There is a story in The Sun from the UK which made me again realise how much we here should count our blessings:
A new survey has found that almost half of Britons are ‘seriously considering’ moving overseas, with Australia, the US, Canada and New Zealand proving to be the most popular relocation spots.
The survey of 1,650 adults has found that the high cost of living, bad weather, unemployment and crime are the main reasons that 48 per of people say they are considering leaving Britain.
Luckily, not even Labor Governments are able to affect the weather although they ridiculously think they can. But the cost of living and unemployment, that they can do quite a bit to affect. And then when they actually start to shift their policies in the right direction, aiming to cut spending and balance the budget, along come their extraterrestrial allies – those Little Green Women and Men from Planet Zongo – to deny them the room to manoeuver. ET go home already.
But the facts are that we do live in an extraordinary sweet and gentle land which has been our own creation. Whether we can preserve it is always the question.
I remember a survey about 20 years ago that found that 30 percent of them wanted to emigrate: not quite as high, but in the same ballpark. So this isn’t entirely new, although this metric might be a good way of monitoring Britain’s health as a nation over time.
daddy dave
17 Apr 12 at 1:14 am
Yeah, well.
Understandable.
The country is a toilet.
But they’re not welcome here.
C.L.
17 Apr 12 at 1:42 am
If they want to emigrate then why don’t they?
TerjeP
17 Apr 12 at 1:52 am
People cant run from self created problems.. only bring them along for implementation here…
David Elson
17 Apr 12 at 5:03 am
“then why don’ they?”
Criminal records I suspect…..
Sea Wolf
17 Apr 12 at 5:49 am
They allowed their version of western civilisation to be diluted, so they want to go where they imagine it’s like the old days. Little do they know, we have politicians here every bit as naieve or venal as theirs. Plus they exported some of the most rabid unionists here. The grass isn’t necessarily greener. Or it won’t be forever.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 5:50 am
If you sh*t in your nest to such an extent that you’ve made it virtually uninhabitable, any acceptance to a new nest should at least be conditional upon your not sh*tting in this one too.
That goes for all wannabe-refugees, economic or otherwise.
sdog
17 Apr 12 at 6:33 am
We would be in the same position as the UK if it wasn’t for the fact that the entire country is made of valuable rocks, so let’s not pat ourselves on the back too much.
Yobbo
17 Apr 12 at 6:52 am
That’s just one issue amongst several, Yobbo.
As I noted above, we have no right to be smug. Look at the UK and you’ll see a version of our future.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 6:57 am
No, not quite in the same position but for the valuable rocks. We still have some way to go before achieveing their craven level of pc despondency. But we are still heading down that path, only to be saved by more conservative government and that’s provided it’s of the spined variety, not too Victorian.
All Brit applicants now need the same sort of screening that ME applicants get, given the makeup of Britain’s population these days.
Blogstrop
17 Apr 12 at 6:58 am
Sure, but it’s not political correctness that fucked the UK economy. It’s their comparative lack of rocks.
Yobbo
17 Apr 12 at 7:09 am
Pretty much all economic growth in Australia is because of mining, every other industry in the country is in decline. Let’s not kid ourselves.
Yobbo
17 Apr 12 at 7:10 am
Indeed, but let’s not have you kid us that the gloomy cultural landscape of the UK is not an I portent factor in making the economic climate even less tolerable.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 7:24 am
Important. Fucking iPad.
But also a portent, ha ha.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 7:25 am
The UK being gloomy isn’t anything new though. People have always been looking for somewhere better. Ask William Bligh.
Yobbo
17 Apr 12 at 7:53 am
The biggest, in fact the only I’ve met, supporters of the greens and ALP’s Carbon tax in Australia have been British expats.
The mining boom won’t last forever, Australia needs to take action to differentiate ourselves from the declining western middle powers otherwise we will follow the UK down the tube. -> action esp. in regards to industrial relations, infrastructure, education,immigration and energy.
