England has fallen…But is Spain any better?

British people are emigrating in record numbers. Last week, I visited Spain. As a place to live, is it any better or worse than England?

got another blue sky sunny day in Finland and um I’m just back or from a holiday um that might sound strange from somebody who’s retired who’s living in Finland but yeah you can might tell from my hat uh yeah I was in Spain’s sixth largest city Malaga um for for a week and um what I’m going to do in this video is is sort of talk about um some of the things that I observed which I think quite interesting because we still have this issue don’t we I just see it all the time a lot of people leave living in Britain doing two things really first of all being very negative or moaning complaining about um you know the direction of the country and I I kind of get that completely uh and then you have from a small much smaller minority you have people who then would have say well there’s nothing really we can do about it and um everywhere else is the same so for me as a Brit living in Finland I I think I can talk about all three places about where I am now in in porry I think por is like I don’t know seventh or eighth largest city in Finland uh Malaga where I just was and of course England you know I was born in Rochdale uh know Manchester pretty well and um lived in London lived in croen for about 15 16 years lived in Guilford for about the same amount of time so we got some points of comparison to to consider so let’s start off with some positives right so the the first positive that I noticed is that about malago was in all the bars and cafes um it was there was no kind of um they were all Spanish speakers basically so you actually felt like you were in a in a country a city with its with its own um Spanish culture um Malaga is quite interesting too in the sense that in itself it’s not a holiday Resort what tends to happen is that a lot of uh tourists come in fly into Malaga and then they go up to Mar Bay or F finga or whatever it’s called can’t say that and um Tor Molinos of course but anyway I didn’t go to those we just stayed in the city itself so um yeah so bar staff Spanish or Spanish speaking so jobs uh for local workers basically so that’s something that’s quite different I think from the UK uh where you know if you went to somewhere like Brighton uh it’s highly unlikely that you’d be served by a Brit or even just a native speaker of English so local people are given a chance I’ve commented about that’s the very similar phenomenon to what I see in Finland so if you go to I don’t know even hinky airport or um you know never mind uh pory you’re going to be served by fins and Finnish speakers uh which is great you know for young people in pory where I live they’re given an opportunity they’re given a chance and I think that’s a good thing for people who were born in the country um to be given a chance of uh of working young people gaining experience doing waiting jobs Cafe jobs all of that and as I say as a tourist I I actually enjoy that as well because it actually feels like you’re living in that particular ular country uh whereas as I say in the UK you go to a I don’t know Brighton or something and you serve by somebody from warsa or something you know not that I’ve got anything against somebody from Warsaw but you know if I want to experience Britain or if you know like it’d be the same wouldn’t it you know if I went to krackov on holiday in Poland you know it’d be a bit of a weird thing to uh to see that most of the people people serving you your your your your beer and dumplings were actually from Margate or something so it’s it’s all about authenticity I guess you know when you go abroad I don’t want to go to some sort of mish mash of a place that’s just uh an an uh an aggregation of some sort of homogeneous Global culture and Malaga didn’t feel like that Malaga felt very much like a Spanish city which I thought was great yeah just to say as well we met two argentines and um what was interesting was they were both one was serving in an ice cream shop the other was in um um a bar um now what was interesting was that they were both fans of the new president of Argentina this guy called Malay now I know people will say in the comments he’s World economic Forum but um and and he is so don’t waste your time writing oh don’t you know he’s in the world economic forum um what’s interesting about this Malay guy he’s that he’s promised to pursue a small government libertarian agenda and um whether he does that or not is a mute point you know there’s not enough time elapsed for that but what was interesting was that these two argentines basically said that they recognized um a critical majority of people recognized that the problem in Argentina was big government and um something had to be done about it so okay this guy might not do what he was elected to do but what’s important is that a critical majority of argentines at least know what the problem is which is big government so for me that’s quite encouraging that um the nation of Argentina the majority of people have been able to diagnose what the problem is whereas I say in the UK um there’s still there’s still uh a majority of people who naively believe that um the the problem is not enough government and the solution is I don’t know Kia starmer or the conservatives who are just going to offer more of the same even bigger government even higher taxes even more government interference in private life so for me what I as I say what I find particularly uh pleasing is that at least the people of Argentina have been able to diagnose the problem and um you know by voting for this Malay um what it shows to me is that they at least understand that the problem is government they they’re no longer laboring under the uh the the the falsehood that the solution is government most of the staff um in Malaga were were’re very very friendly particularly you know in the hotel we visit in there was a couple of occasions where I did