Weekend reading: Who’s Balkanised now?
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Great stuff -when are you emigrating?
Of course this particular area of the Balkans has just recently recovered from a savage civil war -hopefully the raison d,etre for that conflict is now in the past but perhaps that’s just a hope
I recently had a holiday in Slovenia with long term friends from back in the sixties
Slovenia escaped the carnage just but all the ingredients are still in play
My friend has all her savings in property -4 houses -as banks and the financial sector still not trusted
They are certainly currently enjoying good times via a stability imposed by the West and America and now hopefully maintained by NATO and the EU
Long may it last-all my world travels in retirement greatly reinforced how lucky we are to be living in the country that we do for stability safety and health care with its warts and all-we do rather seem to take it for granted
The rest of the world lives in rather a different way
xxd09
@xxdo9 — The Balkan civil war officially ended 27 years ago. Your definition of ‘recently’ might have had somebody saying Britain was recently at war with Germany well into the 1970s. 😉
Alas as the piece concludes I’m not emigrating anywhere. (I still have my bug out Plan B, of course, for the most unlikely but grim scenarios. The idiotic by-election in Clacton this week has hardly given reason to shelve that one.)
I’ve just been on holiday in Sweden and it’s hard not to compare to back home (unfavourably for the UK).
But it’s not a “talking Britain down” argument to say: not all that’s good in Croatia is down to the EU and not all that’s bad in the UK is down to Brexit. I know that’s an over simplification of your argument – and your site your rules – but it does all come across a bit one track.
I voted remain, would do so again if the vote was today. Rejoin is more tricky given the old deal isn’t on the table anymore.
@james1123003 — Hi, yes I deliberately mentioned Germany and France as peers for this reason.
All our woes are definitely not all down to leaving the EU. But doing so made things appreciably worse.
(I suspect an argument could be made that many of Croatia’s gains are down to joining it though. Especially the roads and other infrastructure! 🙂 )
I remember a trip to Croatia back in 2010, didn’t think it was that cheap at the time and they still had their own currency then. Maybe things have diverged since then and inflation shocks have hit us harder and its now a bargain as you describe. Theres good sailing to be had around that part of the med if you’re into that sort of thing. It would be amazing to have that level of functionality in the NHS, kind of how I remember things being in the 90s, though I was only a kid then and maybe mis-remembering my experiences. That trip back in 2010 also included Slovenia, and I thought that was absolutely lovely, Ljubljana,Bled, Vrisic pass, places like that..
Rest of my nuclear family have a bug-out plan in form of Polish passports, alas, I do not and will be stuck with BinFace as my glorious leader
@Rhino — Worth noting I was up in the north. It’s quieter and less touristy by far up that way, especially UK/Western Europe/US tourists.
The other thing that has perhaps changed since 2010 is that the UK (especially restaurants and the like) has gotten so expensive. Of course I’m sure some of those pressures have been felt in Croatia too (e.g. energy) but not all.
Whilst I’m not denying your experience for a minute, I think we need to take a step back and consider a few things. Firstly – a quick Google suggests Croatia’s healthcare situation suffers from similar ills as the UK’s in many ways, and we have better outcomes for chronic diseases and cancer survival rates. Secondly – Croatia emerged from a communist/socialist system in the 1990s and received massive injections of EU money only after accession to the EU in 2013, a process which also helped them clean up their public domain in preparation to join. Much of their infrastructure was probably rebuilt on the back of this funding. I’m also sure that Croatian citizens were considerably more motivated than many in the UK to get their country moving again and catch up with Western Europe, hence the new roads, bridges etc. – it seems like they certainly spent the money well.
Brexit hasn’t helped the UK (and I’m certainly no Brexit shill) but surely the blame for our poor public services lies with years and years of chronic underinvestment – which long pre-dates Brexit and seems to be a ‘feature’ particularly of Conservative governments, with the recent austerity programme a particularly disastrous example. Our productivity started dropping off after the financial crisis with Brexit probably exacerbating a bad situation but not being the origin of it.
