YYZlover

Why thank you!

Considering I am single and have no kids and keep getting told I know ***** all about family life. Your comment is much appreciated.

julius smith

hi again, yyzlover. i have 3 brothers and 2 sisters. i am the eldest.
what you are saying, i have already thought of doing, too! i am quietly getting ready and when the time is right, we'll let them know. god knows how hard we have laboured to look after them, and after half a lifetime, this is the thanks we get. one of my bros even had the cheek to say that i had no right to sell my house before going away, and that i should leave this house and just go! here was someone telling me what to do with my own house!!! as i may have said before, most of this is my own fault, as for many years i was a "mummy's boy".....always listening to what my mum had to say about my life and doing almost exactly what she wanted me to do, never mind what my wife felt! the moment we moved to canada the first time, that was it--in her mind, i had moved away from my mum and finally decided to make a life with my wife and family, which obviously she did not like, as that made her lose her grip on me and lose her control, as she is the biggest control freak i have ever seen. and she is now trying to get the kids on their side, thereby sidelining myself and the wife. my main point is that coming back does not solve anything, even if you are not having the same probs as us. what we were missing when we were in canada, just did not mean anything when we finally got here, funnily! churches, milk floats, corner shops, yeah yeah, so what we thought after just a few months!!

steve666

Of course 39% of those 40% emigrated to upper Mongolia...

montreal mike

Aah ... Streatham my old neighbourhood.

1961.

Used to live at a place called Telford Parade Mansions. I think that was the name anyways. Seem to recall a car dealer below at the street level. Worked at the ten-pin bowling alley on the high street at the princely sum of three shillings and six pence an hour.

So tell me has the old neighborhood gone to the dogs?

I see to recall it once was a decent working class area much nicer, and far safer, than Brixton.

julius smith

hi, mike! was talking to one of my mate's father, and he mentioned the very things you are talking about! i was still a wee bairn in 1961 and didnt know my bum from my elbow, but thats life! streatham did get a bit of gentrification as they like to call it now, ie old places being torn down and new apartments being built in their place, costing more than £250 000 for a 1 bed box, of course! ahhhhh.....£sd, or lsd as it was called. those words had a certain ring about them, which you just cant match with the coinage now. the old 1d black jacks and sherbet bonbons, selling back old lucozade or guiness empties to the corner shop for a shilling, the stuff of dreams! we never had any need for knives or guns in them days, eh?

YYZlover

For goodness sake! Where on earth did he get the nerve to say that? You should just walk away from your own possession and one that you could sell and use to creat a great life for you and your FAMILY in Canada! Imagine a nice condo in dontown Toronto or at the Beaches, eh?

So you were the mummy's boy and now your siblings think that you should pay the price and take care of them, right? WRONG! They have an opportunity here to actually get on the good side with their parents (and already are, by the looks of it) so why don't they take advantage of that then.

You have a responsibility to your wife and your kids. I might sound very hard here but if you want to sell your house in UK - do it. If you want to move to Canada - do it. You already have PR. Don't let that opportunity get away from you. If you were happy there and unhappy here - follow your heart. Blood is thicker than water but it isn't what binds us together. Mutual love and respect is what does and you are obviously not getting that from your brothers, sisters and parents.

Again - sorry if I come across like a stone cold hearted b*tch. So what if I do. I can only tell it how I see it. This is not a healthy environment for you, your wife and your kids.

I am a control freak myself but in the other direction. I will not let anyone control me. I do that myself, thank you very much. I have no interest in controlling others either. I just want to get on with my job, do it well and what I do with my life is my decision. (No wonder I am still single ) I'm not 18. I'm more than twice that. I don't have to answer to my parents. I have to respect them. Just as I have to respect everybody around me, regardless of occupation, social status, numbers of zeros in the bank account etc. And they me.

Anyway - I should get off my soapbox before I stomp my foot through it in anger. Good luck mate. I'll PM you my MSN/Yahoo/ICQ (which ever works best for you). Anytime you want a chat....

