Exodus

I ventured outside today, the first time I had done so since December 30th. It was cold but not as cold as it was on New Year’s Eve. Mercifully the sky, while cloudy was not overcast. It had the promise of being brighter later on. As I turned right out of my street I saw my bus coming so I ran for it. I jumped on and ran upstairs. The guy sitting in front of me stared at me full in the face for a few seconds longer than I felt was polite. I let it go and looked out of the window.

A few minutes later, the guy turned round and started talking to me. It turns out he had seen me in the Norwood area a few times. I can’t remember his name although he did tell me, and I can’t remember what his country of origin was, although he told me that too. Considering that as a trained journalist I am supposed to be hot on details, my memory is shocking!!

As we got chatting he shared his story with me. He had just broken up with his girlfriend of nine years as she had felt he’d outlived his usefulness. After commiserating with him, we got to discussing what we wanted to do with our lives. We were both in the process of making plans to emigrate to other countries for pretty much the same reasons: the people here are unfriendly, to have a better work/life balance and to escape this bone chilling cold weather!!

I recalled all the other conversations I’d had with people over the years who were leaving London for other parts of the world. Of the people I had spoken to, there were only two reasons people were leaving: the coldness of the people here and the level of violent crime. Only one person gave crime as her reason for emigrating.

People are leaving England in droves for a myriad of reasons. Of this group increasing numbers of British people are packing up their families and leaving in search of a different type of life. In the current economic climate, those who originally came to London to work are also having to return home to as they have lost their jobs and are unable to find anything else.

A report in the online Daily Telegraph in April 2008 said that last year, 207,000 British citizens left the UK permanently, but this isn’t necessarily a definitive figure. Even allowing for that, people are leaving and going to other countries, particularly Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Europe; apparently, eight out of every 100 move to the US. I’ll soon be in that number!!

It is sad though how the country has deteriorated over the last 20 years or so. As bad as things are right now, I do believe that England can be turned around; with the right government, a major overhaul of all of the public services, laws and the healthcare system then the country has a fighting chance of being a great place again. There is a huge amount of work to be done, but it can be done if those in power have the vision and correct strategy to bring it to pass.