Help me with a very anxious friend, please...

[stilettoed]

A friend is looking to relocate to the UK for two to three years, possibly longer (she's been offered a job transfer from her overseas office). She lives in a beautiful and pretty safe city at the moment and she came to the UK for a recce of places to live over the summer (her only criteria was one hour or so to London each way). She tells me that, having agreed the transfer, she's now getting cold feet as she couldn't find anywhere in the UK that is:

• Beautiful/scenic
• Close to a buzzy and attractive town for cafes and restaurants etc
• Safe
• Has good/great schools (she can afford private but if they stay long-term her toddler might need state school)
• Good range of kids' activities
• Isn't overrun with oiks and antisocial behaviour during the evenings/at weekends.

That last point is very important to her as she says that when she visited all these places she had been told were charming (Richmond, Guildford/Oxford/Cambridge/York etc etc) she was shocked at the number of rowdy teens and adults she encountered, vaping and cussing and generally being intimidating especially after daylight hours.

Of course the drinking culture in the UK is terrible and I can see why someone from a place that doesn't have this would be concerned, especially as she has a tween and a teen who have some independence where they live at the moment. My question is, is this in every British town and city? Is there no place that is still charming and welcoming and not overrun with marauding drunks and vapers and County Lines drug dealers? I'd like to reassure my friend...

Moving to a new country with that list of requirements is insane. All those things are subjective. Opening your mind is step one to living in a foreign country. I wouldn't advise her personally, you won't get the credit of she likes it (she has been successful at settling in) but will get the blame if she doesn't (you gave her bad advice and she's a victim).

I don't think we have what she's looking for

Nobody vaping?
Nobody swearing?

Scratch the surface and there’s a surprising level of drug issues in Tunbridge Wells!

Nowhere’s perfect and if she thinks ‘vaping and cussing’ are intolerable I can’t imagine where she will be comfortable.

Plenty of oiks in Tunbridge wells!

Honestly it sounds like she might be better staying where she is unless she is a banker.

Reigate/Banstead? Those are quite nice areas.

But they have vape stores in Reigate.... she wants no vaping

They might swear too

Pangbourne or Henley-onThames.

I don’t live there but Richmond is lovely. She is a bit bonkers, by the sounds of things. Sorry OP but it sounds like a culture clash mixed up with wildly unrealistic expectations.

Alternatively, have you considered the fact your friend is actually a time traveller and is just shocked in general by modern society? She definitely sounds from a bygone era 😂

I don't think she's bonkers TBH. She's a very well-travelled academic. I've visited her in her New England home and it's beautiful, safe, gloriously free of discarded bags of dog shit and rubbish (civic pride, how quaint!) and it just doesn't have that intimidating vibe that so many British places do. We went out every night and I didn't see a single group of teens causing trouble in kids' playgrounds (I did see them all playing sports on well-maintained public fields and courts, however), nor did I witness people getting shitfaced and hurling insults at strangers in the town centre. My friend has a good career opportunity in the UK and that's why she's considering the move, but I don't think caring about your kids' welfare and general quality of life makes you crazy.

The bigger question is why is the UK so awash with louts? It seems to be a uniquely British problem, I live in an 'aspirational' place and I dread the day my kids are old enough to go out alone as our town centre is just overrun with oiks on the weekends (drunken fights, smashed shop windows and sexual assaults are all common occurrences, which is why I would never recommend my area to her). My 60-something neighbours never venture out after dark, which means they're housebound after 4pm during the winter months. Why do we accept this kind of behaviour in our society, and why do we think that heavy drinking is some kind of 'rite of passage' for our teens? Is it pearl clutching to say that we've got some serious issues in our society that we should be addressing?

I don't think my friend's list of requirements is particularly unrealistic, in Europe alone I could name a dozen places in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Austria and the Czech Republic that fit the bill. It's a crying shame that the UK has declined to the point that we can't even conjure up a handful of lout-free places for a lovely family to consider moving to.

@SallyWD isn't it utterly depressing? I don't think my friend's requirements are all that 'out there' at all, most parents want somewhere attractive and safe to raise a family, without the scourge of drunken thugs taking over your town and smashing bottles in your kids' playgrounds. It's so sad that wanting those things makes you a 'time traveller from a bygone era' in many people's eyes, it isn't like this in other countries.

I think your naïve if you don't think that the vast majority of countries have some issues whether it's drugs, racism, gangs or whatever. They might manifest themselves differently but they are still there. You only have to look at the towns in the US that have been ravaged by the Opiod crisis to see that.

I live in Cambridge. Someone got stabbed in broad daylight in one of the "nice" parks here a couple weeks ago.

