Re: Why Do People Do This?
 

:blink: what does it say about britain that everyone i meet over here, that hears we came here from australia, says "why would you want to come here? its crap, are you mad???"

i think people in all countries around the world use a universal language to bag places, because thats what people do, and it makes for conversation!

i know when we leave the uk, my husband will moon over our scenic photos, of castles, and quaint villages and the like, and will extoll its virtues to every man and his dog that will listen, but the reality of life where we've lived is not castles and quaint villages, they're for a day trip...its chavs, and grafitti, and our posh riverfront flats constantly getting broken into by the neighbourhood kids and vandalised, etc etc...and they're all the things i am sick of over here...but what someone else said above, is ,at the end of the day, whether a place seems great to you or not, is all down to yourself and where you're at really...we've done the castles and history and stuff, but what we want now is on the "gold coast":eek: (now you'll all assume i'm a leopard print wearing ,gold shoe-d , fake nails/tan person...quite the opposite really:D) we've got kids and our families are in australia, plus we love the rainforests etc...
but it is hard not to bag a place your self, once you are ready to leave...
i find i want to do it, as it helps me separate myself from the things that i am fond of and will miss, by bagging where it is i want to leave, but this time i am trying not to do that, as i realise that its not britain that is crap (although it certainly has its areas) but that it doesn't suit my needs anymore...

i find people ask stupid things about anything you do ,though...for example when e were having our first child, someone asked my husband if it was too late now too abort it:blink::curse::thumbdown:
um..yes, i was 22 weeks and what an offensive and dumb thing to ask..
and then you get the old "why do you want to have kids?" and all those type negative comments...

people sometimes just like to say annoying and rude things in general, i have found ,in all parts of the world....

i have found in those situations, if i make it a competition to find the rudest, most stupid comment i can, it becomes more fun than annoying!:rofl:

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so true....:thumbsup:

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I get it all the time from both sides of the coin, whenever i mentioned we are going back to England!...from family who live in the UK(and have never lived anywhere else) and Canadians, who have never lived in the UK..say "wow! its expensive there, and crime, and houses..." and so on.Or from the British person who choice never to go back!!...

It gets a bit maddening that i always have to SAY my piece so they can see where i'm coming from and justify it in some way... its just never changed, and people will always say something!! that's just life. If we all agreed about the same things. Then it would be heaven LOL..

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I had someone exclaim shock and horror at the thought of my leaving Beautiful Boring BC yesterday. A long tirade I got, in fact, about what damage I was doing to the children, by ripping away from this lifestyle of pine trees, lakes, drugs, ignorance and isolation. Yes indeedy. I was interested to hear her perspective, as she mentioned her recent international travel as her basis for being so happy with her lot in the Wack. She went to Seattle and then to Puerto Vallerta on an all in package trip. First trip ever, in fact. Never been to the UK. BITE ME.

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I guess it's all about perspective and what makes you happy. I live in australia but my heart never left England.
The problems a lot of people describe such as crime are now universal problems that are happening in just about every community in most parts of the world.
Like I said earlier, people focus on knife crime in the UK and judge the UK by this problem but no one ever mentions the lack of gun crime because Englands police do not carry guns. However gun crime in Australia is a problem as are muggings and theft.

I think the other problems people don't realise is that if you're unhappy in the UK, moving to another country won't necessarily fix the problem because often the reason many people aren't happy is in their head.
I can understand it if you live in one of the UK's black spots, but this does not and should not reflect on the rest of the UK. The only reason anywhere has it's black spots is because of the kind of the people who live there.
THIS IS EVERYWHERE and it's just as prevalent here in Australia. There are ghetto's, black spots, ugly people and difficult social problems that neither governments nor do gooders can fix because they are too deeply ingrained.

The Gold Coast, unfortunately, is not a family place. This has just been vigorously debated publically. The tourism board is desperately trying to promote the area as a great place for the whole family to have the perfect beach holiday. The truth is it's wider reputation for being the capital of sleaze and gambling has sunk the image of being the perfect holiday destination. Families have been shocked and appalled at what their children have seen and been exposed to during their holiday. Global business corporations keen to build some of the worlds finest resort apartments in order to encourage their business clientele to invest in their money, have walked away and built in places like Dubai and Indonesia instead.
I work here and I am shocked!

