Bulgaria.com - a visual account.

A photo essay from a recent visit to Bulgaria.

Recently, the British and Irish governments announced restrictions to our new EU member countries, workers will need visas to work here.
On Channel 4 news a Polish shopkeeper had said those from former communist bloc were ‘used to barriers’. The Wall may be gone but plenty more barriers have replaced it.

In Bulgaria almost everything is for sale. Live your dreams and be an investor. If the market has excluded you from playing the game in the west, play in the Balkans. The average wage seems to be €150 a month. A home costs €40,000. Doctors earn €300 a month, corruption is rife in the Health Service, and Bulgarians fear an exodus of the very skilled on the 1st of January 2007.

Newspapers report about the new colonies of the west in their country. Pensioners on €60 to €80 a month are tempted by, in their terms, vast sums to sell their homes so as not to be a burden on their families.

Little Britains and Irelands are dotted around the landscape pushing natives out, but not into the EU.

The crudity of neo-liberalism is fostered and rights pushed aside. I saw many beautiful things but the despair of the most marginalised leaves a greater mark.
(c)

Thanks to the Campaign Against the EU Constitution for hosting an exhibition of some photographs recently.
http://www.caeuc.org/