Dh says the U.K is f***** and he never wants to go back

[Chippednailtoepolish]

These were his words this morning.

We live abroad in a place where a lot of people are coming to live, escaping the uk and America.
He says with everything on the news, the way it's going and what the people coming to where we are tell him, that we'd be mad to return.
Is he being realistic? I want to return to be with family desperately and have a strange feeling that I need to do it soon

Would we be mad to return at this time? If yes, then when!

I think that, on the whole, quality of life isn't great here right now. Wages are relatively low and cost of living is high and I don't really see any options for a government with a coherent plan to navigate us out of that situation. Labour just want to tax "the rich" but can't actually get at the rich so tax relatively high earners instead, and use the money to subsidise benefits because wages are too low to actually live on. Eventually the middle classes will be squeezed so dry that model is going to break, I think we're pretty much there actually. The Tories and reform just want to blame everything on immigration and the benefits bill, despite the fact that most benefits are either pensions or paid to people who are actually in work. Also we need immigrants, our economy doesn't work without them. We spend barely any money on our absolutely crumbling infrastructure and when we do it's a disaster (HS2). There's no clear vision for what we want to do, or make, or achieve, or create as a country/economy.

Is it fucked? In the long run, no, I hope and believe not. Is a much higher standard of living currently available in either a high tax, excellent public services economy such as the Scandi ones or a low tax, survival of the fittest economy (assuming you're employed and healthy) such as the US or the UAE? Yep.

I still wouldn't want to permanently live somewhere else though, we've moved for work opportunities before and I'm not against doing so again. There are things we get right, our education system is decent and the NHS might be crumbling but at least people don't have to crowdfund their kids cancer treatments. Fundamentally this is home and I remain hopeful that it'll improve. I don't really see what that looks like, but every economy ebbs and flows and we're far from alone amongst developed nations in struggling to make it work at the minute.

Where are you? Very difficult to judge without knowing. I assume the people living there are rather biased in their opinions if they moved there themselves. Why exactly does your DH not want to come back? It's fucked really doesn't give a clue or is it just a general I think it's better here.

The whol eof the Middle East looks hideous tbh. Unless you are a money grabber with no soul.

I'm not in Dubai?

I pay for private healthcare

Where are you at the moment?

Nobody can really answer this unless you let us know where you are by comparison. If you’re somewhere in Scandinavia then yes your DC will have better life chances there as the family policy and high standard of education will be great for them. But generally the UK is the same as it ever was albeit with a troubled economy. Like everywhere else, the AI revolution is going to be tricky.

But crime rates are actually at an all time low, so all the stuff he’s feeding you about that is nonsense from right wing social media accounts.

What sort of work do you do? Does he believe he would have a lower income in the UK?

Nice to hear this x

He's not wrong. Im in my 50s. I cannot believe how much the UK has gone downhill in the last 10-15 years.

I have just come back from a Scandinavian country and I can't believe how much cleaner it felt. And quieter. And safer. If I could leave the UK like you have, I would. It's going to get far worse before it gets better because there are zero initiatives in place to halt or turn round the decline.

Crime? I live in south London. I have 2 young adult sons. Never been burgled, never been assaulted. One boy had his phone taken once at a central London pub - he was drunk. My personal experience is that life is ok. Tough for young people to get jobs, but it’s not crime ridden and scary for the majority of people.

Is it Australia where you live now?

This is what he says

Where did you move to op?

It all depends on where, and how much you’d have to live on

I’m kind of assuming it’s Aus.

If it is - would I come back? No.

It got a lot more exciting at the beginning of the year what with all the bombing and drones. You don’t get that in boring old London (well not since the early 90s).

Are you joking? You think we're all going to end up in a circle singing kumbaya in a few years? Of course the country is fucked. We're on a one way journey to being run out. I've told the dcs to leave if they can. This is happening throughout Europe, Canada, the US and Australia/NZ though, so?

We would obviously set up jobs beforehand and would have the sale of our house and savings

@Chippednailtoepolish if what your DH says is like what that poster has written then it's not at all about "crime etc" is it? It's about politics and policy, tax and the economy.

She's not going to tell you. It's a secret. 😳

I'm in my late 50s. I don't think the country is fucked. I like living here. I lived abroad for 3 years a while back and loved it. But I was so happy to return home. I live in south London, which I know will sound terrifying to some on here but I feel totally safe. I tend to go by my own personal experiences, which have been largely positive overall.

Might be "outing"...

We're white,

Immigration, safety, cost of living, quality of life...everything basically!

I reckon it's Nes Zealand.

I hate the UK and what it's become.
It's broken. The governments have totally broken it, nothing works. NHS, infrastructure, everything.
Everything is now too expensive and we keep paying more and more to not see anything get better.
The attitude of people these days absolutely stinks. To the feral children and their c**ty parents too lazy to parent, the increase in racism (blaming the countries ill's on people with darker skin instead of crappy governments), and the entitlement of people, it's a daily occurance.

I would absolutely love to leave the UK, there's far better places to live. Sadly my other half just won't entertain it, despite also disliking what has happened here. We've bought somewhere if we can ever get tradesmen to fix it for us, while it does have neighbours, it has a huge garden, a cabin, which I am going to hide with the cat and just not get involved with any neighbours. I just can't bear people anymore.

And we got all the lovely updates of footballers and their wives desperate to come home. Weirdly, they’ve all gone silent about that. But I guess you have to pay your maids a proper wage in the UK so what’s a few bombs in comparison?

As some PPs have said: it’s hard to know without knowing at least roughly where you currently live. Also as some PPs have said: there is a very nasty far right refrain which portrays the UK as going to the dogs in order to push their racist agenda. Violent crime has gone down, not up. All countries have their problems. Most (though perhaps not all) countries have their plus points including the UK. FWIW, i think there’s a reasonable amount that we get right particularly around personal freedom. Being near friends and family counts for a lot for me also.