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Five reasons it's great to be British!

Despite the relentless doom and gloom, these five things should cheer you up.

Almost four years after the phrase 'credit crunch' entered our vocabulary, times are still tough here in Britain.

Even though the UK has emerged from recession and our economy is growing once more (albeit slowly), the news is still filled with doom and gloom. Every day sees reports of high unemployment, rising prices, declining wages, higher taxes and public-spending cutbacks.

It's enough to make you want to crawl back under the duvet and not come out until you see light at the end of the tunnel!

Reasons to be cheerful

However, I'm not convinced that we live in 'broken Britain' quite yet. Sure, we've gone through the longest, deepest depression since the Thirties, but at least that's behind us now.

Likewise, UK unemployment has been rising steeply, but it's levelling off and should start to fall back. What's more, our unemployment rate is 7.8%, which is miles better than in shaky Spain, where more than one in five workers (20.5%) is out of work.

So, without further ado, here are five reasons to be chuffed to be British:

1. Personal wealth

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) produces a yearly report on our personal wealth. In 2009, the ONS found that we owned assets worth £8,775 billion and owed £1,531 billion. In other words, our total net wealth (what we own minus what we owe) was £7,244 billion.

With around 26.2 million households in the UK, this comes to more than £276,000 per household, which puts Brits among the world's wealthiest folk. Surely that's something to be grateful for, agreed?

However, more than half of our wealth (£3,827 billion, or 53%) is in property, which explains our fixation with house prices!

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2. Household earnings

As well as being richer than most of our European cousins, we also earn more, too.

In 2010, the average household income in the UK was just over £35,000, according to business consultancy CACI. This is about two-fifths (40%) more than the European average of around £25,000 a year.

Then again, we work longer hours than most of our Continental counterparts. According to the Trades Union Congress (TUC), full-time employees in the UK work an average of 43.5 hours a week, versus 38.2 hours in France and 39.9 hours in Germany.

3. Rip-off luxuries, but low-cost essentials

Among producers of expensive items such as consumer electronics and cars, Britain has long been known as 'Treasure Island'. This is because these firms happily charge more for their goods in the UK than in the US, Europe or Asia.

For example, Apple sells its entry-level iPad 2 for $499 in the US. At $1.65 to the pound, this comes to under £303. However, Apple sells the same gadget for £399 in Britain. This mark-up of nearly a third (32%) can't be explained away by different taxes or other excuses, so we're being ripped off.

Then again, thanks to fierce competition on the high street between leading supermarkets, the cost of everyday essentials is lower in the UK than in most of Western Europe.

As the 'Big Four' supermarkets (Tesco, ASDA, Sainsbury's and Morrisons) try to win market share by slashing prices, these 'discount wars' benefit British shoppers.

Supermarket surveys repeatedly find that a basket of essential household items costs considerably less in the UK than it does in other major European countries. So, for everyday basics, Tesco is likely to be cheaper than, say, Carrefour in France or Edeka in Germany.

4. Free banking

Here in the UK, if your current account is in credit, then you're unlikely to be charged a monthly fee or charged for everyday transactions, such as cash withdrawals, cheques, direct debits, standing orders, etc. Such fees are the norm only for those using packaged bank accounts or private banking.

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Although free banking is something that most of us take for granted, it's remarkably rare outside of the UK. In the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Europe and elsewhere, in-credit bank charges are standard. Even when they're in credit, foreigners pay monthly fees and cash-machine charges, which can add up to hundreds of pounds a year.

What's more, going overdrawn without permission over here usually means getting a warning letter and, say, a £35 penalty charge. However, in France, borrowing without approval can land you in court; in America, 'bouncing' too many cheques can see you charged with 'wire fraud'!

5. Cheap culture

I live in an area which -- thanks to its ancient history and architecture -- attracts lots of foreign visitors. During Easter, my high street was bustling with French, Italian, German and American tourists.

What surprises many visitors is how inexpensive it is to soak up British heritage. Indeed, our friends from abroad can visit dozens of British museums, art galleries, cathedrals and churches at little or no cost.

Thanks to financial support from the government and Church of England, both Brits and foreigners can enjoy some of the UK's finest attractions free of charge (not forgetting our world-famous countryside, of course).

Finally, as I often tell my young children, they are very fortunate to be born in such a prosperous, stable, democratic country as Britain. Of the 6.7 billion people on Earth, only 61 million live in the UK, so being British is a 110-to-one shot. Personally, I'm grateful to have done so well in the lottery of life!

More: Start saving for a brighter future | The multi-car insurance rip-off! | Reclaim thousands after PPI court ruling

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  • 04 May 2011

    Thank you for your explanaton Sodit, much appreciated. But, in my view, they are ALL as bad as each other. They are ALL out to line their own greedy pockets. And none of them give a toss about you or me. Somebody said about having to starve, well that's almost me too!

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  • 03 May 2011

    Cliff, a minor point: I have lived in Holland, Sweden and Denmark, and I never had to pay for my current account.

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  • 03 May 2011

    Sorry to hear of your plight, PJ Dutton, but the current government is not as evil as the last one, who deliberately and knowingly destroyed my pension fund, who kicked away the tax-free leg up that their predecessors gave the basic rate taxpayer while keeping tax breaks for themselves and their rich friends (the replacement of PEPs with ISAs), who taxed education in order to drag down those who haven't even started to earn yet, who oversaw an obvious bubble in the housing market and allowed mortgages of 6x income to be awarded thereby pushing house prices out of reach of the prudent working man, and then created £200 bn out of thin air to ruin the government finances thereby undermining Gilts, so there is no safe haven for investors to flee to just to keep their pension savings safe. Bankers are a gang of short term focused pirates, we knew this, that is why banking is a regulated industry. Given half a chance bankers will rip the arse out of any circumstance, that is their nature, that is why they need to be kept on a leash. When Gordy the Klepto changed the regulatory regime in 1997 he had before him the experience of Sweden and Canada, who'd had a banking crisis in the early 1990s, yet he chose to ignore it. Sweden and Canada did not suffer a banking crisis in 2008, we did, where should the finger of guilt be pointed?

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