The rate of violent crime in Boston is nearly double the US national average so I'm guessing she's very affluent. I think that's very much a 'thing' in the US - rich neighbourhoods are safe, patrolled, have their own security guards to keep the riff-raff out, while in the UK we tend to live a little bit more cheek by jowl.

I'd rather a few broken bottles than live in a country where people routinely carry guns though...

@mynameiscalypso I'm not naive at all. I've lived in five countries and travelled to dozens more. Every country has issues but you can almost always find places without them, whereas in the UK every town and city is blighted by drunkenness and antisocial behaviour. My friend lives in an insanely expensive house in Richmond and he tells me there have been several stabbings there recently, he stays up all night worrying about his teems and he's looking to move his business overseas. I was on a train recently with my young daughter and I had to get off two stops before my destination as a group of louts boarded and they were throwing food at each other, vaping and swearing and I'm sorry if it makes me a prude to not want to have my young child exposed to this.

I grew up in the UK, I'm not old and it didn't used to be like this. Why won't we admit that we have a serious problem?

As per pp, I'd rather deal with drunken louts than guns 🤷🏻‍♀️

Well, I live in a Manchester suburb and whilst it isn't especially pretty and we get the occasional rowdy teen, they are just, in general, rowdy and not dangerous. The vast majority of teens are good kids.

The privilege of British people on here, thinking that we aren't insanely lucky in the world order to live in this country drives me mad. And yes, even with the (relatively) shitty state of our politics and economy at present, there are still about 150 countries that would be far, far, far worse places to live.

Compare US murder rates with UK ones. It's eye-wateringly worse over there. I'd rather have what we have, despite the anti-social behaviour you mention. And at least here our kids don't have to do shooter drills at school.
I have visited a few cities in the US, including Boston, though not lately. I'd say that bar the gun culture they're very similar to here. I think a previous poster nailed it, though- here we're more socially mixed in the sort of places she's been looking than in Boston. Over there, there tend to be 'neece' areas that are quite large where those wealthy enough to live there can insulate themselves from the more rough-and-tumble areas. Here it's more mixed up- which, incidentally, I think is a good thing. If she wants an isolated 'neece' area, she'll have to go for rural, very expensive, or gated- that's where that 'type' lives over here.
If she wants scenic, that means well out of most towns. And though I do have a soft spot for Cambridge, the countryside there, for one example, isn't exactly Snowdonia style scenic. She's given herself a must-have list that reminds me of the lists that people on those property buying programmes on the telly have- lists only available on about 2x their budget, or which are mutually impossible (like 'scenic' but 'with a city vibe', and 'a sea view in the SW but with good transport links').
There are plenty of perfectly nice, friendly, quiet towns and villages in the UK. Some of them, like where I live, and have lived, aren't even all that expensive. But on what you say of her requirements, I doubt she'd want to slum it with us peasants up here in the NW, for example.....

@BlueMongoose I don't think she said anything about 'peasants' or 'slumming it'. I've seen plenty of drunken yobs on nights out in Chelsea, and I'm sure a lot of them come from very privileged backgrounds. The oik culture doesn't seem to discriminate in the UK, and it's very hard (impossible?) to avoid.

My friend doesn't live in Boston proper, she lives in a lovely area not far from the city. It's not gated or super wealthy and the population is very diverse (if I had a job offer there I would move in a heartbeat). I don't think it's fair to say that only very rich areas can be nice and not plagued by antisocial behaviour, it seems to be more cultural than anything as we think heavy drinking is 'cool' on our blighted little island. I rarely feel unsafe walking around other European cities at night so what's going on with us Brits?

Has she considered some of the "smaller" communities with boroughs such as Richmond? I do sort of get what she means - one of my best friends is/was trying to get her partner to move back to the UK from Aus and they seriously considered Richmond but he thought it was too busy/noisy (both LHR and drunks). However I live in the same borough but in a slightly different area and it's not like that despite the cafe culture because people who are "going out but staying local" go to Richmond and it's primarily fairly affluent families with a vibe to match.

Thank you @brainstories568. Would you mind suggesting some areas near Richmond that might fit the bill for my friend? She's a lovely person and I'd like to help her if I can.

Cambridge, Mass?

Not too many places left in the world like she is describing. Definitely not in the US, either.

@Crimsonripple wow, and you sound like a real charmer (and one of the reasons my kind and accomplished friend is reluctant to move to the UK)

Where I live pretty much fits the bill but it is not 1 hour door-to-door to central London.

But the Tories have built houses EVERYWHERE and things are changing too fast in my lovely area. A brand new playground has been vandalised nearby, so it is clearly yobs and teens misbehaving. The town was furious.

I wouldn't dare confront anti-social behaviour in case I got stabbed or otherwise assaulted.

I agree with pps that your friend should stay where she is, it sounds lovely