Cory Olsen
17 Apr 12 at 8:03 am
That’s right. Labor and the press gallery call this the “two speed economy” which is code for, “if it wasn’t for mining we’d be in the tank.”
Or alternatively, “we’ve strangled every industry except mining. How did we miss one?”
daddy dave
17 Apr 12 at 8:19 am
Not to worry, Dave – they have a cunning plan for the mining industry as well.
Rabz
17 Apr 12 at 8:27 am
I don’t think they’re wanting to flee economic decline but, rather, moral decline. By which I mean, the UK is now a country where children are taken away by police and fingerprinted for being mean to ‘Asians.’
C.L.
17 Apr 12 at 8:30 am
I don’t want any more Eurotrash in Australia. All they bring is their big government, big spending, high taxing, massive debt fueled, all pervading welfare state, politically correct mentality. They are like parasites who have destroyed the UK and are now looking for a new host with better prospects to leach off. More hardworking and entrepreneurial Chinese & non Muslim Indian immigrants please.
John Comnenus
17 Apr 12 at 8:32 am
I know quite a few who arrived with CV’s full of experience in “Green Consultancy”. They make a mint tying up developments for years, pottering around, forcing the developer to wear the extra holding costs which ultimately get passed to the end consumer / purchaser.
Token
17 Apr 12 at 8:39 am
so-called “Green collar” jobs are an abberation – entirely the product of government green tape. When that gets thinned out, that industry will vanish.
daddy dave
17 Apr 12 at 8:45 am
What John Comnenus said. GB pissed the whole North Sea oil treasure into creating a welfare state that trashed their social structure and acted as a magnet for the Third Worlds refuse.
GB and Europe deserve everything they’ve worked so hard to get.
Winston SMITH
17 Apr 12 at 8:51 am
Maybe the soaring price of schmaltz is a factor. I don’t know how much it costs here though. The treasurer probably does.
Charles Bourbaki
17 Apr 12 at 9:58 am
IT will pop a blood vessel when he reads this
Tal
17 Apr 12 at 10:06 am
“I don’t think they’re wanting to flee economic decline but, rather, moral decline.”
Not according to the survey. Unless you are counting crime as part of moral decline.
Jarrah
17 Apr 12 at 10:14 am
Having spent some time under the grey skies of Britain I would want to get out as well.
It’s a two-speed society there. Either you’ve got some cash and can afford a nice house and to do nice things (like make an escape to the countryside), or you spend your life living in a rotting ghetto.
They’ve only got themselves to blame. They let socialism in the door and pretended they could just have a little bit without ruining things.
It’s a shame really, the country that gave birth to secular liberalism is the one that turned it’s back on it, all in the name of ‘social justice’. And now everybody has it worse off, including the royal family.
And I agree with the export of union leaders. Not content with destroying their own industries, they expanded internationally looking for some of ours to ruin as well. Looking at you, Doug Cameron, and all your union mates.
brc
17 Apr 12 at 10:20 am
How many more Doug Cameron’s, or Julia Gillard’s do we need?
kelly liddle
17 Apr 12 at 10:39 am
Political Correctness requires that people Lie and accept lies / great untruths in Public Discourse = Hard to have a free market in that environment.
rodclarke
17 Apr 12 at 10:54 am
Well, yes.
C.L.
17 Apr 12 at 10:56 am
It is interesting that nobody mentions ‘white flight’.
Such is the suppression of free speech most everywhere in PC places.
john malpas
17 Apr 12 at 11:17 am
I must have missed Cameron saying this (Australian).. Checked and it appears to be a real quote.
You were quoted on Radio 4 recently (22nd October) as saying “I don’t suppose anyone gets up in the morning thinking ‘I wish the state were smaller’ “.
FFS when the leader of the conservative party, in a state where government accounts for around 45% of GDP says that, then you are looking at a hole with no bottom.
thefrollickingmole
17 Apr 12 at 11:21 am
My worst fears are coming true.
