To be a teeny bit relieved that we left the UK!

[Cadpat]

I have namechanged for this, as I know I am probably going to get flamed!

DH got a job in Canada and as a family we took a big income cut (from a dual income to single income) and moved over this year. Originally I didn't want to leave the UK, but I a beginning to feel really relieved that we left when we did, especially when I see and hear about the scale of the coalition cuts.

We have also managed to buy a really nice house which we would have never been able to afford where we lived in the UK, and even with the paycut life just feels a lot more stable here.

That said, I feel a bit like a rat leaving a ship though! AIBU?

I think it's just the thoughts of a family being turned down because of chronic illness or disability that really sticks in the craw though. I have a cousin who would have been entitled to US residency, maybe citizenship, and he was booted out upon graduation from college as he had sought treatment for depression while a student there. Barbaric.

I have lived in a few different countries and love bits of each but to me nothing beats England, the countryside, the fact that people actually let you in when driving etc etc

I recently went on holiday to Vancouver and it was lovely but seemed to lack something, some depth to the City, it doesnt compare to somewhere like London.

My Canadian friend is looking to move to the UK in the next few years, she gets very excited about how cheap flights are, weekends away in Europe etc.

Its easy to sneer at England but I think its fab!

Alright don't rub it in! i am glad for you too,if we had the opportunity we would be gone like a shot x

mathanxiety, I totally understand that.

In fact the medical tests to qualify for residency can be incredibly invasive here. It was funny, but around three years ago I was treated for TB in the UK, and I flagged it up in my medical here. The Canadian health services were on it like a shot, wanted to make me take the full course of antibiotics again! I refused. The first lot made me feel like shit and I wasn't going through that again.

They did take my refusal with fairly good grace though.

hr100, I am not sneering at England. I would never do that... one of my original objections to move here was the horrendous cost of flights to anywhere else. Air Canada has a monopoly that really needs to be broken and quickly. And don't even get me started on the cost of mobile telephones.

math - i know. it took us 3 1/2 years to find out if they would let dd2 in. the thing is though, people get turned down for all sorts of reasons - lots of applications get refused. it's just one reason out of many, but it sticks out because it is so discriminatory.

it is getting better though - it really is. i know at least five families whose pr has been granted this year despite having children with disabilities. there are still plenty going through the courts of appeal though.

tb is one of the hot topics cadpat. most medical reruns are for dodgy chest x rays.

scaryteacher dh was a submariner! he still is, they are just diesel and don't seem so much when they come home!

disablities ds2 came over and he has a pacemaker and he has just been diganosied this year as being austic. if you pay heath care cover then you are ok

Im loving the way Noone has pointed out to the OP it's a global financial crisis

"Im loving the way Noone has pointed out to the OP it's a global financial crisis."

That's true but the countries which dont have big national debt problems have more flexibility in how they deal with it.

Also, there are some developing countries (eg China) which still have astonishing levels of growth- in fact, China's industrialisation was a big contributor to the boom in the west pre-07. The US (especially) and Europe spent a lot of time shitting themselves about what would happen if China decided to put the brakes on. Australia's boom was built on exports of iron ore and coal to China.

Australia is doing quite well atm too! Or is it? Can anyone confirm that? Someone with more global awareness than me!

Just to add my two cents worth, we lived in the UK for 3 years and I LOVED it. We are back in New Zealand now (DH and I are both from here and so moved back for family). We miss so many things ... the culture and history of London, ability to travel to Europe easily and cheaply, the newspapers, beautiful countryside. Cost of living is way more over here too, NZ is a low wage economy though compared with Australia or Canada. It annoys me how many NZ'ers are rude about the UK, usually people that have never been there. Yes it felt overcrowded compared with NZ, but that didn't bother me. Bad customer service was probably the only real negative for me about the UK.

BonnyDay, I am well aware it's a global financial crisis. But as others and I have pointed out, Canada suffered a bit less than the UK. And Alberta, where we've moved didn't suffer that much thanks to its oil-based economy (I do have problems with that though, but its a different story)

And if I am not mistaken, Labour overspent massively on bailing out the banks in the UK, and that is one of the reasons the deficit is so high?

I disagree with several of the cuts at home, but I voted for the LibDems and have to take the consequences of the coalition. We also still have investments and we had also invested heavily in our pension funds in the UK, so it does matter to us how the economy is doing.

londonkiwi, I love how everyone gets excited about us being from the UK here. They all want to go there for their holidays and we've been asked for recommendations so many times. No one's ever been rude about the UK here.

Australia was really booming for a while due to exports of primary products to China, which is still experiencing growth afaik.