encounter um some some rudess um but that that was that was in the minority and I think you know been I don’t know if you’ve noticed this there’s been a few articles about how um the Spanish my wife told me about it about how the Spanish are they don’t like they’ve not been so keen on um on BR on British tourists in particular now I have my own sort of theory about that so the Brits one of the interesting things about Brits is that is their property Obsession you know all this location location homes under the hammer you know Brits are are really into their property speculation and when they go and have a look at a country it’s always like oh like we could buy a flat here and like uh rent it out Airbnb and unsurprising ly um British property speculation isn’t popular with locals cuz it drives up house prices and that was something I did notice in malago as well is that the the flat prices there’s a lot of flats in Malaga seemed pretty expensive and I I didn’t really get to the point of knowing what what the prices were like in relation to local wages but if you’ve got an army of Brits coming in uh and Brit Brits have got a very high appetite for debt so they’ll they’re prepared to borrow a shed load of money and um and gamble with it gamble in the real estate market you can understand maybe why Brits aren’t so popular in places like Malaga um because locals view them as being responsible for a lot of the house price inflation um that’s that’s maybe pricing locals out of their jobs I guess a very similar phenomena also happens in Britain like you know um parts of Britain anyway like Cornwall and Devon same sort of phenomena people coming in from I don’t know London and greater London and uh you know maybe borrowing more money uh than locals would borrow and therefore pushing house prices into orbit something else that I noticed was um in the city center uh most of the shops were were open uh you know so if you go to a lot of places in Britain even London now you’ll see a lot of empty units um because people entrepreneurs can’t turn a profit because the business rates are too high another uh taxes Council taxes business rates it’s just um starving businesses of the opportunity to make a decent profit decent enough to survive um something else I noticed in terms of Taxation was um the the price gap between drinking in a cafe and drinking at home you know the price of alcohol served in supermarkets it was it wasn’t that big you know I think uh you could buy a a beer in the center for sort of two and a half and um I’m just going to walk back this way a second uh whereas in the supermarket it cost I don’t know €120 so again like a big difference with Britain in that um you know alcohol sold in Tesco super super cheap you know you can probably buy it for I don’t know under two quid these days um whereas in a pub let’s forget about JD weather spoons cuz that’s a glorified off license anyway um you know you can be paying seven or8 pound a pint in London quite easily um compared to Finland finland’s um you know my local charges 6 so that’s about uh 550 isn’t it maybe a bit less uh a pint and you can buy a beer for I don’t know2 and a half EUR from the from the supermarket so and what’s the point of that well basically um low uh taxation of alcohol uh on trade in bars and pubs and stuff um it it can make a huge difference to the uh atmosphere in a town or a city it makes it more live L there’s more people out and about uh it seemed to me that people in Malaga they had more disposable income than than what I see in Britain it’s a bit similar to pory um you you know in the center of town bars and stuff they’re they’re quite busy uh there’s quite a lot of restaurants in the town and so what the point I’m trying to get out here is that taxation matters it matters hugely and in the UK I think what’s happening is is um the supermarkets are given a preferential tax status by their mates in government or by the politicians that the big businesses uh appoint to to kind of rule over Brits and um this is a bit of an issue so something else that I noticed um is loads and loads of independent cafes and um bars so uh in Malaga so there’s no Spanish equivalent of JD weather spoons for example or Costa Coffee or um you know what’s the on Starbucks and there was an occasional Starbucks in in in Malaga maybe one or something maybe maybe but basically the vast majority of the bars pubs cafes they’re all independent now that’s what it’s like in Finland too and I quite like that diversity you know it’s h and you tend to get better quality products like the coffee in Malaga um you know was like it was pretty good in each uh coffee bar the coffee the coffee conche coffee with like like warm milk it was all slightly different you know and as I say it’s very like that in Finland too whereas in England you know you have more of these big corporations dominating so even the market for pubs has been taken over by Pub chains like uh JD weather spoons and then of course you know the market for coffee bars is just like you know dominated by Nero cost of coffee whatever so for me I my own personal preferences I much prefer a less concentrated Market where you’ve got a lot of small independent businesses cuz I think you got that with that choice and and competition you get better prices and better quality so I really like that about Malaga and you’re more also you’re more likely to be served by somebody who’s got some skin in the game so you might be you’re more likely to be um served by somebody who owns that business so of course they they have a vested interest in um in serving you better being and and and as I say in general apart from this one or two exceptions the quality of service was very very very good admittedly though we did speak Spanish to the the people that were serving us so that might have had something to do with it another similarity between Malaga and uh and Finland that I noticed was um sort of national pride and culture so there were plenty of Spanish Flags knocking