Perth is already awash with British and Irish scum fleeing the unflushed bogs they formerly lived in. THe only people happy about this development are Dentists and potato growers.
Infidel Tiger
17 Apr 12 at 11:28 am
Fantastic news from Sweden as reported in frollickingmole’s link. A libertarian in charge of Sweden’s public finances.
jtfsoon
17 Apr 12 at 11:29 am
More on Anders Borg here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Borg
jtfsoon
17 Apr 12 at 11:30 am
Borg – a drug-addicted Libertarian who couldn’t finish a degree.
He probably saw academic degrees as a regulatory device.
Samson Agonistes
17 Apr 12 at 11:34 am
So our pet troll hates Borg, what a great endorsement!
Token
17 Apr 12 at 12:28 pm
Interesting how often people here say ‘fucking ipad’ – how come no one ever says ‘fantastic ipad’?
Helen Armstrong
17 Apr 12 at 3:02 pm
Or even ‘fucking fantastic ipad’?
JamesK
17 Apr 12 at 3:06 pm
IT: and bogans who owned/own land in Kwinana or Rockingham. They’ve made a packet out of the Poms’ penchant for shitty seaside sandpits.
Oh come on
17 Apr 12 at 3:25 pm
Particularly when the non sentient device is merely trying to correct its owner’s mistake! Bad workman, tools etc.
Entropy
17 Apr 12 at 3:28 pm
Darwin as well, and they’re not an improvement on the average local.
Supplice
17 Apr 12 at 3:29 pm
My problem is this feckin’ awful crappy collapsing ISP. Lost a comment again, and too short of time to be writing it up once more.
Aussie friends Skyped last night to say they are coming back home from high-flying corporate life in London. Things are bad, they say.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
17 Apr 12 at 3:44 pm
Obviously HIA is very influential
JamesK
17 Apr 12 at 3:56 pm
Don’t think there are any engineers left in Ireland, we have them all!
They get around $60g pa in Ireland, more than double that here. Great bunch of people but need subtitles to understand some of them.
I heard a great joke from our Aboriginal site clerk the other day. Am afraid if i repeat it here as will be Mordered.
Woolfe
17 Apr 12 at 4:06 pm
It seems more ladylike somehow, James, especially in the afternoon. They write it up everywhere in Ireland and it’s not seen as offensive. It’s also just a little bit contagious as well. Hang around long enough and it starts to rub off on you. I have to be careful. I’ve just noticed there’s a ‘to be’ up there as well.
I do love the Irish. “Welcome to Dublin” beamed the man in the pub in love with the world late one night in the Shoebox Pub on the Dingle Peninsula (the one immortalised in Peter McCarthy’s book McCarthy’s Bar).
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
17 Apr 12 at 4:16 pm
I know plenty of terrific Brits who’d make better Australians than met Australians.
But, as with everything, the immigration stream whether legal or illegal, tends to favour people who will chip away at our character.
It is a great irony to me that so many want to come to Australia because of it’s very Australian-ness, but most of them when they get here don’t want to be a part if it and seek to turn it into a simulacrum of the shit society they were fleeing. It’s not always a conscious act: most likely it’s because assimilation can be challenging and clinging to your own habits is easier.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 4:40 pm
Met = many
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 4:41 pm
Q.How do you know a plane full of Pommies have just landed?
A. The engines have stopped but you can still hear the whining.
Splatacrobat
17 Apr 12 at 4:47 pm
That shower in Daingean and beyond know how to carve open wallets andf not much else really.
Pl,us the never shut up anout the disease ridden dolphin tahy comes into the harbour,
They’ll say anthing/anyting to turn a shilling.
JamesK
17 Apr 12 at 4:49 pm
Well I know some Pommies who get on with business in some shit locales and never whine, unlike a large number of my fellow Australians.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 4:51 pm
I gather the other 54% are the ethic majorities that have already fled other world hell holes and find Britain a better place to live…….even if it is too cold, too democratic, too Christian, too add your own insult………….
