Is UK getting boring ?,..or is it just me ?

I'm asking this question to kind of put my over-active mind into normal speed instead of gazing through the window or sitting day-dreaming about what the benefits of moving over to Phils would be. Is UK getting boring, getting depressing ?
So I'm open to all who wish to contribiute.
I'm very happily married to my Filipina wife,..she gave me two absolutely beautiful young kids in our 7 years of marraige here in Scotland.
We own our own house,. and I have a fairly good income from a landscaping business I started 15 years ago. But,..things are getting strained a bit lately,..there are more and more guys starting up the same business around here,..most with grants and loans from the council, and they put in crazy prices for contracts that I just can't match.
There just seems to be 4 times the amount of money being paid out than what is being earned into our household purse at the moment. I don't know when or if it will ever get better ? To rub salt into the wounds, a nieghbor who gets all the benefits in the world, has started complaining to us that he has to pay £14 every week for the 'chill-out room' (extra bedroom) that they have in their house which is rented from the council ! I want to kick his arse !! They never work, and drink from morning till night and have an incredible lifestyle to match any working man in our street.

We're not skint,...thankfully,..but am I the only one sitting thinking this country is going down and it doesn't seem such a good catch to be living here anymore ? I already feel like I missed the boat several years ago,..we could have bought a nice piece of land locally for a good price, and it was 100 peso to the pound then.
Now I worry that the longer I wait the less I'll get for our house here and the more we will need to pay for something in the Phils.
We already have a small house over in the provinces of Cebu,..but I don't really see us staying there as we bought it from a cousin and let my wife's mother and siblings live in it. Its not big enough for us all anyway.
Just recently my wife has been mentioning moving back over there and trying to set up some small sari-sari,...just next to the big school in her home village. We seen the place when we were over for a holiday last month. I must admit it does look like it could be a place that I would like to live,.. and I believe my wife could actually make a go of the store / food outlet thing.
I seem to be turning rather lazy of late,..I seem to be just giving up on the fact there might be a future here in UK for us. Tell me other folk think like this too ?
I just feel there should be more 'spark' in my working life at the age of 53,..having been successful in business for a good few years now. Is this just the after-effects of returning from an incredibly good holiday there last month ??

Any comments ?

It's not just you.

I think you've got the same feelings as most hard working folk in the UK at tmoment. The last good few years of the benifit system being used as a lifestyle instead of a safety net for those that happen on hard times has taken its toll on the average hard working joe in the street filling them with resentment for those that blantently abuse it.

I personally think things are going to start improving this year, slowly but improving none the less. The wife and me are going across full time to the phils in october (scouting mission in june) for maybe 2 years to sort some things out but I still fully intend to come back to blighty. I am a little younger than you at 38 but I've always said that I'd retire out there rather than stay i the uk. Maybe if you can afford it down size your present house and spend 6 months in both the uk and the phils

I would say that was a very bad idea - sorry for being so blunt but I know several foreigners who did just that and all of them lost money. Why? Simply because there is a foreigner in the mix and even if you remain completely invisible, word will get round that you and your wife, who spent an amount of time in the UK, own and run the place. Ergo you are rich and therefore you can afford to offer credit to your customers who will never repay you because you are perceived to be rich.

Sari-Sari store margins are horribly small because there are no and cash and carry outlets** here and their owners buy stock retail from supermarkets such as SM. My wife's aunt and uncle run quite a large Sari-Sari here in Davao on the main highway from Davao to Tagum, about 3 kilometres from the airport. Their's is quite a successful business but that's mainly due to the fact that they have invested a lot of money in stock, their store is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and they have a strict no credit policy, even for family!

** The European cash and carry company Macro did for some time operate several stores here with their local partner, SM. Problem was that SM also has a chain of cheap supermarkets, Savemore, and they were undercutting Macro's prices. Macro pulled-out about a year ago and SM took over all their stores - built and equipped with Macro money - and immediately increased prices, albeit by a few Pesos.

I was in a rut and changed career.
I am glad I did.
I think if things get bad we have to rethink everything.
I was working overseas doing long trips (min 6 weeks, often 12 weeks) now I drive artics and get home every night bar the odd screw-up.
I think the UK is what you make it.
I often work 70 hrs/week and sometimes take weeks off.
One life to live.

I just spent 6 weeks over there and wouldn't want to live there. It is a third world country and I'd hate to feel trapped by everyone trying to rip me off because of my skin colour.
The UK is a great place and the more countries I visited made me see this all the more clearly.

