When did Great Britain and London become a place that everyone hated living in?

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Just a short rant. Let me start by saying I love living in Mill Hill. I love living in London and I love living in the UK. My main hobbies are playing and watching music, watching football at Manchester City FC and Hadley FC, drinking good ales and eating curries. There is nowhere else on the planet I can do that. I love having friends locally and we meet up regularly. Last Saturday, I watched Hadley FC then went to Pizza Express to watch Liv Evans do a brilliant R&B set. Today I go to Manchester to watch City play Forest. We will have a beer and a curry before the game at Bundobust, a great veggie curry house in central Manchester. On Friday, my band do a gig at Fabwick in Hackney for the London Talent Festival. I've no complaints, I love it.

It seems I am in a minority of one. All I ever seem to hear is "London is a S**thole, The UK has gone to the dogs, nothing works, everything is too expensive". A couple of weeks ago, I went to Bedford to watch Hadley play Real Bedford. As the train sped north, I thought of friends who "move out of London to get more space" and thought to myself REALLY! Is this what you want? The thought of being surrounded by fields and having to drive everywhere fills me with dread. Sure London is expensive, smelly and the transport system breaks down all the time, but REALLY?

As far as I am concerned, for all it's warts, for all it's expense, for all it's inconvenience, it is the best place in the world to live. Despite idiots running (ruining) the country, despite Mayoral mismanagement. Despite Crap(ita) Councils. It could be a million times better. I heard on the news that Americans are on average 1/3rd richer. That's great until they are ill. I am on prostate cancer groups on Facebook and I see all of these yanks talking about their "health insurance" with life insurance issues. All the money in the world means nothing if your doctor tells you that he can't treat you because you can't pay. God bless the NHS. France? Well nice for a holiday, but no decent tea, no real ales and dodgy football. Italy, great pasta, hard to get a curry. I lived in Sweden. Beautiful women, great music, beer five times the cost of the UK and it's horrible lager. Didn't have a curry for six months. 

And the moans? Immigrants. Well send me home. Dad was an immigrant from Australia, came to save the UK from Hitler, as did around 3 million non Brits who server in our armed forces. Why is London so amazing? Because we had an Empire and spent 150 years robbing Africa and Asia. Is it any surprise they see us and want a bit. My Dad worked in Palestine when it was under the British mandate. The situation in the Middle East is in no small part down to our Imperial past. You may not like that, but buy a history book if you don't believe me. I run a business in an industrial estate where all of the other businesses, are either run or staffed by immigrants. My chief recording engineer (and Bandmate) is Portuguese. When I see the word immigrants, I see people working hard to improve themselves and this builds the UK. No immigrants, we'd have no one to do the work. So you don't like people in boats? That ain't a holiday cruise, it's the end of a long, dangerous journey, at considerable risk. Sure some are bad people, but until we stop making wars in places that are none of our business and selling weapons, we have no right to slam the doors shut. The reason we have immigration from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria is because we were started wars and fermented trouble there. If you don't like it, vote for parties that don't start wars. 

Me, I embrace the cuisine of immigrants and count many as friends. When I had cancer treatment, Mr Choudrey at the Mill Hill Tandoori sent me a free curry to cheer me up. I've signed passport applications for the Kosovan guys kids, who run the Bunns Lane Carwash, who I've known for 20 years. The previous owner, a Moroccan, often nips in to say hi and play drums in  our studio. 

If you don't like all of this, that's up to you, but take a long hard look in the mirror. We are where we are because we elect governments that cut taxes by slashing public services, by encouraging cheap Labour from abroad and by not punishing criminals, because prisons are expensive and they don't want to tax their rich mates. 

The sad truth, is that if we had better government, we could have a far better country to live in. But this wouldn't be a country without immigrants.  Immigrants are a scapegoat that the rich media owners use to distract us from their own greedy ways. It would be a country where public services, health and transport were properly funded by taxes. The sad truth is that if large corporations were properly taxed on their profits, that would pay for it, but as they buy politicians and give them juicy jobs when they retire, this will never happen.