Splatacrobat
17 Apr 12 at 4:57 pm
So you missed the posts where I wrote about their version of western civilisation being diluted and their gloomy cultural landscape? Does it need to be expressed more crudely?
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 4:57 pm
The UK was a great place to escape to because it had all those things your own shithole lacked: free speech, property rights, fair trial, etc.
But then a few insects decide that it can be improved by getting the grotesque lascivious women to dress like our own demure and moral women, and by building temples that dominate and broadcast across the landscape, and changing the signage so we don’t have to learn a language beyond our own beloved Urdu, and what do you know, these englishes they are weak and bend like grass in the wind when we complain about… Anything really.
After awhile you won’t even need garbage removal in parts of London, because that is what the streets are for.
Abu Chowdah
17 Apr 12 at 5:05 pm
JamesK – yes, that feckin’ dolphin. We mostly stayed with locals in Ireland.
Elizabeth (Lizzie) B.
17 Apr 12 at 5:12 pm
The country is big enough to take more people.
Just pray the “ugly spirit” stays out.
Ally
17 Apr 12 at 11:21 pm
Australia’s big enough I mean, pardon.
Ally
17 Apr 12 at 11:38 pm
Sorry, I know I’m not perfect either but more people should be able to come here. And if there’s any mean people who come, hopefully they will see that you don’t have to be a complete and utter prick or bitch in order to have a nice life here.
Ally
17 Apr 12 at 11:45 pm
Of course it is. As long as they don’t bring a love of high rise tenement apartments, riots, and their kooky belief in climate armageddon, they’ll be fine.
daddy dave
17 Apr 12 at 11:48 pm
daddy dave, I think that’s an impossible ask… formerly they were defined by their empire and now these things define them.
Don’t forget Mordoch witch trials and curry & chips, the new british paradigm!
Cory Olsen
18 Apr 12 at 5:19 am
Ally’s view is the same wrong headed view of the left: surely once people see what a nice place it is here and how lovely we are and how cool pluralism is, and how marvelous Cate Blanchett is, and how spiffing the gay Mardi gras is… Then they will simply jettison their centuries-held barbaric, sexist, anti-Western ways and join the nearest branch of the ALP.
Fucking idiot,
Abu Chowdah
18 Apr 12 at 6:17 am
I beg your pardon Abu filthy mouth. You should be more worried about the “migrant millionaires” who had the “inside info” and ALREADY set up shop here in the last ten/fifteen years while everyone was sooking about the “poor immigrants”.
And some of these rich people have THE UGLIEST SPIRIT!
I ABSOLOUTELY NOT saying Australia should be just open the borders willy nilly. We definately need stronger border protection. Even more so now. Its a VERY different world.
Ally
18 Apr 12 at 8:52 am
I beg your pardon Abu filthy mouth?
Your “insight” is just amazing.
Do you actually read about whats happening the in REAL world?
ally
18 Apr 12 at 9:26 am
Great… stronger border controls and evil “rich” migrants, nice work ally.
Highly skilled well off migrants (from anywhere really but I prefer southeast asian due to culture) are what this country needs, dare I say the only kind we need.
David Elson
18 Apr 12 at 11:23 am
Um excuse me – the rest of the world has just gone to hell. The people or “ugly spirit” who made it happen can stay there.
ally
18 Apr 12 at 2:18 pm
Migrants are people.
People are either good or bad.
People are either rich or poor.
Ally
18 Apr 12 at 6:27 pm
Splatacrobat
18 Apr 12 at 9:42 pm
@ Ally, there’s a reason why this is the Asian Century…..
Perchance these parts of the world have not “gone to hell” in the manner of the statist UK, USA, Greece etc…
David Elson
19 Apr 12 at 5:55 am