The Mexico of Europe
…Used to be Ireland.
According to new figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Britain is going through the biggest brain drain of any country and its biggest exodus for more than 50 years; one in 10 of our most highly skilled graduates has left and no other nation is losing so many qualified people; overall, only Mexico has more emigrants.
Hmm.
In reviewing Roger Scruton’s England: an Elegy a few years ago, the journalist Christian Tyler described that feeling particularly well. “For people in later middle age,” he wrote, “the present is a place of exile in which they are condemned to live estranged from the country they knew and loved as children. Brought up in the culture and mores of one place, they are involuntary immigrants to another; there they can choose either to acclimatise or to live locked up in a state of permanent regret.” Or they can choose to become emigrants.
That might be why some people leave this country. But I think the most important one must be economic; Britain is a wonderful place to live if you are rich and can pay your way around any inconveniences. Britain is relatively good if you are poor, particularly if your country of origin was even poorer. But for the educated middle classes Britain is no longer a good deal. The main reason for that is simple: it is the oppressive price of property.
Property here isn’t merely where you live; it is your entire way of life. It means how bad your local schools and hospitals are, how efficient your local authority, how nice your neighbours, how safe your streets. Property prices have become frightening.
As a result, professionals have to put up with a way of life that is much worse than that of their counterparts in Australia or America, and the cost of living elsewhere is lower as well. The same applies to retired Britons who own a house; they can get a better house and plenty of change, in a more civil society, if they abandon this country.
So, Mexico’s corrupt plutocracy = the Home Office?
February 25th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I’ve offered to fly my mum back to the UK for a visit (she’s never been back) a number of times, but she always says “no, it would have changed so much”. Probably a reasonable stance. Mind you, when she first came to Australia and found out that she would have to cook (she couldn’t cook) not only for dad, but for his four brothers, she was very tempted call it quits right then and go straight back to the olde darte.
February 25th, 2008 at 9:52 pm
Heh.
I dunno. You could put her in one of these country piles turned bed and breakfasts. She could sit in a folly with a cup o’ tea and look out over the pure English countryside and never have to know what it looks like in the city just over yonder hill. Just don’t show her a newspaper.
February 26th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Have you seen “Goodbye Lenin!”?
If you haven’t, it’s very good.
February 26th, 2008 at 9:05 am
I did! And yes, it was very good.
Okay so to save yourself (and your friends) the effort, make sure you take the TV out of her room as well. Or find a B&B that doesn’t go in for those newfangled contraptions.