Britain - They all want to emigrate.

[atomant]

Australia is the best country to live in...

a simple reason why actually...

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/odd/7268092/ninjas-rescue-sydney-student-from-muggers/

Where else in the world are you going to rescued by Ninjas?

[OneFootInTheGrave]

42.6%, to be exact. 1.03^12.


"A friend"?

A big reason why UK is turning into a ****hole is because it's getting overpopulated, which means the jobs are hard to find (when found, the wages are low) and the prices are high.

The funniest scenario would be if all the working people of heavy industry would leave along with established industries and only banking sector along with universities filled with pseudo-intellectuals and filosofers would be left. A nation which wouldn't export anything and would import everything, wealth entirely founded upon multinational financial industries which are easy and fast to relocate by their owners

It's kind of sad. The future of the big Western European countries -- Germany, France, UK, Italy, Spain -- doesn't look good.

England being crap has nothing to do with jobs, jobs are acually the best thing in there, but it has all to do with living outside of that job (if there is living outside of it actually)... everything is broken - literally, and "lowest common denominator" rules more than anywhere else, for sure a lot more than in central europe (not to mention a "proper" country like Switzerland or Japan)... it is just a poor existance despite of the level of $$$ or £££ that you make, or can make... sure it is not "third world" but out of the developed economies (and that includes Croatia!?! - we may have 1/3rd of GDP per capita figure going around here, but when someone actually does something it tends to work) it is a lot worse for day to day living, which most of the people here (in Croatia) would not belive if I told them...

anyway it has the best marketing/reputation as a country for what are really poor living conditions overall (let alone considering all the money that flows around in the UK)... and what is bad - everything actually when you find a good service in the UK consider yourself lucky... be it public transport, car mechanics, plummers, restaurants (which are not outrageously expensive), food in general (except London, but there is more choice there just due to all the foreigners)... houses you name it... the only good thing about UK (except London) are the roads, and the motorway system which is great, but in London it is a nightmare... medieval town planning with 10m people in it... looks good on a postcard, but when you actually have to go around in there... was there for a bit more than a month this Feb and ... despite of staying walking distace to Richmond park which is one of the "nicer" areas to be in...

and so on... I could go on for quite a while, and many people are "immune" to this due to easy availability of sex, drugs & rock and roll... but hey if your life is not about the before mention three... England is a very poor choice of a country to live in, and for sure you can have SD&R&R elshwere too, but it is not a requirement for surviving

If I had to stay in the UK, it would probably be Scotland, Edinburgh in particular, or something like Stirling... and if I had to stay in England, than Devon or Cornwall, as life seems a lot more pleasant there... big English city, if I had to - Bristol... but I don't so - glad that I was there, good learning experience & in my case great for the money, but that I am out.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

one more point - English people need the lowest standard in developed world to be "satisfied", it is the famous tolerance, and acceptace which ultimately leaves the system without any pressure, so all goes down the drain, sooner or later. IMO this "lowest common denomination" being so low is a cultural issue, and no idea how it came about, looking at century old buildings, how they were built for example, comparing to same "luxury" housing built today - it does not look like it was there 100 years ago, but it for sure is there now, and that is why nothing will ever just work. OK one more thing works pretty well in there for customers - banking... but hey we have seen the other side of the picture just recently, most exposed in the whole world to the recent crash, just standard performance... same reason for non-competitve industry at large, demise of cars, even Fiat survived but no British car company despite being one of the top producers in the 50's etc... whatever jobs for sure are the least of the current British problems, it is actually suprising that there are so many given the quality of which most of this is performed... but for services patience, and tolerance works pretty well, despite of often questionable execution + english is a clean advantage (as is/was north sea oil, UK is basically a oil state to top it off)... so they are still hanging on, but for how long... we shall see

liberal-conservative government, will see what they do to steer the ship

[MikeH]

100 years ago we were still a massively rich imperial power. We were the dominant world power up until WWI, it's no surprise standards have dropped since then.