about um and people seem to be quite proud of their own culture uh which is sadly no longer the case in the UK is it you know because in the UK If you fly um the Union Jack you’re a farri racist people are not allowed to be proud of being British anymore in Britain which I think is a massive shame and um yeah people seem to be quite happy you know whereas I think this Simon sideways he did a video I think it was his last video where he was talking about how he feels that living in Britain all the joy has been sucked out of life um and that’s basically the I’ve I’ve picked up very much that same Vibe when I visited England myself you know last time was in September 2023 uh that people seemed the the phrase I would use is like care warn you know and um I think the newspapers are partly to blame for that in the mainstream media um but then these other things that you just can’t deny anymore like just like the nonfunctioning um provision of Health Care in in the UK which is an oxymoron because not much is being provided you know that from this organ organization that is the biggest employer in Europe but um yeah I think people seem and also another thing as well that I noticed last time I was in the UK was uh all the high VI you know the number of people in high vises high Vis you know those funny yellow high Vis jackets everywhere you know on uh Security in the entrance to places like super drug you know everywhere seem to be uh full of high Vis and then you have you know the oral pollution of say it see it sort it and all of that type of stuff so of course that creates tension uh in Britain and uh in Malaga no I didn’t get any of that at all there was no uh hi Vis anchors knocking knocking around and barking at people telling people what to do uh it was all pretty lowkey laidback and uh people seem to be enjoying life which is uh how it should be and people seem to be pretty healthy um there wasn’t as many um well obviously there’s a massive problem with obesity in the UK um much less so uh in Malaga uh people just seemed Health they seemed pretty healthy um and well-dressed as well you know they took a pride in their appearance um in fact I talked to my wife again about that you know and um you know her opinion on it was that the you know Spanish girls they sort of dress similar to sort of Finnish girls in the sense that you know they uh they um they didn’t have stuff out on show you know like I I think I’ve mentioned this before but uh you know she says that amongst the Finnish girls they always talk about br British you know as being the the biggest girls in the smallest dresses so yeah in Spain it was like um quite people were well-dressed which I thought was great and as I say it felt as though you were in Spain you know um yeah without without going into too much detail about that but you know it’s you felt as though you were in Spain because I know if we if we’re honest about it when you go to places like London you no longer feel feel as though you’re in Britain anymore something else that um I thought was interesting was that we were um walking by there was like a a coastal path and um there was a few hospitals and homes for the elderly and uh what was really great was that you had care workers they all appeared to be Spanish so they were able to communicate with with the the elderly people that they were looking after and they were being pushed about out um in the sunshine so it was it was deemed to be important in Spain to get elderly people in Care Homes out of the home being pushed around on wheelchairs uh out in the sun I was reading some um Earnest Hemingway uh Farewell to Arms it was called this this novel it’s quite a famous novel and uh in the novel The the kind of the main character he gets injured and uh Hemingway actually talks specifically about um convalescence like and Sun treatment being part of his treatment his recuperation was being left outside in the sunshine so um and and this novel was was written like over a hundred years ago so you know the sun is actually good for people and um that seemed to be acknowledged by the Spanish Health Care System um so I I like that I liked seeing elderly Spanish people Granny’s and that being pushed around in wheelchairs speaking Spanish with their young uh Spanish carers who um incidentally were all were all women something that shocked me the last time I was uh in in the UK was just a sheer number of places now that no longer accept cash so what was the situation like in Malaga complete opposite I didn’t encounter a single place that refuse payment in cash so that’s really great so in terms of cloud Schwab and and the Gang um they’re going to find it very difficult to impose a digital Euro um because Europe is kind of so the Euro area is so diverse and a lot of the Euro area like there’s a lot of people still who have a preference for using cash and um you know I dare say that that’s true in um in places like uh Greece as well and and Italy when I’ve visited there a lot of people pay with cash um in Finland there’s more digital payments but the good news is that I’ve done videos about this is that uh cash is making a comeback even uh in places like like Finland and um there’s nowhere in porry that refuses to accept cash so that’s another similarity with with Malaga is that um cash is very very much still um an acceptable means of payment you don’t have shots who refuse your business because um you’re not prepared to um um pay uh with with card only I’m turning the camera around cuz we’ve got it’s quite quite sunny um you can maybe hear a be something that was a bit weird about malago there was lots of like uh flowers and stuff like that but um I never saw any bees we really weird um so I don’t know whether they’ve got um you know some Monsanto kind of what this got GM modified um flowers in gardens and stuff like that in Malaga that are self-pollinating um but uh anyway so uh let’s talk about the the weather in in uh in Malaga obviously it was um it was like like low 20s it’s