To be worried about emigration

[YourOpenNavyAnt]

Our neighbours, 2 highly skilled Indian immigrants, who have been in the UK for 8 years are emigrating to another country. He’ll get an 50% pay increase for doing the same job in another country, plus a lower housing costs. According to him, a sizeable cohort of his friends, also want to leave the UK.

I have two cousins who have spent £10000s for their children to study for a masters in another country to make it easier for them gain the right to work.

A colleague’s children (both junior doctors) have both migrated to Australia, with no plans to return. Another colleague’s daughter (a dentist) has moved to New Zealand for 6 months, to determine if she wants to settle permanently.

I have a large circle Aussie friends and acquaintances from my time living in London and most (8-10 people) have either returned or are planning to return. These are people who’ve lived here for 10+ years and have British citizenship but they view the UK as being in terminal decline.

Has anyone else noticed this trend? Is this country really that shit?

As a higher earner I worries before labour was in power but maybe it's an age thing

worried

You are right to be concerned OP. For us, bringing pensions into IHT was the final nail in the coffin. We are a family of five tax paying professionals and by Christmas only one will still be in the UK.

As a younger person including pensions in IHT makes more sense to me than further income tax rises. We need to encourage spending money not hoarding it to pass on.

Spending needs to be cut drastically. I'd start with the untouchables of welfare, pension triple lock and NHS.

The triple lock needs to be paused, it's madness & the winter fuel reversal was stupid but a lot of the public don't want it.

God how I hate it when certain phrases like 'terminal decline' come into fashion and people just start using them without any thought as to what they actually mean. It's great for the fearmongers - others do the work for them by repeating these things over and over often enough that even sensible people start to think 'gosh I've heard that a lot, there must be something in it.'

'Terminal decline' in the context of a country makes no sense. A country is not a person. There are peaks and troughs in a country's fortunes, things may change beyond recognition, but the country will still exist, it won't suddenly fall out of existence.

What I don't understand is why everyone seems so blindsided by the current situation. If everything is shut down as it was in 2020, that has absolutely massive, decades long fallout. We're experiencing that at the moment. It was 100% predictable and plenty of people warned about it at the time. If you were in favour of things being shut, then you were in favour of whatever suffering is being visited on the country at the moment, because logically it was inevitable.

It's interesting as I have friends who have emigrated here from Aus and Canada to get away from their issues and friends who have emigrated to these places to get away from ours.
Nowhere is perfect. The middle east sounds good with no tax and glamour but as soon as theres an issue or someone loses a job it becomes a risky place to be.
Lots of Europe are also struggling with cost of living and far right politics.
We arent perfect at all but everywhere has pros and cons and at least as a British citizen there is a safety net if needed.

I would leave tomorrow if I could and I’ve lived here all my adult life since we emigrated from our home country after graduating. Never thought I’d say that as until about five years ago I loved it here, always said I’d never move ‘back’. DH would struggle to get work in our home country as the industry he works in is so much smaller there as is mine, but I could remote work more easily. But I think we’d have a better quality of life. DS would likely get a better education and more opportunities for the future. It’s very sad.

I don’t agree that we were blindsided by what happened in 2020, other countries are not in the same position and the lack of investment started long, long before then. The UK made very different decisions and here we are.

What I don't understand is why everyone seems so blindsided by the current situation. If everything is shut down as it was in 2020, that has absolutely massive, decades long fallout.

Things were not good before covid though What was the peak 08?

after 08?

other countries are not in the same position and the lack of investment started long, long before then. The UK made very different decisions and here we are.

This

You’re not concerned about the resulting increased social instability with tearing up the social contract?

@IwasatClaines I think a lot of younger people feel the social contract is already ripped

Sounds good, but it's completely wrong.

I don't blame you for believing this lie, as it's perpetuated everywhere including the BBC, that doesn't make it true..

Post Brexit the U.K. economy was out performing both France and Germany, and it still is. That's not much to boast about, but they are doing worse than us. In fact the whole world economy is on the brink of another collapse.

Under Sunak and Hunt the British economy was seeing a recovery, Reeves has put an end to that.

Covid and Ukraine made the big hits, and it's an interesting thought that Remainers are incapable to recognising this, and think that all our problems will be solved by letting Brussels tell us what to do.

I suppose it's the same sheep like thought process that makes so many apparently intelligent people think that the jihadi death cult Hamas are the good guys.

Post Brexit the U.K. economy was out performing both France and Germany, and it still is

What are the figures?

@TonTonMacoute so the financial crash & QE, austerity had no impact on what we are seeing now?

