SCUMBAGS

The older I get, the fewer things there are that make me really, blood-spitting angry, but this is one of them:

8.00pm Property Developing Abroad Having been stationed in Iraq, Charlie and Sascha took early retirement from the Army to become developers in Bulgaria, and are now looking to buy up as much property as possible on its Black Sea coast. With the help of presenter Gary McCausland, the couple view potential purchases and consider how best to increase their profits by targeting British holiday-makers seeking luxury villas (888) (Stereo)

Place is not about profit, it's about belonging - unless you're Bulgarian - or Greek Cypriot - or - or - or - in which case, good luck. If this was happening in Wales you'd get your luxury villa burnt to the fuckin' ground and rightly so. But this is a lost debate in the UK, ever since Margaret bloody Thatcher decided to create a class of kulaks by selling off the decent council housing stock and leaving the poorest to rot.

The most interesting thing - and the one I've never seen properly addressed - about all these programmes on whinging poms buying abroad is why they decide to leave in the first place. What has gone so badly wrong with the country that they are not prepared to stick and try to make it work? How have they become deracinated, so that not only do they not belong in the place they move to, they don't even belong to the place they've come from?