A few things wrong with the UK

Just spent a bit of time over this forum post so thought I've share it here. Kinda sums up my main reasons for not wanting to live in the UK:

Don't get me wrong, England is beautiful and will always be 'home' but some things are so wrong. I won't get into it too much (unless anyone else enjoys talking about this stuff...) but we are one of the richest countries in the world and could vastly improve the lives of the less fortunate, yet our government chooses to spend our money on things like the Iraq invasion (our taxes spent to help establish permanent American bases in the Middle East and hand control of the world's 2nd (or is it 3rd) largest oil reserves to a handful of big corporations, not to mention the horrible loss of life), renewing a (not very) independent nuclear deterrent and keeping us under watch/control with ID cards, detention without trial, etc.

I totally disagree with a the xenophobic, "Sun reader" view on issues like immigration. My view - I would like to be able to live and work anywhere I want (I can't), so we should allow other people to do the same. The only solution to the problem of immigration is to improve the standard of living in other countries so less people want to leave them to come here. This will happen eventually (look at India, or even Spain, over the last 20 years), but us rich countries have the power to speed it up significantly.

I know I'm probably in the minority. Britain is an island and many Britons will always see themselves as islanders.

In my opinion our society (the west) gives too much value to money and material things. It probably comes from religion - other cultures seem to value happiness more than wealth. Which to me makes more sense to me.

It's the little things as well (or maybe not so little, depending on what is important to you)... Why do we have public transport run by private companies to make a profit and the road network, used mainly for private transport is run by public bodies at a cost to the taxpayer? Private roads and public trains seem to work a lot better in other countries and it seems more logical to me.

Take the recent budget - give with one hand, take with another. Some (vote-winning) green taxes, but the big winners seem to be big companies not the little people.

Sure, governments and policies change (a bit), give it 10 years or so and we might even see a fairer electoral system, but a lot of it is deeper than that.

Then there's the weather.... :P

Anyway, I'll shut up now - Just a few reasons why I don't really like the UK. (Though there are many reasons why I love it too!)

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