I was wondering if Europeans who move to the UK can have voting rights as soon as they land?
I read today that the French say the invasion of the Brits to their country is more overwhelming than when the Nazis came.
Rambling I know but do you have a show on television called House Hunters International (HGTV).
We are glued to that show. It shows people from the US and the UK who are shopping for homes in Paris, Portugal, Fiji, Italy and Thailand. We like Italy, Portugal and the French countryside. Fiji was OK. If anyone is interested they can watch the series on their site when you Goggle them.
I would think that these countries have some kind of a NHS?
EU citizens have the automatic right to vote in European elections in Britain and have been granted the right to vote in local elections.
They have some-sort of NHS, but the NHS is actually rather unique. Most European countries have an insurance based system, generally private (but strictly regulated). For example in France 70% of costs are reimbursed by the mandatory plans (which are run by employers/unions for workers and their dependants). Generally people also have a private 'mutuelle' to cover the rest, but that's optional.
I think Britain's very European, but that's slightly misleading because it implies Britain buys into the European project. Often people think that Britain isn't European culturally or socially or politically, but I'd argue that this is taking a narrow view of Europeans and effectively saying that Europe's soul rests in a café in Marseilles. But Europe also includes Warsaw, Rome, Dublin, Berlin and London. We all watch the Eurovision song contest, play football, have much the same stereotypes about each other and - most importantly - live quite similar lives. The difference in how a German lives his life compared to a Briton or a Spaniard is, arguably, smaller than the difference between a Kansan and a New Yorker.
That said, we don't buy into the European project as much. I think that is largely because our experience of the war was subtly different (not axis, occupied nor neutral - so little moral anguish on our part) and because our entry into the project was made very difficult by the French, which tinged the entire thing from the very beginning with a sense that we did not share ownership of the project. A lot of people tie it to the Empire, but that forgets how central imperialism was to the French, Italian and Belgian senses of identity.
