I refer the honourable gentleman to post #87.

A gem indeed.

Well yes, I have been a member for over a year, but I think I have only posted maybe 3 times, and def do not read the forum on a regular basis.
I guess I should elaborate and say, that I live in London and have found the people here to be very rude etc. That isn't to say all British people are rude etc, just in my experience, I 've not met very many pleasant people here.
Okay, that's a bit much, considering the circumstances, it was anything but acceptable. What people do on their OWN time, is a different story. It is not acceptable no matter where you live to bring your drugs with you to work. I was mearly adding that because of how shocking it was.
Well if I took my 300,000£ and bought a house in lets say, Ontario, I know from actually looking at properties there the last time I visited, that I could have a newly built house, with about 2000 sq foot, a front and backyard, and garage. My point was just that England is overpriced for what you actually get for your money.
Apologies, that wasn't meant to be a sweeping statement, just basically saying that the culture here seems to be that most people drop by the pub for at least one after each work day.
And finally, to each their own. I'm not bothered if i'm not missed by england at all, I've not had fantastic experience here, and it's mainly to do with the country and not the people (although I have found people in London to be ridiculously rude, It's not ALL BRITISH people)

Some British people are actually quite nice - like me and the many nice friends I've got

For what it's worth I would never live in London. It's overcrowded and ridiculously expensive. My friends in London who live in a basement flat are always amazed when they come up to mine in Yorkshire - the size of my house and shock horror that I have a back garden. Their rent is a lot more than my mortgage.

I think it's a bit silly to judge the whole of England and it's people on London. My family live in the North East and Geordies on the whole are a real friendly bunch...

And no I don't go to the pub every night. Nor does my husband...

Yes, I suppose you are right. I guess I just had the misfortune of living in London. I do find it to be outragously expensive in terms of cost of living, it's very crowded, and not a nice place to be. I lived most of my life in Canada, where space was always plentiful, people were always friendly (i've had the same friends since childhood) and the costs of living in my area were acceptable.
I do agree that my first post may seem a bit harsh, but I have to say, having lived in both countries for a considerable amount of time, Canada is where my heart is, and I never realised how great it was, until I moved here (London)
I know there are some lovely places and people in this country, but to be honest, I don't think they live in london. Or at least, in the 4 years I've been here, I've yet to come across any happy, friendly people.

Ah, now it makes sense. If you were living in a village in Yorkshire, I suspect you'd have had a very different experience (and also be able to buy a lovely house for the money you mentioned earlier!).

But you can get all of that for £300,00 in England too - just not in London! Hence my Vancouver v Norfolk comparison.

I don't know a single person that does that. Most people I know may go to the pub on a Friday night occasionally, or for a Sunday lunch, but that's it - certainly not every day.

Fair enough. Your last post was just an amusing rant and did seem rather ironic (complaining about everybody in the UK being rude by being incredibly rude about them, complaining about a lack of jobs when you are a teacher - many threads on the forum from teachers in Canada doing exactly the same thing, etc), but I get your point now.

Sorry that you've not had a good experience, but I suspect you would have loved it if you'd been living somewhere smaller with more of a community feel, and where you could have afforded the house you want.

Like Oompa says places like Yorkshire (where I chose to live) are completely different - it's shame you didn't live somewhere in a village with a village atmosphere where you get to know lots of people etc.

As for London - we went for a weekend a while ago and I couldn't wait to get home. While it's certainly vibrant and loads of people absolutely love it - I couldn't get past how dirty your feet get in flip flops, the fact that you blow your nose at the end of the day and it's black and the tube system... man you feel like an ant scrambling to get anywhere... couldn't wait to get back to the fresh air and space of good old Yorkshire!

I hope before you leave the UK you travel around it and see some of the lovely places it has in it.

And again, I could say the same about Vancouver. But I know that the whole of Canada isn't like that, basing your opinions on one large city seems a little misguided to me. Perhaps you're just not a city person, and prefer the space of being more rural? That's certainly true of me, I hate cities, and love living in the country.

