I live here?

[ButternutSoup]

My husband and I are South African and are immigrating to the UK (with an ancestry visa as my grandmother is British). While we were researching nice places to live, we stumbled upon this funny website called ilivehere.co.uk, where people write scathing reviews of their towns/cities. It must be satire, as nearly every town is made out to be some kind of crime-infested hellhole, which can't be true.

Some of the reviews do seem to contain elements of truth, I'm sure, but which ones? I've always had a romantic notion of living in the Scottish Highlands, but the "I Live Here" review makes it seem like the setting of The Hills Have Eyes.

Can anyone here recommend nice towns/suburbs? Our three criteria are: low crime rate, clean air, and house prices that are not clown-shoes expensive. We don't care that much about weather (my irritatingly pale skin has had enough sunshine for a lifetime and every time I go to the dermatologist his warnings become more severe), so maybe somewhere up north would be nice?

Between the gushing estate agent write-ups and the pessimistic "I Live Here" reviews, I don't know what to believe.

I would say avoid the south generally, not because it's awful, it's not, but is getting so hot now. We are moving away as that's one of the problems, I hate the heat.

Joint income of £60k gross would give you (v approx!) £40k. Rent, bills, travel, cars, pet care, etc would bring it to - again, very roughly - something around £20k.
Take off medical and dental insurance (for the first 5 years when you'll not qualify for NHS treatment), and whatever pension contributions you need. Ive no clue what these would be, but say £5k altogether so looking similar to £1.2k pcm total as your budget for for all food, clothes, social life, etc - Have a look online at uk supermarket costs (eg Tesco), clothes etc. Perfectly normal and manageable amount, but when youre looking at areas its worth remembering the lifestyle you can afford.

@ButternutSoup there's a big South African community in Edinburgh. It's not the cheapest for homes obviously but plenty of work, stunningly beautiful and easy access to the Highlands which are indeed lovely and not at all like The Hills have Eyes.

A lot of South Africans also seem to wind up in SW England after an initial London/SE stint.

Whatever you do decide, I wish you the very best in your big move over, I know it's a hard and bittersweet decision.

I can't stand the heat either, and have already got loads of sun spots at 42 years old, the African sun is damaging to everyone regardless of skin colour, but it is particularly dangerous for very pale skinned people like me. I love the rain, and storms, so up north or Scotland sounds nice to me. I hope your move goes well.

Sorry, I realised I didn't reply to this - thank you for the suggestions. I'm looking at pictures of Somerset now, it looks lovely. Re our industries - I'm a writer and copy editor, I used to work in magazines and now I edit law content (books, textbooks, scholarly journals, ebooks, digital portals etc) for a South African publishing company. My husband is a graphic and web designer and also a fine artist (which is more of a hobby at the moment but may bring in some revenue at a later stage as he's actually quite good), he works for a small web dev company here in Joburg.

I would think around Bristol or bath and surrounding villages would be great for you

Many thanks.

I think I'd take this site with a pinch of salt. Our area is meant to have pungent smells (yes, we know there's the occasional problem on the far side) but majority of area has absolutely no issues. Teenagers smoking weed in centre, never seen myself and just checked with family and all say they've never noticed this.

We moved here 27 years ago due to the large number of facilities, good pubs, takeaways, two supermarkets, three smaller ones, chemist, other shops, on best bus route in town, choice of food schools, local community events, centre has character and we're at the bottom of a hill which is the highest point in the area - no matter where you live, you can be in the countryside within 10 mins walk. Centre is a maximum walk of 15 mins. We feel safe here. Only thing it hasn't got is a river/the sea but ticks every other box we'd require in our ideal location.

what does a legal editor do? How is it a full time job?

I am in (science) academia so I understand what journal editors are supposed to do. In journal reality, it's just the production staff who really edit, the 'editor in chief' editors increasingly do very little. I have published once in a magazine (they didn't edit my article at all) and once in a newspaper (lightly edited) & on The Conversation (they edit closely & try to sensationalise everything into 800 words).

