It's not the cheapest place in the world - but it's certainly not the most expensive.
The rioting is nothing serious... It's pretty localised.
rioting! basically a few people pissed off that their favourite political party didn't get in.
people pissed off about the fact that the country has to make some cut backs. (we currently spend over £10Billion more than the country makes every month. and we can't keep borrowing forever).
Don't get me wrong, it's not nice that people working in public sectors have to not get pay rises, or have to have their pensions adjusted to be reasonable or sane, it sucks that there are some places in the country where one in three people are employed by the state, and there will be masses of job losses there because well, mostly it's unsustainable to have so many people employed by the state.
it sucks that people will lose their jobs... (and I really do feel for them).
but I'll tell you what, it sucks even more to not be employed by the state and to know that for the past 13 years the public sector has more than doubled in size, constantly squeezing money from the private sector to pay for their wages.
and the justifications for some of those jobs, is ludicrous, but not nearly as ludicrous as the amount of money some of these people who are being employed by the state actually get.
but yes,
food has gotten loads more expensive in recent years, cigarettes are ridiculous, petrol has more than doubled in price in the last decade, that's as well as road tax going up, and the cost of car insurance practically being a joke.