There are good and bad points to the store / food outlet.
Firstly,..I think that it all depends on the location,...I wouldn't dare try it in the city or anywhere that I aint lived (part-time) over 8 years.
I'd like to think the people in the village know me,..and I know them.
There have been successfull food eateries in the village a few years ago,..but unfortunately the owner passed away and his wife just never got over it and continued. The others just moved onwards to another town to set up the same. We have watched an aunt start from nothing,..cooking rice and other'cheap' foods and selling it and making a nice little home for themselves and her husband/ sons. She now sells lots of differant foods to the nieghboring comunity.
There is also a huge market for food with the local fishing boat. There is 47 hungry lads get off that boat every morning and they just filter away into differant corners of the village to eat and sleep and of coarse drink till its time to sail again at night. Our house is right next to the dock-yard,..we know the owners really well and I know almost all the workers by name, and I just know they would come and eat at ours if it was big enough and cheap enough for them all to be catered for at once.
Sometimes I just feel that life would be much sweeter over there than here in UK. The income I know will be small,..bet I wont be looking to get rich over there. Hopefully the sale of our house will release enough funds to buy another house (not a huge fancy mansion ) and build some kind of cafe / bar in the front driveway / garden area ?
Doesn't hurt to dream I suppose !

Jonny

I tend to think that it can often be a case of the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. Things that are still good about Britain are easily forgotten when we are here.

My feeling is that for anyone not settling in the Philippines soon, will be met with a far less favourable exchange rate and rising prices in the Philippines in the future. It is happening as we speak. Not only that, if we choose to take a vacation in the Philippines, the same is likely to happen. Gazing into the crystal ball, goods and service and holidays will not be cheap out there for much longer.

Noticed the prices when we were there last month were getting higher.
For a start , we couldn't find an exchange rate higher than 60 peso to pound and we searched a few places.
Also the beer has gone up a fair bit as well as the ciggies ( its fine,.I stopped smoking at new-year ).
Some of the land that we turned down years ago has now been sold to other westerners for about half million more now.
Yes, I agree that there will be a time soon when the tables are turned on the western world versus the east for cheap places to emigrate.

Taking a long view, the Philippines economy is not going to go anywhere.

I've seen this cycle before - in the middle 90's under Ramos - all the signs looked good, the necessary reforms were being put in place, the lights were back on.. the peso appreciated like a rocket - then came the Asian Crisis, the masa voted for Erap, the economy tanked, and things went back to normal.

In three years time according to Raul Fabella whom I've quoted elsewhere on the site (Phils videos) the economy will run out of power generating capacity. The power stations should be being built now, but there is no sign of them. So in 2016 the lights go out again.

That will coincide with the next Presidential election, and if past history is any form a crook will be elected.

Unless Aquino puts in real reforms, opening up the economy to foreign investment and making it attractive, things will go downhill again soon enough.

It's not a case of "they will run out of generating capacity by 2016": they already have. Much of Mindanao, though thankfully not Davao, is affected by rotating black-outs lasting up to 8-12 hours at a time and major companies, like Dole and the mall operators, have been told to run their own generators to reduce the load on the grid. The situation on other islands is no better and on Luzon, Meralco's answer is simply to increase electricity prices to reduce demand.

If you are thinking about living in the Philippines then by all means come here - but to retire. Do not for one second contemplate running your own business here because the odds are stacked against you. Over the last 6 or 7 years, I've seen or heard of too many foreign-owned business fail.

Even more reason to not settle over there?

Now if the exchange rates staid pinned at 70 to 100 and the Philippines infrastructure and economy was developing tickety boo and if the next president isnt a crook etc etc etc then maybe food for thought then.....

Good to read your post Oss , at least you can understand the frustration that I have.
I too have two small kids,...and I've thought long and hard about their education both here and over there. Let me tell you about that subject, (schooling )..
About 2 years ago we went over to see my wife's family in the province of Cebu. We took my 11 year old son with us. He quickly made a lot of friends, probably being tall blonde and blue eyes helped,.. and he spent most of his days with them in the sea.
The last week we were there the local kids had to go back to school,..he was left alone to mess around, until some of his pals asked their teacher if he could join in the class for an afternoon. The teacher thought it would be a good idea to find out how my son's school was ran. He enjoyed every minute of it, even going back for a full day the next morning. The teacher gave him the exam papers that the class had just sat,..and we brought them back to his school here in UK. I gave them to his teachers and they were very surprised at the level they had already reached at that age group ! So maybe the teaching is not so bad over there after all ?
I know thats just a small part of the problem, but I'm sure most others could be overcome too.

Jonny

I'd have to go along with that.
Although in some defense of Pnoy, he has claimed to have directed huge sums of money for power generation and infrastructure projects, but no-one appears to know where most of it ended up..........