The acceptance of being satisfied and making do came a lot out of the 40s and during rationing through the 50s, and a lot of people alive now are either from that era or have parents from that era. A lot of other European nations were worse hit by WWII than the UK, but we also never had to essentially rebuild our countries and attitudes.

Some of the things you say about the UK are definitely true, although I think many are improving (and yes, this is in part due to immigration). If you think our restaurants now are bad you should have seen them 20 years ago. Or even 5 years ago. Still a lot of **** around though. But generally, it's not as bad as all that.

Unless you are living in London on not much money, in which case it's probably pretty bad. Personally I wouldn't live in London.

[MOBIUS]

If I had to stay in the UK, it would probably be Scotland, Edinburgh in particular, or something like Stirling... and if I had to stay in England, than Devon or Cornwall, as life seems a lot more pleasant there... big English city, if I had to - Bristol... but I don't so - glad that I was there, good learning experience & in my case great for the money, but that I am out.

Interesting. If I were to plump for a city to live in in England, I'd also say Bristol. Also, I'd possibly take Edinburgh over Bristol. I'm guessing you never made it to Cardiff, because if you did from what you've said, you'd be choosing here - and I say this as an ex-Londoner.

Cardiff wins because you can easily get two bedroom flats in the centre of town for £550, meaning that you can basically walk/cycle to work, town etc.

But it is all about what you're willing to put up with as a nation. You state that we have good roads, whereas I would beg to differ - a least from a traffic point of view. However on visiting Germany, I was shocked that once you leave the autobahns, their roads between major towns are often little more than the equivalent of large country lanes.

Also I will never (well not as much!) curse British roadworks because at least they don't actually close the whole road, unlike in Germany where one 'detour' on a 'main road' where it looked like they were fixing about 100m of road resulted in a 14km addition to our journey!

[OneFootInTheGrave]

ah well Cardiff - was passing through there mostly, was really only one day there - for Radiohead concert ... so haven't seen much, but from what I have seen I liked it.

£550 for two betroom flat in centre - never paid attention to it, but wow! If I ever have to come back permanently, I'll put it on the shortlist ... As for the rest - yes it's about what you are willing to put up as a nation, and in the case of England specifically - it's a lot.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

100 years ago we were still a massively rich imperial power. We were the dominant world power up until WWI, it's no surprise standards have dropped since then.

The acceptance of being satisfied and making do came a lot out of the 40s and during rationing through the 50s, and a lot of people alive now are either from that era or have parents from that era. A lot of other European nations were worse hit by WWII than the UK, but we also never had to essentially rebuild our countries and attitudes.

Some of the things you say about the UK are definitely true, although I think many are improving (and yes, this is in part due to immigration). If you think our restaurants now are bad you should have seen them 20 years ago. Or even 5 years ago. Still a lot of **** around though. But generally, it's not as bad as all that.

Unless you are living in London on not much money, in which case it's probably pretty bad. Personally I wouldn't live in London.

Well I guess something somewhere went wrong with the attitudes... like "Beeching Axe" - while Japanese were working to introduce shinkansen, British were axing 25%! of their "unprofitable" railtrack, and 50%!!! of the stations... Just another one of those "oh my GOD!" moments which would be hard to believe if I did not live there for so long, and knew this was a fact. Consequences of those wise decisions are still felt today,and they are talking about "green taxes" now. Idiots. etc... but not to go in that direction anymore... I am out and am suprised after 15 years in Uk how in a low GDP country like Croatia so many things can work well despite of the relative money shortage.

I know that if I never left, I'd never be able to appreciate it... but now not only that I do, I am actually regularly positively shocked with things that just work and you do not have to run in circles before you get to some sort of satisfactory result

[MOBIUS]

See, there we are again: Cardiff, for a population of only 325,000 has 20 railway stations and is at the hub of another 6 railways with about 60+ stations whose lines specifically serve and terminate in Cardiff.

Two of those lines have been reopened in the last few years in a reverse of the Beeching Act (impressed you know about that! ), as well as improvements on the other feeder lines - which is what happens when Wales is allowed some autonomy over its affairs.

IIRC it won some European transport award recently.