you guys are talking about Switzerland, right?

Whatever gives you that idea?

Not a lot of what they list can be attributed to this country….. especcially not:

Creating more jobs than all other European countries
Health service free at the point of demand
transparency in the corporate and public sectors
to a member of the public, a near-total lack of corruption
to a businessman, a near-total lack of corruption

What has saved Switzerland so far from descending into a socialist state is the direct democracy, where the people have the last say about important issues. Without that, Switzerland would no longer exist in its current form. As for corruption, there are many facets. You may not see it very much in the legal sense of the word, but in the moral and patriotic sense the parliament and parts of government in this country is as corrupt as in most EU states and has the same ratio of outright traitors in their ranks. Add to that a huge amount of criminality in high places and you got the picture. As for petty corruption, the only reason that is not happening is that people get paid sufficiently decent wages to value their jobs more than the risk of being found out and fired. Would corruption make economical sense to them, they´d be on the top of the ranking I am sure. Instead, the corruption you have to deal with on the every day level is not of the financial kind but of the brown nose kind which has lead to many Swiss businesses but also a lot of the public sector to have become lead by totally incompetent muppets.

No, not really any of the points John and Peter have brought up could be attributed to this place apart from a relative security and pretty high standard of living due to the fact that the money is there to offer that, which in return has to do with the relatively low taxation level and great economic sense of most small and middle businesses combined with a high “tolerance” of the banking place to house questionable funds in the past. But the governmet or parliament have preciously few to do with that. If it were for them, we´d have long descended into the darkest socialist pit they can imagine.

Last Edited by Mooney_Driver at 29 May 05:45
LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Hello!

Fastest growing economy in Europe

Are you sure? The latest official EU figures see Ireland, Poland, Romania and a few others growing faster than the UK. (http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/eu/forecasts/2015_spring_forecast_en.htm)

But I wouldn’t mind if that was true, because “we” would sell more Porkers and Mercs and Audis again to the Islands! And I would maybe fly to the UK more often (I really like to be there). Right now, I fly a lot more to Poland than to the UK.

EDDS - Stuttgart

“Fastest growing” really doesn’t say much unless you know the baseline. Otherwise most teenagers would be better athletes than olympic champions.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

It depends on the baseline. I would expect Romania for example to be growing at a very high % rate.

Another factor in so-called economics is that if I sell you a bottle of beer for €1000 (which cost me €5 to make) and you sell it to somebody else for €1500, and they sell it to you for €2000 and you sell it back to me for €2500, we (if we formed a country) would have an amazing GDP

It will work provided all of us are 100% patriotic and nobody breaks ranks and starts to import the beer

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Another factor in so-called economics is that if I sell you a bottle of beer for €1000 (which cost me €5 to make) and you sell it to somebody else for €1500, and they sell it to you for €2000 and you sell it back to me for €2500, we (if we formed a country) would have an amazing GDP

Isn’t that how some countries managed to fulfill the requirements for joining the Euro

And regarding the topic: As long as I have been flying from my present homebase (1/4 century…) we have only had one privately owned jet fighter here. An ex Swiss airforce Vampire. The owner got his aircraft banned from the airport when he melted a taxiway during a prolonged ground run. Also the noise complaints reached peak values during the short time he was flying from here. But it was a nice plane to look at.

EDDS - Stuttgart
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