I think OP needs to be somewhere close to big publishing houses and that will be urban enough for her H to find work, too. My xH is in same industry (websites and website Apps) but on technical side. He got nearly all his jobs from personal encounters. He WFH but he never got his foot in door without meeting the company staff and going into office sometimes. He says good free lance website designers can charge about £500/day but the work is sporadic, as I imagine OP knows.

Our three criteria are: low crime rate, clean air, and house prices that are not clown-shoes expensive.

Wiltshire has one of the lowest (the lowest?) crime rates and it's a lovely county. No heavy industry so clean air and house prices are reasonable - at least in as much as any house is reasonably priced these days.

We would buy a car so that we can travel around at will, so somewhere where there is bad traffic would probably not be too good.

Everywhere in Britain has bad traffic. Too many cars, too few roads.
West Wales, South Hams might be lighter in traffic.

For good city life and good public transport Edinburgh.

It sounds wonderful! Could you tell me where it is? No worries if not, I understand privacy is important.

There are different kinds of legal editing in SA. Legal publishing houses publish three main branches of law content that customers (lawyers, judges, law students) rely on for their work - legislation and statutes bulletins and research portals; case law; and commentary on legal developments.

Statutes editors must stay up to date with all new government legislation, proofread it and put it into our house style, and organise it so it is more reader-friendly and easy to navigate. They also create update bulletins so legal professionals can keep abreast of new legislation. They create print and digital version of this content.

Law reports editors choose the most important court judgments from around the country, and then edit them and write headnotes. They create print versions of the law reports but more and more it is just digital - they send the reports to the digital team who load it online for our subscribers to access.

Lastly, there are law commentary editors, of which I am one. We edit manuscripts written by legal academics and practitioners, in which they explain, interpret and comment on the law. Many SA authors are second-language English speakers, and so they need help with their writing and expression of complex ideas. As law editors we must have knowledge of legal terminology, local and international legislation and case law, as well as all the requirements of a language editor. It involves line editing, content editing, and proofreading. It also involves collaborating with the production team to get the product out, liaising with typesetter and designers, and mentoring other staff. I've edited legal dictionaries, journals, textbooks, loose-leaf commentaries, handbooks etc. You know the bound volumes you see in the offices of law firms? We edit those.

It is very much a full time job.

Scotland is sounding better and better the more I hear and read about it.

I would ignore that website. Just looked up the town I moved to 12 years ago, and it taken the worst deprived area and focused the review entirely on that. Being from the south of England, I would recommend the Highlands in Scotland.

Scotland is beautiful (well outside some of the central belt) but I wouldn't want Humza Useless having a say in my life. A bewildering combination of stupidity and incompetence ( and I have to put up with the dildo that is Sadiq Khan)

What about Newcastle or Northumberland? Beautiful beaches (but no great whites!), cheap property compared to the south.

I don't think you'd be happy anywhere?

Why?

I was happy enough in London without a mayor and happy enough with Ken and Boris as mayors. Khan is appalling

The Scottish Highlands isn’t all rural- look at Inverness for example.
In England, look at Durham and the nearby small towns.
Ignore silly websites like ilivehere. Most people wouldn’t recognise their home towns from the descriptions, a lot of which are made up by teenagers for fun. Note that a lot of towns appear in both the best 50 and worst 50, so the ratings are meaningless.
It isn’t the end of the world if you move somewhere and don’t like it much. If you keep your costs down and keep some money aside when you come to the UK, you can always move on after a while.

I don’t agree that everywhere in England has bad traffic! Where I live, in a small town, we rarely have traffic problems in the town or anywhere nearby. One of the main A roads is prone to traffic jams at times but most people don’t need to use it. Cities in general do have a lot of traffic.

Sheffield side of the Peak District. Rural/semi rural but easy access to the city.

Also much of the league of gentlemen was filmed over the hill in Hadfield so that’s one day trip sorted 😁

Or if the innuendo name is more important, there’s a village near Hadfield called Broadbottom.

Politicians are awful the world over! Although some are worse than others. In SA, for example, Jacob Zuma sold the country out from under us and set our decline into motion.

No Great Whites? Where's the thrill in that?? Just kidding, I am terrified of sharks. Have you ever been to Sydney? Many of their beaches have shark nets a few metres out in the water - nice and safe.

No, I wouldn’t get in the water if there were sharks!