Dear Sir,
The above words, obviously stolen from Harold Macmillan I would add, were uttered by Lord Young, a government advisor, in the UK’s Daily Telegraph last Friday.
He was making the point that many UK citizens had experienced a ‘good’ recession, with heavily reduced mortgages because of low interest rates, rock bottom prices in the shops and thousands of jobs being created in the export manufacturing arena due to a weak pound.
When I made this very same point some weeks ago in your newspaper, pointing out that the scenario for UK citizens in Thailand was exactly the reverse, whereby interest on savings was virtually nil and incomes in sterling had fallen by 30%, I was crticised as some form of whinging expat.
Maybe the government knows more than your correspondent about the realities. I doubt many UK citizens in Pattaya have had a ‘good’ recession, not to mention the frozen pension issue that has been heavily debated in your columns.
Mind you, there’s always a royal wedding to cheer us all up, if you believe the UK newspapers.
Yours sincerely
DW
Nongprue