Having said that, we definitely have a number of structural problems in this country with public services which desperately need sorting out, one of the worst of which in my opinion is social care funding. Lack of long term care places cause bed blocking in the NHS and also drains council budgets, given the ‘genius’ decision to push the funding of long term care onto local authorities AND cut their block grant, meaning the most visible public services such as road maintenance, street cleaning and the general environment get neglected, creating a general air of decline.
I’m not saying any of this is easy, but it feel to me like we need to lean a bit less on Brexit as being the cause of our ills, and look at established structural issues.
@Mark — Thanks for the sensible comments. Again, I mention France and Germany as similarly unflattering comparisons, and I do say in the piece that Croatia is/was playing catch up.
However I do twice mention Brexit, because I am not going to forget the cost — say 6-8% of GDP, with big knock-ons on the tax base — of this economically damaging decision, just because it’s boring or it is not the whole story.
From my perspective, any article that does not mention Brexit when discussing the UK economy is in dereliction. Which in turn is not to refute your very valid points about longer term UK structual issues.
Some day it’ll have to dropped and absorbed, but for me that’s probably still five years or so away. And when discussing the past ten years, it’s highly relevant! 🙂
@TI – My Mavens subscription having just been paid, I had hoped for a few less Brexit mentions. I realise it is your site, under your control.
I enjoyed the Croatia piece which was interesting and informative.
I agree with you re Brexit. A mistake to be given the vote. A mistake to happen. But “we are where we are” expertly describes the situation. Can’t change it. We have to move on. Yes the UK is in a far worse state than we would have been but for Brexit. But still, if it is what we have been left with, we have to work with what we have got now. I have never been one to constantly keep looking backwards….
@Barm — Firstly and mostly importantly, thanks for the ongoing support via the Mavens membership! Every sign-up is greatly appreciated. 🙂
As you say, my site and I think it would be weird of me to suddenly stop mentioning what I think is the UK’s biggest unforced blunder of the past 30 years at least. Weekend Reading has always had a more personal/political bent, and people presumably expect to hear my opinions (or anyone else writing Weekend Reading) not somebody else’s.
To avoid repeating what I’ve already said above, I’ll add that I would be more inclined to stop factoring in Brexit into the UK’s economic malaise if the right-wing press routinely nodded to it in their own analysis. However they mostly never have, and instead act like all our problems are down to a couple of years of Reeves and Starmer. They didn’t help much but they didn’t hurt anything like as much, either.
Finally, FWIW it’s worth, ‘unsubscribes’ from this email are even lower than usual. Almost negligible as I type. While I know Brexit mentions annoy a few otherwise happy and loyal readers, the vast majority at least accept it if not agree with it.
And again, perhaps they think that a couple of sentences (one of which refers to the arsonist who has just become an MP again and has a non-zero chance of being the next PM, despite doing untold damage to the UK economy) is not excessive.
Most of the piece was about how pleasant it was to be in a country growing places, not a diagnosis of why we’re flagging, after all. 🙂
Interesting to go looking for more data on Croatia.
Population has declined since 1991 and emigration increased once they joined the EU. Mostly young people leaving for better job prospects.
How would that affect the GDP per capita PPP adjusted comparison?
> All that conceded, it’d still be nice to live somewhere that didn’t feel trapped in spiralling decline.
You’re getting old. This is what decline looks like, you can remember too much of the less bad 😉 Cheer up, you know yourself better, so hopefully less existential angst and that sort of thing. And you have a lady so things have been looking up!
Congratulations – and unless you’re actually cradle-snatching young professionals probably the answer 😉 They’re all to often early twenty something ‘content creators/digital nomads’ whatever, who haven’t realised that what the algorithm giveth it taketh away in a heartbeat. Personally if I were in business I’d prefer that my customers were earning a decent living rather than flushing their lives away on their phones one short-form video after another, but each to their own. The only thing Andy Warhol got wrong about fifteen minutes of fame is that it’s two now.