now sort of 18° in Finland where I am and um there were there were far fewer chem um those trails in the sky uh in Malaga there was some and when we were flying over from Finland to um malago we went over Paris and actually we saw some uh some trailing being done uh in real time so I’m going to post up a video it’s my wife took it on her phone so I need to get a copy of that video and I’ll I’ll post it up so you can have a look at it yourself um in Malaga there was a little bit of it but nothing like what I’d seen in the UK you know there was no kind of like grid pattern in the sky there was a little bit you know really in Finland we don’t get hardly any of it at all um we might like you know today the you know clouds look there are a few clouds and they’re kind of sort of Fairly normal looking we don’t we don’t get the grid pattern that fills in like uh like you get in most of the UK um obviously a big difference Malaga was a lot of people there um and for me uh I don’t think I’m completely antisocial but I ever since the kind of nonsense um I quite like interacting with with nature being in U you know where I am in Finland and just having peace and quiet know I’ll just turn the camera around there so it’s very nice so it’s very weird again you know to encounter the sort of situation of having to wait to cross a road and stuff like that and um cycle there was a lot of people cycling and going on those electric scooters um but unlike which is very common like in pory cycling is a big mode of Transport very very very popular but here we have separate cycle paths that are completely separate from from the road um in Malaga was a little bit more chaotic so you know personally I would have been um a bit worried uh you know for me I just felt it was a matter of time before and there’s loads of people walking around with their broken arms and stuff so whether those were pedestrians who got run over by people on electric scooters or people on bicycles and you know obviously there were a few people a few Brits um around you know they were getting tanked up during the daytime and then going on bikes which is not a great combination really you know bicycles and alcohol tends to equal a visit to A&E so all in all what were my conclusions well for me personally and this was the same for my wife too we both decided that we wouldn’t swap Malaga for for Mary porry that we just love being here and you know to be honest after after a week or maybe not even that maybe after about 5 days I was already missing things from here most most of obvously like the peace and the quiet and being close to Fantastic nature however if I was still living in England I’m I’m very sure that I would have uh fancied relocating to to malago you know if you gave me a choice between Malaga and Guilford or Malaga and London or Malaga and Brighton I I would be choosing Malaga all day long because probably the most important thing was that it still had its own culture and what’s that L it’s it’s something like it’s better to be a foreigner abroad than it is to be a foreigner in your own country and I think the latter is is how it feels like in Britain these days um you know most of the country is you know it’s just changed so rapidly and um you know it no longer feels British it just feels like this this multi multim monocultural mish mash and um you know for me I don’t I I also like the freedom of of people having their own culture and um their and and being able to celebrate it and being proud of it and to feel as though that you live in a society where you know people understand what the cultural norms are so um yeah for me I know this will anger people again but if I was a Brit living in England I’d be thinking very uh seriously about moving to somewhere like malago it’s not perfect no place is perfect but um from my point of view it’s an awful lot better than the the 99.9% of the UK and um the other thing that i’ would say you know to the doomsters is you know if you’re still moaning about Britain but then you’re still insisting that everywhere else is the same and that there’s no point in relocating or whatever for in search of a better life then what you really need to do with with the greatest of respect is to shut up about it cuz you know if you’re moaning about something constantly and you don’t you’re not prepared to there’s a boat going by the boat in season is well underway now and you’re not prepared to do anything about it then you really need to shut up and that’s that’s that’s what I would say um because you shouldn’t just moan about things and then not do anything about it cuz it’s a bit weak and it’s uh it’s more than a little pathetic so um yeah that was my that was my trip to Malaga for for a week very interesting very very good oh and also the other thing as well was the quality of food was pretty good there as well people like there was a lot of fresh fish being grilled and stuff like that so I’m not too expensive you know you could buy I think the cheapest I saw was some grilled sardines for uh two two Euros but then again you know the thing that I see with Brits is I think they don’t and I’ve seen this lot they don’t know even how to eat fish off the bone they’re a bit kind of like flu by it you know fish is just fish fingers or something or something else that comes in a box from Iceland or Tesco so um anyway that’s all I want to say today oh the final thing as well is that it’s quite ironic you know go to Malaga and then whilst you were away the Sun comes out in Finland so as I say in malago it was like low 20s came back to Finland and it was like on when was it on Tuesday it’s like 18 degrees in hellsinki you know so anyway it was good to experience something different cuz I think that’s the other thing as well is that uh experiences that give you different points of comparison so uh you know you can make better contrasts and evaluate things better if you’ve got different perspectives to view things from so yeah that’s all I want to say today so God bless