Russian Reminiscin'

Last night after dinner my Russian mum and I somehow ended up discussing the many social and political changes that have taken place in Great Mother Russia over the past few decades and what she had to say was interestingly a lot more relevant to British politics than expected.

This is a woman who had spent all of her life growing up in a society where everyone was forced to have a job and it was simultaneously nigh on impossible to become extremely wealthy. In her eyes, socialism meant that there were as few rich people as there were poor and the majority formed a just about comfortable middle class.

She explained to me that after perestroika, opportunistic oligarchs stole the country's national resources and these Super Rich go on to use their profits to holiday in places like my fatherland (the Seychelles). She also took issue with the fact that they justify themselves by saying that they earned the money; they didn't put in any hours in at the mine or down at the farm. All of their employees, ordinary people, did all of the work that pays for their houses in London and their luxury holidays.

Meanwhile, people have cottoned on to the financial benefits that come along with governmental roles meaning that politicians are no longer motivated by their work for the people, but simply by the money that brings.

It seems to me that although Russia and the UK have had and continue to have vastly different political situations, the gripes of ordinary people here are not all that far from the many dissatisfactions and frustrations we feel at home.