I notice you didn't make mention of Ate Glo

Jonnyivy,
Do you mean that to say that in UK everyone appears stressed and angry, with behaviours to support that impression.
Where most people are dressed so casually and looked dishevelled to the point of being scruffy.
Where nothing seems to function or operate as it should. Shop staff are sullen and unattentive. Customer service non-existent.
Fast food outlets dirty, tables not cleared and cleaned, floors dirty and spillages left to get trodden around and sure do.
Where excessive yobbish behaviour and lack of visible police presence makes 'going out' unpleasant.....

C'mon lets be fair and give a balanced view. Just like other places the UK has both good and bad aspects.
It's really a matter of personal taste I guess.
You might think it's great and want to move here, or you might feel like you're stuck in the UK, think it's terrible and you'd like to escape.
High (and ever increasing) retirement age, too few public holidays, miserable weather and a soaring cost of living (not to mention extreme high property costs) have combined to leave the UK trailing most other countries in disposable incomes and quality of life.

Here in UK we are taxed until the pip squeaks, the quality of life is appalling, wages are shameful and crime is spiralling.
The criminals have free rein while law abiding people seem to risk being persecuted.
The overbearing burden of bureaucracy, absurd laws and nanny state interventionism (over zealous sticking to trivial legalistic minutii) can make the UK seem almost unjust to live in at times.

There’s not much here for me to be cheerful about.

Now see what you did Jonny, I wandered off into rant mode again...

Says it all I guess.

There was a time when I felt that my wife might find difficult in adjusting to day-to day life in the Philippines. These days, I think she can see that the positives (for us) far outweigh the negatives.

Let's make no mistakes though, living in a different country and different culture doesn't sit well with everybody.
Philippine life may not suit everyone and may quite easily end in tears.
There's a lot of learning to do and a lot of careful integration also.
I imagine that for folks retiring in the Paradise Islands one of the major issues could actually be boredom. That needs to be avoided and resolved either before arriving or soon after.
Make a better life is the pathway to follow.

I am probably not a useful contributor to this discussion since if all goes well I may be taking up an offer of a good job in the Philippines, so my concerns are a bit different, like housing and schooling. When i lived in the philippines in th 90's boredom was indeed an issue - but there was no Internet then.

I think a lot can depend on where in the UK one lives. I know there are bad spots. But I don't live in them or spend much time in them, if any.

I have spent a lot of my attention on this topic over the last couple of years. Should I or should I not move to and settle in the Philippines. The factors are many and wide ranging. I wonder if anyone has sat down and listed the many advantages and disadvantages of either staying or going?

I have had some in depth face to face discussions with someone who spent 15 years in the Philippines and he has concluded just recently that enough was enough and has settled back in the UK. I know that everyone's experiences and potential for settling can be different but everything he said tied in with something someone has mentioned either here or on the other "channel", so much so that I am inclined to believe his points are valid.

Hi Peter,
Sorry to isolate one sentence in your wonderful article but it is one that I would like to respond to, particularly with our shared experiences of travel.

The Philippines is indeed a wonderful country in many respects but it also has the problems that many third world countries have.
The thing that irks me most is the feeling that I (perceive I) am viewed mostly as a benefactor rather than just a person.
I see so many people relaxing there when I often work 70 hours a week in the UK. I have had a change of heart recently and have decided to stop trying to kill myself by overworking, but that's a side issue.
However, as time has worn on, I feel that the wonderful way I saw the Philippines and the Filipino people on many previous trips has changed into doubts.
I find it quite insulting at times the way I am viewed over there and I became more agitated the more I went back there.
I could go on and on but I have to go to collect my family from the shops.......

Yes, I agree , it's all down to each individual persons situation in life, and what they are exactly looking for ?
Here's a bit more of my own,...
I go out to our house way down south west coast of Cebu maybe 2 times a year,..mostly to relax , but more often to see how well our family fits in with the way of life and 'imagine' what it would be like to settle in that area. If you have family in the small villages then you will know what I mean when you can sit and people-watch and see how the locals work and play. I know I cant do any of my own type of work out there as its far too hot. But guiding my family in making a small eatery would suit me fine. i know folk thing dont do it,..but like I said,..it's differant for each individual. I know the money wont be great.

For sure,..I've paid my taxes over the years,..like mentioned, feels like every last little squeezed out of me, and what for ?
Business this year aint looking too rosy,..the snow and cold frosts have hindered me from the spring start-up, and there is so many 'newbie's' on the scene now,..even local firemen taking a weekend job gardening to help get by ! It dont help me get by !!!
As far as where I live ?..well our street still has the sleepy peacefull area that a lot of folk would long for. there's no through-road, so no fast cars passing , and never a police car is seen round here. There are miles of fields behind our house where you can walk for hours and the view is stunning.... But I would still prefer to sell up and go over.
As already said,...each to their own ideas !

I really think that by the end of this season I will have decided one way or another.