On leaving Blighty

Laban Tall shows us that many native Brits are leaving these fair isles at a rate of knots:

The people leaving are middle class and educated. When my wife was organising a reunion for her Barts nursing trainees of 20 years ago, she found a quarter of them were living abroad, nearly all in the Antipodes or North America.

I’ve often thought about it, you know, leaving England.

People leave for all kinds of reasons but for me it would be that there are things that I would like to do that are simply against the law in this country. Indeed, my whole profession would almost certainly be different if I was, say, born in the USA. I wonder how many leave for similar reasons? Probably not many. It certainly doesn’t appear as a factor in the New Statesman article:

A survey in Emigrate magazine found that roughly three-quarters of potential emigrants think quality of life in Britain is deteriorating. The YouGov poll cited crime, council taxes, congested roads, lack of space. Eighty-five per cent thought Britain was "grinding to a halt". ICM added a few more reasons to be miserable: bad weather, long working hours, regional unemployment, high house prices. The Alliance & Leicester study found that the top reason for emigration was the search for a better quality of life, with work stress the main trigger, and destinations which place a "greater value on leisure and lifestyle" the most favoured. Among older people, the main reasons for moving abroad were climate and environment, pace of life, health, lower living costs, and "social advantages". What is also notable throughout such surveys is gloom and pessimism about Britain and the lack of attachment to the homeland.

These are reasons that we can all appreciate to some extent I think. The article also suggests that one of the things against which people are voting with their feet is enforced multiculturalism, which is interesting. Only the outward going Brits can tell us if that’s true and I expect a great deal of flack to be sent the way of the NS for even mentioning such a thing. It will disturb the sensibilities of a lot of easily disturbed people I think.

I find this mentioned lack of attachment to the homeland interesting. I wonder how much if it has to do with the way the education system teaches history. I think that Peter Hitchen's book, The Abolition of Britain goes into some detail on this. Certainly, when I was doing history, it was all about how bad the slave trade was and how dark and satanic the dark satanic mills of the industrial revolution were and very little in the way of blowing our own trumpets, if you know what I mean. Nah, probably nothing to do with it. More likely is that people just don't feel well represented anymore. Not appreciated. Pushed around. Used. That kind of thing makes you loose attachment pretty quickly.

Anyway, I think about leaving every now and again but I don't think that I can really afford the luxury. My family is settled and my parents are getting old and long gone are the days when I can think just of myself.

One of my sisters, on the other hand, has no such qualms. She left England over two years ago with her husband for, you know, tax reasons. They’ll be back some day. I hope.

Posted by John at September 28, 2004 09:00 AM | TrackBack