No, they weren't. And then the decision was made to disadvantage literally every business, every student and every worker in the country (apart from those who took advantage of the situation and benefited massively through fraudulent dealings). If you whack the economy square in the knees, it's going to fall over. Businesses closed, people who were going to start businesses didn't, people who had dreams and plans saw them scuppered. The momentum and potential of everything was drained. Of course it's going to take years and years and years to recover from that, even in a country with a very robust economy. But given that the UK had recently kicked its own arse with Brexit, it was always going to be harder here. There's no great mystery too it - you fuck things up, things stay fucked for a while.

I am not worried, the churn of people coming and going has always been huge. I live in London and before we left the EU I would see work colleagues come and go within 6 months, the reason is mainly the cost of living. Unless people have strong family ties or partners here my thoughts have always been they will leave eventually. Also the UK is thought of as a stepping stone to immigration to other places like the USA. Anyone coming here is confronted with the same problems we have and has options.

Companies should spend money on training staff rather than importing trained staff. One of the things Boris Johnson did was change the law so companies could recruit staff directly from abroad and not try and find staff here first. I don’t think Labour have even changed it back. I think that has really distorted the Labour market making it very difficult for everyone to get a job hence the relatively high employment numbers as companies bring in people but also high economic inactivity as British people find it hard to find work especially as they get older or are just starting out.

I'm glad you're around touting this message because my home country, Ireland, is doing extremely (like eye-wateringly) well out of Britain's belief that the EU is bad. The current issue that Ireland has is that it has so much money it can't spend it. That's partly due to big companies suddenly having to pay tax but it's also due to the fact that so many companies that had headquarters in the UK have now moved to Ireland as it is a more attractive English-speaking gateway to Europe, despite its total lack of infrastructure.

Ireland has benefited so so much, which I feel is much belated payback. So thank you.

Brexit really hit our financial service sector

As a Lexiteer I object to 'Brexshit'. However, if people are going to Australia, NZ or Canada they can expect much the same. Canada is so fully TWAW that a rape refuge was refused state funding as it won't allow a TiM to give victims counselling, and is the site of the trashing of a feminist library by TRAs - tip of iceberg btw and several threads on MN. Canada also has a problem with MAID - assisted dying - which is now offered to the depressed, the homeless, the lonely, not just the terminally ill. Australia is currently in the throes of Tickle v Giggle where a man is suing the CEO of a woman-only internet site which refused to allow him on it despite him being a TiM - it has got to the SC there and the CEO is likely to lose because Transwomen are women. NZ the same.
All also in economic decline esp because of hard-line climate emergency rules.
Both countries were the sites of violent attacks on Let Women Speak meetings too.
If to Europe or the EU then terminal decline awaits there, too, and that's nothing to do with Brexit, but the economic model followed (neo-liberal capitalism) and falling demographics. The EU is also fully TWAW and France and Germany have problems with immigration.
The US? Well, wage rises could be swallowed up by their infernal tax system and the need for private and not well-regulated health insurance. Also Trump - though at least he isn't TWAW and has removed men from women's sports - and places like California where girls have to say they are mentally ill or belong to a sex-segregating religion to have privacy from males in changing rooms and lavatories in schools: see MN thread on Single Sex Changing Rooms in Brighton School (they don't have them btw) - sorry, can't post link.
Might as well stay here and fight for the UK, I think. England has been a nation for 1,100 years (as of yesterday) and looks unlikely to fail in the long term.

No other country is utopia but the UK seems to be winning in the low wages, high taxes, high COL unfortunately.

Yes it did. Between 2016 and 2021, 135 companies moved from the UK to Dublin as a direct consequence of Brexit. Bearing in mind that Dublin has a population of 1.5 million and the country as a whole has a tiny population of just over 5 million, that's a huge number.

Ireland had a budget surplus in 2024 of 21.9 billion euros.

Companies should spend money on training staff rather than importing trained staff

There has been a real lack of investment since 08 by business into their staff and by the government in general

I almost moved abroad when I was younger and sometimes think I should have. I’d do it now if it was the right thing to do, DH doesn’t want to and that’s fine. I think my DC would probably thrive longer term is say Australia but one of them would find it very, very difficult in the short to medium term and I wouldn’t want to put them through that.

Our NHS/social care model also doesn't work with an ageing population

Agreed. We are talking ourselves into this situation - it seems to be part of the British national character to have this negativity.
If we all just sit back and complain we will get the kind of country we deserve. If you don't like it, get out there and be positive forces in your own workplaces and communities!