Looking at the varoius posts throughout this website, it seems that there are a lot of people leaving the UK to live in other countries and a lot of talk about problems in the UK. Why is everyone leaving? What are the big problems with the UK?

I could write a book on this! There are some good things about the UK but some of the major bad ones which affect me personally are:

1. Inadequate health care due to mismanagement of NHS
2. Substandard schools and universities due to twenty years of the National Curriculum and weak teaching
3. Increasingly violence and drunkeness on the streets even in rural areas
4. Lunatic government (Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown make a good pair)
5. Overcrowding in housing and roads due to too much land being owned and controlled by rich and powerful people
6. Astronomical cost of living
7. A corrupt food industry
8. Polluted air even in countryside
9. Lousy weather

I know some of these things apply in other countries. It's a matter of proportion and what each individual prioritises I suppose.

I live between England, France, Egypt and the Bahamas, with roots in Canada, and each country has upsides and downsides. But on the whole England has fewer upsides for me than those other places.

Sounds like many parts of the US, except the "corrupt food industry". How can a food industry be corrupt?

Hi PDXnative
Corruption: An official enquiry showed that some of our biggest supermarkets had 'fixed' prices of staple dairy products (butter and milk), keeping them artificially high.

I agree with Deeana that there are problems with the NHS and the education system however I would blame the Government for interfering too much in things they know nothing about. Teaching is not weak in general nor are the Universities, the problem is due to teachers being prevented from teaching properly because Ministers keep changing the system when they know nothing about teaching. Also and are prevented from exercising discipline by 'political correctness' and 'human rights'. Teachers should be running the classrooms not badly behaved or spoilt children!

The overcrowding is not caused by too many rich people, it is caused by the government insisting on huge amounts of new buildings of the wrong types in the wrong places. Why build when there are so many empty or unsold properties? What is needed is AFFORDABLE, LOW COST housing not luxury 4 bed detached houses.

But we left because we couldn't afford to live in the UK any longer. As middle-aged homeowners without young children we were hit by every new tax initiative until we were taxed to death. I don't want my husband to have to continue working for the rest of his life just to afford to live. We want a life!
And our law-abiding grown up children are let down by a government too busy supporting criminals by offering them incentives to behave. What incentive is there to not become criminals.... you get nothing for staying on the right side of the law...other than taxed!

We hated being in the country with the highest degree of surveillance in the World. You can't go anywhere without big brother watching on CCTV.

Last but not least, the whole attitude of the country has changed in my lifetime. It is no longer a country where people are concerned about others. We are too busy struggling to live that we have become self-centered and worried about our rights.

In short, we left England because we didn't want and couldn't afford to be there any more.

What is the average taxes that everyone pays in the UK?

I believe it is true that people in general work until around June each year before they start to actually take home their salary. In other words everything you earn goes to the government for half the year.

I run an after-school tuition centre with 200 children coming to us every week for extra help in English and Maths - many are five years behind in both. If this wouldn't indicate weak teaching I don't know what would, and weak teaching doesn't necessarily mean the teachers are weak themselves, just that good teaching simply isn't happening in many of today's classrooms.

It is also a sign of weak parenting.

I have to agree that it can be. But speaking from personal experience only, our parents are all caring individuals, otherwise they wouldn't bring their children to a place where they have to pay for tuition to help their children out of sticky situations at school. They have almost always tried and failed to get the help they need at school, and to provide it at home.

Often they are baffled by the requirements of the National Curriculum, frustrated by the educational system and confused by the attitudes of some of the teachers and schools. Plus, they aren't always the best judge of how to teach their own children.

Myself a teacher, I took my own two children out of school aged 8 and 10 and homeschooled them while traveling through Europe and the Middle East, ending up in Canada for their senior high school and university years. They both did just fine and both say they wouldn't have had it any other way.

I've reread your thread about taking two years off later and taking your daughter round Europe - sounds like a great idea - are you still planning to do that?
Deeana

We sure are. We are waiting for her to turn 7 or 8 (or until SHE is ready) so that she will get the most out of it. We are actually tossing around the idea of moving to Australia in two years to work a couple years and see that Country, then head off to Europe and travel without working.

How was it when you travelled with your children around Europe?