@Ermine — I have a very elastic definition of ‘young’, for delusional self-image reasons. (Also I was referring to 30 years of dating there…)
Re: decline, well I’m not convinced. The UK was doing great as recently as 2008 — and well beyond that, at least as far as me and people like me are concerned, which I write with full knowledge that this isn’t everyone etc and is a privileged position, and hoping nobody needs to explain that to me. 😉
London was fizzing. I was watching new fintechs being founded by countless clever immigrants, seeing ambitions new projects underway, went down the Crossrail tunnels while they were being built, saw the UK economy grow despite some very questionable post-GFC policy decisions (at least in hindsight). Everyone wanted to live here.
Very different now. We’re clearly on the skids and people want to get away. Property is flat in real terms over 20 years (a bug or a feature depending on your point of view, but hardly a marker of rip-roaring animals spirits).
10 years ago I could live freely among a community of 700m or whatnot. Now I can’t even move house in the UK without dropping £30K on stamp duty. Etc etc. Real wages pretty stagnant for everyone.
Political tension / racism / generational antagonism far worse than 20 years ago, though of course not worse than 40 years ago.
I’m sure being older is a bit of it, but I think it’s too simple to wave away the UK’s rotten past decade or so that way.
Not least because the young people I know are if anything more gloomy and pessimistic!
(And I haven’t even mentioned global warming from their perspective, which is clearly unfolding exactly as promised by the trailers… 🙁 )
@jimboglo — Interesting. I did see other data suggesting young people in Croatia are much happier than the old (hmm, cf @ermine’s comments above!) so maybe they are emigrating from a position of strength.
In any event, based on my anecdotal experience I would expect that to plateau soon and for people to start to return, like we’re seeing with Poland, at least where they’re not in particularly specialised / high-earning roles.
I’m suspect too that money is coming back into holiday homes etc. Even China used to actively encourage a certain amount of emigration on the grounds of currency inflows from expats! 🙂
@TI I have more bad news for you – the NHS no longer does ear syringing. It’s either a Blue Peter DIY job with a rubber bulb syringe, or pay £70 to have it hoovered out by microsuction at one of the ear wax removal shops that have sprung up on our high streets. At least you didn’t pay through the nose!!
Say what now ?
‘Political tension / racism / generational antagonism far worse than 20 years ago, though of course not worse than 40 years ago.’
Would you care to justify that ?
Croatia and Poland were net recipients from EU funds weren’t they, not so the UK.
In my trips around northern Spain and Madeira I have been very impressed with the road infrastructure: and the EU flags alongside them.
The UK has been in relative economic decline all my life, in my view an ossified class structure (management as a separate class) was a factor.
Still, with your 10 year old Brexit hammer I am sure you will find a lot more nails :(.
Yes you don’t have to travel to Croatia to get your ears sorted. I paid £45 to have my left ear sucked out a few years go. Worth every penny and got rid of the pulsing tinnitus from the liquified stuff pushed up onto my eardrum after using Otex which is basically expensive olive oil. Price hasn’t gone up either:
https://www.bucksearwaxremoval.co.uk/services
Next time maybe get yourself on a train out of London and enjoy some sight seeing in the Home Counties too 🙂 Just find a clinic with a qualified audiologist, some of them used to work in GP surgeries until they abandoned us for this problem.
@TI #13 > Re: decline, well I’m not convinced. The UK was doing great as recently as 2008 — and well beyond that, at least as far as me and people like me are concerned,
Q.E.D. – as you say, just under 20 years ago the UK was doing OK, now not so much. This is what decline looks like, forsooth 😉
> well beyond that, at least as far as me and people like me are concerned,
ever watch a ‘toon called Wile E Coyote and the Roadrunner?
Still, look on the bright side. You and your good lady love the London life and you’re minted. The best of British luck to you both. Sure, the vibes were better back in the day, but chin up, in London, in love, can’t be all bad!
