Seriously thinking about leaving the UK - AIBU?

go for it! Migrate for a better life. Be an immigrant somewhere else. Build a better life.

I’m sceptical about how many countries you can successfully do that in without experiencing many of the challenges your own country faces.

And I can’t help but judge people for not staying and improving this country, building it better. Rich people who can run away to greener pastures seem almost selfish. Leave your country for someone else to fix. In my mind, if you don’t care about your country and actively nurture it, what’s the point of having countries, nationalities, at all?

But humans have migrated for as long as we’ve existed. And migration is a positive thing. So I’m contradicting myself there!

Anyhow, like others, I’m keen to see which country you’ll migrate to. And even more interested to hear how you fare in the years to come. Keep us updated!

I think if you and your family have the employability and language skills to live elsewhere and dislike where you are now, then why not give it a go. It’s a personal choice.

Broadly though, I suspect quite a lot of people who think the U.K. is crap are being quite myopic. What do you think life is like for, say, a checkout worker or a cleaner in, say, Canada, Portugal, the Emirates, Japan or Austria? Do you think they feel they live in veritable utopias with the world at their feet? Life is pretty crap everywhere if you don’t have much money and no specialist skills to offer, there are no magical utopias.

This. ^ The rose tinted spectacles that some people wear, and the fantasy world they live in is quite shocking. 'Oh the UK is shit, I'm off to live in Paris, LA, Bangkok, Sydney, Stockholm etc etc etc...' Like life is going to be soooooooo much better there. Upshot is, it's unlikely to be any better in any other country than it is in the UK, and in some countries it will be worse!

You think there are too many foreigners in this country so you encourage your children to go and be foreigners in another country?
Don't you see the irony in that?

Where are you thinking of going? You can't just rock up in France/Spain/Greece any more and get a job unless you have an EU passport.

Yup. Australia. Leaving soon.

This. ^ I can't imagine, for one split second, 'encouraging' my children to leave the UK. What a bizarre thing to do. The vast majority of people wouldn't want their children flying off to another continent to live. Why on earth would you try and encourage them to go?

It depends where you go. The grass isn't always greener. It's much worse in many countries and not necessarily better in others

I left the UK in 1988 because there were no jobs for people with my qualifications. I moved to a European country, where I spoke the language and had been very happy as an au pair and student.
Everything was fine until Brexit/Covid, so I became a dual nationality person, which I was not very keen to do, but needs must.
I can honestly say that I have not been back to the UK for more than 2 years and do not miss it.
However, the economic divide started in the 2000s, it is not a recent phenomenon.
Living "abroad" is just the same as living in the UK, same challenges, same "life admin", possibly slightly better pay and conditions, possibly better holidays, sometimes the weather is better, but, certainly in large cities, the issues are more or less identical.

One of my nieces did exactly that with Sri Lanka. She now has her own business and is very happy indeed.

But then they would be adding to migration in another country. So part of the problem they would be trying to escape from in the UK.

AAahhh... my dream.

I am envious. One of my Dcs' dream is to study at the Sorbonne so that is my leaning as well. Athough my parents are in Australia and we might head in that general direction.

The country's screwed - it's going to take generations and a full-on revolution to recover from years of being hollowed out by the Tories
@notprincehamlet

What form will this revolution take? Guillotines in town squares?
What income level will mean eradication?
Presumably all Tory MPs past and present will be for the chop.

I live in rural thailand in the countryside i left the uk and everything in it 22 year ago and nothing could make me want to come back.
I just woke up one day and thought fuck this im done.
I only took my back pack that was that i started over with nothing and it was so bloody worth it.
I now have a job a home friends that are like family.

What is it with all these posts with these endless reams of self-justification for leaving the UK? Just go. You don’t need to do it via Flouncers’ Corner. People have been emigrating since the dawn of time. You don’t need to think the UK is a shit show to leave it, you can just fancy a new culture, a new climate, a new language. I left my home country the week I graduated from university.

And go where? That is a crucial part of the decision.

France.

This. ^

As someone who has far flung family, life is quite hard in many countries, and some other countries don't want immigrants. I am quite bemused by the " Go for it" comments. It's like Brexit nevet happened!

The UK I live in still has a village pub and a parish council. We have neighbours who like each other, relatively little traffic, no parking issues. Farms, fields and trees and gardens.

I can run without being hassled, I can walk to the pub in the dark. The worst we have is a bit of graffiti. There are job vacancies.

I accept inner cities are not like that. So different people have different experiences.

It's been going downhill since 1979 and the start of a new and highly destructive political era. The results of which are too depressing to mention. Even a very good government would need many years to begin to turn things around. There are no magic cures for this level of damage.

Go for it OP.

Each to their own I say! I was born in East Anglia lived all my adult life in London, and the first time I visited Scotland I instantly felt at home. Glasgow is like a perfect city, and Edinburgh is so photogenic and the Highlands are just stupidly lovely. Then I started getting the train up, omg the Scottish Borders are like the descriptions of Narnia and Archenland in CS Lewis.
I don't see the decline of the UK so much as an escalation of inequality for which I blame the English electorate for voting Tory so often since the 1950s. Same shit in most capitalist countries from what I can see, and obviously I would never move to an authoritarian state that doesn't have the rule of law.
But the nice thing about living in the UK is that we are a democracy so you, indeed anyone is free to leave, apart from citizens in prison of course.

If my daughter wasn't disabled, I'd leave in a shot.

Ah .... the monthly 'UK bashing' thread!

Good luck with that. (Leaving the UK!) One question... How do you know your country of choice will want you though?

Bit presumptuous to assume that you can just stroll off and make a new life just anywhere @HonoraBridge

You won't leave. I will bet my house on that. The vast majority of UK bashers, (who were born and raised her,) who claim they're off to another country as the UK is so 'shit,' are all talk......

Weird how the UK is so 'despised' by some of its own people, yet 1000s and 1000s of people from other countries, seem to be desperate to come here and stay. Go figure!

The UK has been through worse times than this. These kinds of threads make me roll my eyes, seriously. 🙄

Where did you go if i may ask @AlisonDonut ?