Top 10 Reasons to Leave England - Part 1

Okay, before we start, I have to make it clear that despite the somewhat negative element of this title, I am not a negative person. It is not my intention for this blog to be just a rant of what’s wrong with this country (although a little of that will be necessary I’m sure). This blog is an exploration of the pros and cons of living in England, and the opportunities available to everyone for living and working abroad. As a starting point I think its important to establish exactly what it is that makes people like me want to emigrate and seek a better life somewhere else. The follow up to this entry will naturally be “Top 10 Reasons to Stay in England”.

So, I thought long and hard (in fact much longer and harder than I thought I would need to). What are my top 10 reasons for wanting to leave England? If you are thinking of leaving England and travelling, or living and working abroad, this exercise is naturally a must for you. BUT not only so that you can be sure in your own mind about why you want to leave, but ALSO so that you can fight off all those comments with hard solid facts… What comments might they be? Okay, well, if any of you out there, are anything like me, then you will have experienced on numerous occasions, the old cliché “You can’t runaway from yourself you know!”
To which you can boldly reply. “No, but I can run away from England!” If anyone then wants to challenge you as to why you would want to do that, then here you are fully armed with your top 10 reasons!

I think these could be placed in any order. For me they are all equally as important as each other, but this is basically the order they popped into my mind! Your votes on what your number 1 reason is would be most welcome. Or maybe you have some different reasons I’ve not thought of… Let us know!

Here we go…

1. The weather
Right up there at the top as the first thing I thought of. This is hardly surprising when you consider that it was raining at the time. But us Brits talk constantly about the weather anyway, so nuff said on that topic I recon.

2. Pace of Life
Everybody, and I mean just about everybody, is stressed in this country. I really noticed it the most when I came back from a year in Thailand & Malaysia. I’m not kidding it was immediately obvious. Everyone looked tense, and everybody was moving so fast. It was almost as if I’d entered a nation high on caffeine or something. Everyone was whizzing around from one thing to the next, from one place to the next, and I couldn’t and still can’t fathom exactly how people manage to do so many things in one day. Working parents I applaud you. How on earth do you keep the house clean, do the food shopping, prepare the meals, talk to the children, get them to school, get them to any after school activities AND go to work, let alone have any time for yourself? But whatever you do, while you’re busy working your socks off to simply get through the day, don’t forget to fill in any paperwork for your child, your car, the gas man………….

3. Lack of people contact
Probably as a result of the pace of life, many people are too busy and therefore don’t have time for other people. We don’t smile at each other in the streets, everyone is on too much of a mission to get to the next place, or too worried about talking to strangers. We have to diary people in for quality time, IF we can. Then, when we do have “down time”, because we’re so exhausted, and because of the design of our society, we live in our little (or large) cocoon houses, living out individualist lives, trying to gain some connection with the rest of the world and other people by watching reality TV shows or god forbid, writing blogs!

4. Crime
Is it growing? Or is it reported more? What do you think? All I know for sure is that the town I live in used to be pretty safe from a large proportion of crime, and to be honest still is one of the safest areas in England. However, I’ve noticed a growing amount of teenage agro seeping into town. There is much more attitude around in youngsters today, much less respect, and so on. I can’t begin to imagine what things are going to be like in another 10 or 20 years time, or indeed what it must be like already in some neighbourhoods of the UK.

5. Materialism
Ahhh… the biggy. To me the route of all the evils, and the one that causes me some of my largest personal battles. When you live in the UK (or any western society really) you are constantly tempted, constantly seduced, and constantly encouraged to want more and more. A nice house, a nice car, nice things to go in the house, nice clothes – all designer of course. So we work all the hours under the sun to get these things, then we work even harder to pay for a holiday to get away from it all, plus we spend loads of money on playing equally as hard as we work in order to get some kind of release from the tension.

********* okay – half way through – need to take a break now! *************