Thinking of emigrating - read on...

On GMTV this morning there was an item about about the huge numbers of people in Britain that would like to emigrate. Apparently it is all the fault of the credit crunch , immigration and the weather.

OK so let's let's look at this a bit closer.

Do those people who want to up sticks and move half way around the world realise that the current economic climate is a global problem or do they think that it is only in the UK that we are looking at falling house prices and dearer food and fuel bills. Do they really think that just because they can buy a house cheaper in Adelaide that they won't have any more financial problems and that the world price of wheat won't affect them? Are they so naive to think that OPEC oil prices won't hit their cost of living just because they won't have to use their central heating for 6 months a year? Well presumably they will still want to drive a car, they will still need to have their air-conditioning unit blasting away and presumably they will still need to eat food in a country, that in some areas, is in the thrall of a 10 year drought.

When those people emigrate to Spain, who do they think the immigrants are in their new country? Is it the Africans or the Eastern European that are the new immigrants on the Costas? Don't they stop and think for one minute that it might be them who are now the immigrants. Some of these people who are complaining about immigration in this country are planning to go to a country where they don't speak the language, have no intention of assimilating with the indigenous population and know little of the culture and customs of their host country. If this was reversed and it was the Spanish working classes that were coming to the UK, these same people would be moaning about Tesco having whole aisles dedicated to the 'incomers' and bang on about the strain on local schools having so many children joining them who couldn't speak our language.

But I think the most ridiculous reason of all for wanting to go is that old chestnut about our great British weather. Yes this summer has been a wash out and not just in the 'North', this year even Southerners have had a grey and wet summer. And that's the rub, it became very fashionable this year 'because of the economic climate' and 'reducing our carbon footprint' for the chattering classes to holiday in the UK, those London based journalists, who are more used to jetting off to Tuscany with little Tarquin and Annabel for their Summer holidays, have been huddling under a brolly in Cornwall and Devon this August. So what have all the red tops and the television news items been banging on about for the past six weeks? why our dreadful weather of course. Now any of us who regularly holiday in the UK could have told them you don't take a holiday here for the weather, we know that we can't guarantee long hot days sitting by the pool, we holiday in the UK for our fabulous scenery, our cultural and regional diversity and most of all the hospitality of this great country - ask any Japanese tourist!

It never ceases to amaze me that somebody who works a seven day rolling shift in a factory in the UK looks to emigrate to Australia to do the same job and working the same hours for less money, is making the move because the weather in Australia is better. Don't they realise that they are going to be stuck indoors all day, doesn't it occur to them that their partner will probably also being working full time, their children are going to be in school all day, they are going to get home from work moaning that their legs ache or the boss is a pain or the traffic is awful. Life down under is only going to be different for them if they work hard at it. Nobody is going to give them a boat so that the family can go sailing every weekend, nobody is going to give them lots of money so that they can have prawn barbies every night, and nobody is going to magic away any family tensions that they might have had in the UK.

Don't get me wrong, I am not against people wanting to emigrate, in fact if our circumstances had been different we might have been tempted to try for new life down under but what I do take offence at is the people who spend all day moaning about living in the UK and then do nothing about it. If your family needs more 'quality time' get organised and make time because if you can't manage it here how the hell do you think that moving thousands of miles away is going to make any difference. If you want to emigrate do it for the right reason and not just because we are in the middle of a global economic crisis and it's raining!!