Souvenir

A mate of mine in CIC told me that the drop-out rate among PR migrants to Canada was 40% with 5 years (could have been 7 years; the conversation was in 2000 and my memory is clouded).

julius smith

yep, agree entirely with what you are saying. they have just exceeded the limit, not by a small margin, but by about 10 000 miles, and all because i let them do it. well, time now has come to put an end to it. we still have the luxury of the PR, and there's no way im going to lose that, whatever happens.

montreal mike

Reading some of the threads at this forum, at times, paints a pretty bleak picture of the old country. One I can not recognise.

I grew up in an atmosphere/era of respect for ones elders, where one sang 'God save the King' before the picture started, where one recited a prayer and sang a hymn at grammar school prior to the commencement of classes etc.

I can still watch some of the old black and white movies and TV programs such as Poirot, Jeeves, Miss Marple etc. and well relate to that era.

I guess I should be glad I was born there in 1943, not 1963, or even 1983.

YYZlover

I would say that UK is very much different to when I first came here in 1983. Just days before I went to Toronto. I never understood what the fascination was. It wasn't until around late 80's early 90's that I started to like UK and I had been here several times until I got to that point.

Moved here in 2003 and it was a whole different ballgame.

There are many advantages with living here compared to Sweden. Small business climate. Entrepreneurial climate. All of that waaaay better than back in Sweden.

Then you look at kids, parenting, drugs, alcohol, living standards, cost of living and I'm back to where I was in 1983 thinking "what is so good with this place?"

For the record, I was born 1965 but brought up mostly by grandparents who were born 1902 and 1915 so I had their values and morale drilled in to me. I am quite shocked, sometimes, to see the behavior people my age are displaying.

MarkG

Britain has certainly changed vastly from when I was a kid in the 70s... and not for the better. Financially, sure, in some respects it's improved, but socially it's a disaster zone and the standard of living for kids leaving school today is appalling with high debts and miniscule wages relative to housing costs. Most of my schoolfriends, brothers and sisters bought family-sized houses on relatively small mortgages, today they'd need to borrow 10x their income to buy the same place.

fishfinger

I think parts of Canada are heading that way too. Where I live, near Vancouver the price of housing is getting scary, I'm sure it must affect people trying to buy their 1st place too.

montreal mike

Real Estate value in Vancouver and environs are way out of line. This has always been the case. Eventually the bubble will burst, sanity will again prevail, but only for a short time, and then the climb starts all over again.

Can't be sure but I read somewhere the impact of rich Chinese buying up properties has driven the market skywards. Is that just a rumour?

fishfinger

All I know is that there is a lot of money here, flash cars, homes etc. We are selling our house and had a family come and view, I believe they were Asian. They didn't buy our house instead they bought the one up the road for $2.4m!!!!!!!!!!!!

MarkG

Brought to you by the same people who said Saddam Hussein could nuke Britain in 45 minutes, I'd guess.

Of course in the most pedantic sense it's true: anywhere other than the parts of Africa where our ancestors evolved is a 'nation of immigrants', since humans didn't evolve there, but once you ignore the useless pedantry, mass immigration into the UK is a recent phenomenon. Most previous examples of large groups of people moving here have been invasions, not immigration (Vikings on the East coast, Normans in 1066, etc)... and they soon assimilated by marrying into the native population. I guess the Romans are the biggest example of invaders who didn't assimilate.

Growing up as a kid in the 70s I rarely saw any non-white, non-English kids around. The odd thing is, we never even considered the few who were at my schools at all strange, to us they were just kids, I don't remember any of them being harassed because of their skin or background, and I suspect if any kids had insulted them the teachers would have washed their mouth out with soap to remind them not to do it again... it's hard to imagine people being treated that way today after decades of growth of the race industry. When you see a black/yellow/green person the government pretty much requires you to consider their skin colour first before anything else.

The real problem is that the government _likes_ to create disorder and instability, because that gives them justification for passing more laws and demanding more taxes to pay for more interfering busybodies.