It's January 1st, Bulgarians & Romanians are on their way to rinse our benefits dry, how are you prepared?!



I have a Daily Mail & Daily Express at the ready to usher them away....

has cameron not recently put something in place to stop the benefits getting rinced dry as you put it, to try and put them off coming to the UK?

Yeah it's 4 month period before they can claim apparently

Bring out a card similar to a driving license that you must produce to claim anything and use the health service for everyone, (small admin fee) and build more schools and train more teachers and I have no issue with it.



In fact living in London I'm hoping my house price goes up due to demand.

Do Spanish people complain about the migration of English folk over there?

I was at my Mum's on the East coast rcently, the beach was thronged with Daily Mail types unfurling huge swathes of razor wire to prevent the buggers landing.

I wouldn't be surprised.

When you think it's an ageing slice of our demographic who mostly do go over they must have a big impact on the small funds Spain have

An ID card? We already have one effectively, a National Insurance number. It's needed to claim most benefits.

I'm very, very wary of making people have to produce a card or ID of some sort at a hospital. I think the only minor problem that is health tourism can be solved in different ways.

But it's a nice bit of diversion away from the governments real term cuts to health and the real problems facing the NHS, and is a nice way of the government trying to look tough on those nasty foreigners.

No issue with 'foreigners' it's numbers on resources. If we can afford them and accommodate them ie school places,not over burden NHS then iI'm cool with it BUT can we?

Its been fifteen years since my dad came back to England to die but prior to that he'd lived in Benidorm for eight (or was it ten) years an he was the archetypal Englishman abroad although he did socialise with Spanish friends and he lived in an apartment at the back of town where all of the Spanish service staff lived - his use of the Spanish language after all those years was limited to a few words that couldn't be understood away from the coast when I'd visit and drive him back to the UK from time to time.



Probably more pertinent to your question he rented his apartment from a landlord who asked no questions for cash every month and so never registered as a resident (he'd have to pay local taxes if he did), his UK car that he took out there wasn't taxed in the UK anymore and because he wasn't technically in Spain at all he didn't have to register or tax it there either, he insured it in England on a tourist green card basis.



For health care he could use his UK NHS number to receive treatment at the Spanish equivalent of an NHS hospital which gives its citizens a basic level of care but most working Spaniards took out medical insurance to be treated at the private Benidorm hospital that you see in all the TV documentaries, when he found that he had prostate cancer he paid for private care there and had his prostate removed at a cost of £2000, later when he found he had the Benidorm desease (liver cancer, or kidney cancer, highest killer of retired folk in that town) he returned to the UK to die.



Thats how he rolled

any opportunity to stick two fingers up at authority, Tony Soprano had nothing on my old man