I want to come - whereabouts are you? X

This thread makes me feel sad but pleased at the same time.

Sad because we have a severely disabled child and we are trapped forever in the UK and even in the same city. Some countries like Australia would refuse to let anyone in who will be a 'burden on the state', and in many countries, it would be really difficult to get the services we have fought tooth and nail for here. We have no freedom of movement. As my son gets older, we will have to be near him for the rest of our lives.

Pleased, because I don't lust after living in a different country any more. I just accept my lot in life and get on with it and see the benefits of living on this sceptred isle. It's not so bad

glad all well with your move.i have lived various places and they all have plus and minus points.flaws and all do love uk

donkeyderby, I am sorry!! One of the best things about the UK was the NHS, and I totally understand why you won't be, or want to move.

At the same time, as NoT has pointed out, Canada for one, is changing its policies. Perhaps they have realised how discriminatory they are being.

Scottishmummy, thanks. Yes, every place does have its positives and negatives. And end of the day, as I mentioned earlier on, its all about how you personally feel about where you live.

great you and family are settled well.

I'd like anywhere I didn't have to work.

"Australia was really booming for a while due to exports of primary products to China, which is still experiencing growth afaik."

Yes- in a nutshell, China makes a LOT of stee, mainly for own consumption - around 40% of total global production. Steel is made out of iron ore and coking coal, which China has very little of (they do have some but not good quality), so they have to import it. Australia has loads but makes very little steel itself, so exports to China. Iron ore and coking coal prices are very high at the moment for this reason. These trade movements also increase the strength of the Australian dollar.

I love Canada, lived and worked there but my heart is here! Canada is huge in terms of size but only 34 million in population, UK is in comparison small but with almost double the population so yAnbu as lifestyle is no doubt better. Less people more space everything bright clean new! I think the London underground is older than Canada!

The pay cut however will be fine as long as you stay local, venture out and the $ in majority of countries icl UK be worth less but with standard 2 weeks holidays a year you can't go too far anyway! But you will no doubt have lots of willing visitors!!

Canada has a particularly large ageing population, more than us, IMHO they take in lots of skilledprofessionals to pay taxes, build the economy support their ageing population.... Canada is hugely made up of immigrants willing to work hard blah blah blah

I remember missing mostly the dry British wit ( sp) and the super cheesy friendly customer service can sometimes get OTT! He he
Glad you are enjoying!

Cornonthecob, yes, the whole thing about staying local bothers me a bit. Lots of my family live in India, and it'll be a pain to get there in an emergency (ie, deaths of GPs etc) or even for a holiday. But that said, we are ideally located for so much stuff, like camping, hiking and canoeing, that we both love, so it'll probably be a while before we venture out for the holidays.

And, I agree with you, I really really miss British humour. No one understands mine here. The other thing that annoys me is that most people take things so seriously. Which is why I am on MN so much, I need a good dose of Brit sarcasm to keep me going among all this sincerity

I remember muttering suspiciously to DH about the friendly salespersons too... what do they want, why are they being so friendly, mutter mutter, until I realised that its part of living here :)

We moved to BC (via New York) almost two years ago now, and whenever I feel down about my job here (a significant step back down) I think about how horrible it would be to be in my old job, or even if I had managed to get a new job, as I worked for a PCT and they are all being thrown on the bonfire :(

I loved living in London and miss my family most of whom I haven't seen for over two years (for the four of us to fly back home would cost in the region of £4k). But I really like living out here, and we can manage (just about) on one income so the children are well supported and dh is very happy. BC is very easy to move to because it is so young (my town is only 150 years old) and most people arrived here from one place or another fairly recently, so being new is accepted as normal. In fact I know very few people who were born here.

Canada has done OK because it is an exporter of natural products and very heavily regulated. It does have a very high exposure to the States, so if they double dip there then that will have some impact (although mostly to Ontario and Quebec).

As for their earlier cuts, I don't think that it's very comparable. A lot of the cuts simply moved the deficit from the federal to the provincial governments and the rest of the world wasn't in trouble (the US boom in the mid 90s pulled lots of exports). There is also at least some analysis that said that (as in the UK now) there was a significant propaganda element going on and that the depth of the cuts was probably more political than economic. In my experience one of the biggest differences between the UK and Canada is that politically Canadians seem to be incredibly apathetic. Federal government seems almost totally irrelevant out here, and people's interest in the recent BC elections was fairly low too. One effect of this is that government can get away with much more radical action (like suspending parliament because it might be a bit embarrassing if critical things were said during the Olympics), or getting rid of the long census because it might show that there are groups of people who really do need supporting).