Well, you have now. I'm usually annoying happy, and content with my lot. And if you lived somewhere other than London (although I'm sure London has friendly communities too, but obviously just not where you are), then you'd find that people smile and say hello, neighbours look out for each other and socialise (and no, not at the pub all the time!), and that everybody is friendly.

yeah, london is not a nice place to live at all and haha yes, the black snot is disgusting. I'm actually not a teacher. My husband is a teacher in London, Hence why we live here. Also another reason why I'm a bit hacked off (see public sector pensions being done away with)
I have been out to some other places in England, and can say that places like oxfordshire, and Witney etc are lovely. The british countryside is very nice although, but I do find that they are completely different to canada's countryside. When I say that, I mean, they actually are very rural in terms of things to do around the area. But lovely none the less.
Anyway, I haven't visited here in quite some time, and I've actually come back here to read about peoples experiences with immigration and getting work in Canada because we are on the verge of applying to return back to Canada.
Hopefully (fingers crossed) this doesn't take too long (7-9 months I hope) because like I've said, I've been out of work for a year now, and I'd really like to go home and take some more college classes so that I can get back into work. Also, we are going to buy a house, and I cannot waaaait to have more space. At the moment, we live in a flat, and we have def outgrown it.

have i? I'm sure like everywhere, there are places where people are friendly etc, I guess that also includes london.

I lived in London NW and worked in Central London for 2 years and I found people there to be generally unfriendly and "standoffish". However, that's not indicative of the entire country. I lived in the North West of England for 7 years and have friends and family all over the UK - so I have travelled there quite a bit. I think people are generally friendlier and more genuine in the North of England. I do think that Canadians are probably friendlier overall - although sometimes it's hard to distinguish between what is real and what is superficial.

I do agree that property prices in England are expensive. That's only to be expected when you consider the much higher population density - many more people crammed into a much smaller area. Space is at a premium. In the UK, we couldn't afford to buy a decent house in an area that we'd want to raise our children in - and this was one reason why we left the UK. We found it much easier to find affordable housing in a decent area in Canada and the US - and we've heard the same thing from many other expats.

Not everyone in the UK gets wasted in the pub every night but there is certainly more of a social drinking culture in the UK. I don't know if it has changed much since I worked there but a lot of business meetings were held in pubs. It was very common to go to the pub for lunch and have a couple of pints before returning to work in the afternoon - there's no way I could do that in North America! Because of better (or at least more convenient) public transportation in the UK, it was easier to go to the pub after work before travelling home. I think people in North America tend to do more of their drinking at home and so maybe it's just not as visible.

Rather fun though, a compendium of standard posts.

I left England because I couldn't afford a house inside the north circular, I felt then, as I do now, that if one is obliged to move to a remote spot within the country one may as well go to the colonies. I would have been aghast had my Canadian child grown up and moved to the north instead of to Tower Hamlets. Hell, if what you want is a desolate pre or post industrial wasteland where you can keep a whippet, Dufferin County offers that for a song.

Whippets are $3.99 a box at IGA.

Loose whippets cause havoc in Ypsilanti hardware stores.

Yeah, it's so very dear here to afford anything. And for us, we would much prefer to live somewhere with space etc, but in an area which has plenty for us to do as well. I am just so used to the space canada offers. I used to rollerblade every day to work, and like, I couldn't even imagine riding a bike on the streets of london! that's crazy. I miss that aspect of my life. I miss that sense of freedom that space provides.

I sense an apples and pomegranates comparison here. Toronto, for example, isn't that big a city but, if you live on a streetcar line, you're not going to have space to keep horses or even chickens. You can't rollerblade to work because the cars will kill you when you get caught in the tracks and, unless your job involves manual labour, your colleagues will object to the stench of sweat you'll carry about you. I suspect you're comparing small town Canada with London, which is hardly fair, small town Canada should more fairly be matched to somewhere like Ballymena.