Pretty soon I’ll be leaving the UK I reckon. My reasons are:
1. I will not inherit wealth. So I am basically just an indentured servant with no realistic social mobility to aspire to achieve.
2. I have a good above average income and a frugal lifestyle and yet I feel trapped in a crappy semi-detached in a crappy area. To move to a nicer semi-detached in a nicer area would consume more than half my net monthly income. Sod that.
3. Everything I use, which isn’t much, has far outstripped my wage increases. Basic staples such as using a car to commute to work, needing to wash and dry clothes, needing to heat a 3 bed property, needing to maintain the property, needing car servicing, broadband, paying council tax that has gone up – I shit you not = 25% in 6 years. Even just the fact my food bill is now £85 a week. Clothes, a pint, a pizza..
4. I can’t afford to pay in to a decent private pension which means I’ll never be able to retire. That seems totally shoe on head nuts and the way people just eat that reality with a nonchalant shrug is horrifying to me.
5. The NHS is totally f***. I’m paying £700 a month in taxes and I’m not even guaranteed a level of service the most basic private healthcare warrants. I have to pay for private dentistry. If, God forbid, I need surgery for any reason I’ll need to go private or wait so long or accept such a desperate level of care it would be literally masochism.
6. The politics in this country are screwed. We absolutely do not live in a democracy. Its a farcical pantomime. Don’t even get me started in the fact we still have a monarchy and an un-elected 2nd chamber. Strewth.
7. I can’t afford a kid even if I wanted one.
8. I can’t even afford a dog. Which is fine because I have to work 55 hrs a week (including the commute) just to pay for the car payment and diesel required to work 55 hrs a week.
9. I have pretty much no life. My days are work, cook, clean, shop, youtube, reddit, bed. Its truly wretched.
10. Every kind of service in the UK is dogshit. From the supermarkets to eating out. Everything is top dollar and there’s no concept of service or quality.
11. The roads are gridlocked. The shops are gridlocked. No matter where you go in England there’s 15 buggers waiting for you in a line.
12. The current levels of direct and indirect taxation are draconian. The cost of doing business is insane. Being self employed is insane. PAYE is an absolute robbery.
Loads more besides.
There’s just not much going for this place now for anyone with half a brain and a middle income. Unless they want to play the “marriage, first child, inevitable divorce, pay for someone else to raise your kid and live in an HMO game”. I really don’t fancy that either.
All that and I didn’t even mention Brexit or the climate being shit. Didn’t really need to though right? 🙂
Well put, the social contract such as it ever was, is well and truly broken.
How do people expect the average house to go down? There aren’t enough of them. House prices falling would involve everyone agreeing to sell their houses for below market value. How is that ever going to happen when houses are selling in 2 days to a week? My house was on the market for a grand total of 3 hours before I bought it. Houses in my village are selling in a matter of days.
If we get more immigration then we will have more workers and more houses will be built, our GDP will increase and we can continue to fund pensions if we reach 140m population by 2050.
I mean even their figures say that they actually dropped.
They’ve ‘seasonally adjusted’ them to encourage people to keep taking out mortgages. When prices are falling people are less likely to buy.
Cool, im still poor. Wait, i mean, Im even more poor. Go me. Well done. Hi five. No, i dont own a fucking house.
Not surprising to be honest. A few factors:
* Inflation falling, cost of living easing especially for middle classes
* Interest rates calming down
* Wages (across whole economy) staying ahead of inflation
* Continued shortfall in house building with population growth
Anyone expecting a house price crash will continue to be disappointed. We have seen the slump due to Truss and high inflation but that was it.
Yes the country has serious systemic issues that have caused huge inequality and suffering for many people but most people can name 10 countries maximum they could say would give them a better,safer happier life.
Whichever way you swing it the UK is one of the best places in the world to live. That’s why when leaving we don’t get on the first inflatable raft to France and we aren’t paying people to illegally smuggling us to better places.