@ermine — Hmm, perhaps I misunderstood you. 🙂 I took the ‘this is what decline looks like’ line as being more a “this is the sort of thing older people say”… or else in the epic Edward Gibbons sense.
If you mean things have been pretty crap for 10-15 years, I obviously agree!
Still, despite my dark take (my email replies today also have several readers saying/admonishing “why are you still so gloomy about Brexit” but obviously, tellingly, not actually arguing that Brexit has done anything good for anyone) I still hope the UK is in the trough of a wave, not the pointy end of a slope. 😉
@all — On the general Brexit issue — not specifically to anyone here, more generally — really I have nothing to prove now.
I said Brexit would be crap and achieve nothing, economically or politically, and that it would certainly be bad on the former over time. Brexit has indeed achieved nothing on any front, and it has been bad economically over time.
Nobody can defend it, nobody even bothers trying anymore. People just don’t want to hear about it, nor about its consequences.
Well, not on my watch, from time to time.
And again, I wrote just a couple of sentences in an article to trigger this ‘why the Brexit?’ pushback.
And *I’m* the obsessed one? 😉
I came to say what two others have already- that for reasons that make as much sense as Brexit, the NHS won’t do ear wax removal anymore. I wonder how much it’s costing them having a load more people blundering around deaf and in pain? The going rate on my patch is £80. Make it make sense.
@Vanguardfan – because the NHS is firefighting, and has been for years. It is hugely overloaded (whether because of inefficiency or lack of resource; probably both). In a firefighting situation, only short termism makes sense.
At 16, I had a moth fly in and get stuck in my right ear. Killed it with olive oil so I could get to sleep. Had my ear pumped out on NHS. Lost high frequency hearing in that ear for the rest of my life. If I had been old or had both ears done at the same time I would not have noticed so much.
I think if one was going to live in the Balkans and was a person with options through wealth then a bug-out plan would be more important there than here in the UK. I wouldn’t quite have a 24 hour bag with my passports packed but I would have a ever running six month plan to check out.
https://newdirection.online/the-european-journal/article/the_balkan_tinderbox
We thankfully don’t have anything like that level of deeply ingrained animosity amongst our population…for now anyway.
That said the article brings up some really good points. Geo-Arbitrage for UK Fire Seekers is a real thing potentially.
Also the UK has just go so expensive in recent years as you say, which I suppose we all know is a combination of deliberate government policies, the cumulative affect of short term thinking over decades and exogenous events. e.g. one of the highest minimum wages in Europe, energy & housing policies and the war in Ukraine.
Now I’m not saying a living wage or a higher minimum wage isn’t a good thing. Cost of living is a major problem. But it would have helped if we had spent more on infrastructure to lower the cost of energy and built more homes to lower the cost of housing over the past few decades rather than pump the north sea oil dividend into welfare for example. So many of our issues come back to these fundamental points.
The electorate just wants the short term sweeties such as VAT off the energy bill and refuses to take any longer term view.
World living standards are likely to further equalise over the next (that’s us meeting the other half in the middle on the relative downward slide) and we have an entirely unsustainable pensions / welfare bill.
There’s going to be millions of extremely upset people in the UK in the near future, who will inevitably encourage politicians to continue to say anything to get elected even if its palpably not in our longer term interests.
So what to do…no person’s an island but I’m giving it a go. So that’s opting out of the NHS (apart from A&E, which is a concern), state education, live in a low crime neighbourhood plus one without any social tensions from immigration or otherwise, who cares if the state pension exists all not- I won’t be banking on it. Have enough money to fund social care at the end, which is a complete disgrace in the UK. A bug out plan if it starts becoming too painful tax wise.
If it all sounds rather the devil take the hindmost, indeed. It’s no more selfish than our general electorate choices over the past few decades particularly one taken about ten years ago. Once you cross that rubicon it’s quite liberating.