8 comments
Pretty soon I’ll be leaving the UK I reckon. My reasons are:
1. I will not inherit wealth. So I am basically just an indentured servant with no realistic social mobility to aspire to achieve.
2. I have a good above average income and a frugal lifestyle and yet I feel trapped in a crappy semi-detached in a crappy area. To move to a nicer semi-detached in a nicer area would consume more than half my net monthly income. Sod that.
3. Everything I use, which isn’t much, has far outstripped my wage increases. Basic staples such as using a car to commute to work, needing to wash and dry clothes, needing to heat a 3 bed property, needing to maintain the property, needing car servicing, broadband, paying council tax that has gone up – I shit you not = 25% in 6 years. Even just the fact my food bill is now £85 a week. Clothes, a pint, a pizza..
4. I can’t afford to pay in to a decent private pension which means I’ll never be able to retire. That seems totally shoe on head nuts and the way people just eat that reality with a nonchalant shrug is horrifying to me.
5. The NHS is totally f***. I’m paying £700 a month in taxes and I’m not even guaranteed a level of service the most basic private healthcare warrants. I have to pay for private dentistry. If, God forbid, I need surgery for any reason I’ll need to go private or wait so long or accept such a desperate level of care it would be literally masochism.
6. The politics in this country are screwed. We absolutely do not live in a democracy. Its a farcical pantomime. Don’t even get me started in the fact we still have a monarchy and an un-elected 2nd chamber. Strewth.
7. I can’t afford a kid even if I wanted one.
8. I can’t even afford a dog. Which is fine because I have to work 55 hrs a week (including the commute) just to pay for the car payment and diesel required to work 55 hrs a week.
9. I have pretty much no life. My days are work, cook, clean, shop, youtube, reddit, bed. Its truly wretched.
10. Every kind of service in the UK is dogshit. From the supermarkets to eating out. Everything is top dollar and there’s no concept of service or quality.
11. The roads are gridlocked. The shops are gridlocked. No matter where you go in England there’s 15 buggers waiting for you in a line.
12. The current levels of direct and indirect taxation are draconian. The cost of doing business is insane. Being self employed is insane. PAYE is an absolute robbery.
Loads more besides.
There’s just not much going for this place now for anyone with half a brain and a middle income. Unless they want to play the “marriage, first child, inevitable divorce, pay for someone else to raise your kid and live in an HMO game”. I really don’t fancy that either.
All that and I didn’t even mention Brexit or the climate being shit. Didn’t really need to though right? 🙂
Well put, the social contract such as it ever was, is well and truly broken.
How do people expect the average house to go down? There aren’t enough of them. House prices falling would involve everyone agreeing to sell their houses for below market value. How is that ever going to happen when houses are selling in 2 days to a week? My house was on the market for a grand total of 3 hours before I bought it. Houses in my village are selling in a matter of days.
If we get more immigration then we will have more workers and more houses will be built, our GDP will increase and we can continue to fund pensions if we reach 140m population by 2050.
I mean even their figures say that they actually dropped.
They’ve ‘seasonally adjusted’ them to encourage people to keep taking out mortgages. When prices are falling people are less likely to buy.
Cool, im still poor. Wait, i mean, Im even more poor. Go me. Well done. Hi five. No, i dont own a fucking house.
Not surprising to be honest. A few factors:
* Inflation falling, cost of living easing especially for middle classes
* Interest rates calming down
* Wages (across whole economy) staying ahead of inflation
* Continued shortfall in house building with population growth
Anyone expecting a house price crash will continue to be disappointed. We have seen the slump due to Truss and high inflation but that was it.
Yes the country has serious systemic issues that have caused huge inequality and suffering for many people but most people can name 10 countries maximum they could say would give them a better,safer happier life.
Whichever way you swing it the UK is one of the best places in the world to live. That’s why when leaving we don’t get on the first inflatable raft to France and we aren’t paying people to illegally smuggling us to better places.