Anyway, for me personally, I have always missed my garden, the seasons, the warmth of solid friendships, the access to the countryside, the shopping and my own personal development in terms of my career and business.

I didn't choose to leave the UK, I stood by my Australian ex husband, followed him here, he did the most unimaginable thing, the rest his history. Now I'm getting ready to return home.

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Best post today...

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I hate vegemite AND marmite.
Am I a hopeless and complete failure, or an amazing success?

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Quite right about the UK being able to sit in one Canadian province and as for trying to compare the UK to Canada.............Well you are probably better off trying to compare Europe to Canada.

Quite right as well, about the reporting on their own province. I have a couple of Canadian friends who live in the Ontario region of Canada and they have absolutely no idea of what goes on half the time in the rest of their country:lol: I imagine the same probably holds true in the USA as well.

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Just think of me as your shadow:)

As for the lady that tells you crime in Sth Africa is on a par with the UK, well she must be living in a fantasy world. There are probably relatively safe parts of Sth Africa but through reading the SA forum here and the stories that I have heard about crime in SA, from people that have either been there or originate from there are pretty frightening.

The UK a hell-hole.........Well stick somebody in Brixton or Peckham and it is!!! But go 15 mins down the road (not in rush hour) and you are in say West Dulwich a very desireable place to live and you couldn`t be further from a hell hole. All this in the space of 15 mins.

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I have family living in Durban so I hear what's it's like there. You don't walk anywhere at night it's not safe. My cousin (who's 33) will not drive from her parents house to her own at night as she is scared of even getting out of her car at the other end and getting in to her house! She stays there if she visits them and she is without her OH.

People don't go up to neighbour's dogs as dogs are trained to guard and kill there and I know S Afican's who have come here and find it great that they can pat and see other dogs close up here!

Houses have electric fencing around them and many people have guns for their own protection in their homes.

My family have been broken in to a few times but luckily have come to no harm as the offenders have not got past their guard dogs. People there will break in to steal but will kill you anyway.

Without a car it is not safe to walk anywhere and you are stuck in your home and the transport system is rubbish there. Even if you are in your car you have to be very careful where you go and at what time.

My family live in a very good area. It's a shame because the country is beautiful but the crime is terrible there.

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This account of how life is being lived in SA makes the UK look a paradise. Australia is also relatively safe compared to other countries. Like the stabbings in the UK are mostly related to differences amongst ethic minorities (arent they?) most shootings here in Australia are related to drugs and the underworld.
It's only when crime spills into the ordinary lives of ordinary people that we all get a shock and our perspective turns to doom and gloom seeing the event as normal and therefore hard to deal with.
But I do not believe it is normal. I believe both the UK and Australia are very safe providing none of us take our own personal security for granted or fail to add the commonsense security measures within our homes.
I've never been a victim of crime in the UK or in Australia. Mostly this is because I've always lived in nice areas but even then bad things happened to others. When you read the circumstances, it's usually been because there has been an opportunity for something bad to occur.
For example, just recently, two girls were attacked and sexually assualted on their way home from a nightclub at 3am.
It shouldn't happen but the fact that the girls were drunk, scantily dressed, walking home at 3am through the back streets of an area known to be dangerous, well, it says it all.
While the girls should have been safe, they should have also had some level of responsibility towards their own safety.
This happens all the time because the opportunity is both provided and taken. It's life in the somewhat ironically named Surfers Paradise. Because of the nightlife, it's a breeding ground for all kinds of criminal activities. It's just how the world has always been and how it remains because it's the nature of the beast. There will always be dangerous people and situations out there. Going halfway to encounter them is not the smart thing to do.

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You mean like the kid who was walking home in the UK and chased at knife point by another group of kids up a tower block and forced to jump of 4 floors up, how is it that kids fault, all he was doing was walking home after school...

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He didn't do anything wrong but the situation you describe is a completely
different scenario. I didn't read the story but it sounds more related to bullying.

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If you think the Australians big themselves up you really have no idea about the Americans. Many Americans can't find Canada on the map! That's because they are taught that the USA is the greatest country on earth. It's called patriotism.
The 'Ontario region of Canada' is in fact not a region, but a province. It's also 1,076,395 km2 (415,598 sq mi), so quite large. As for your friends not knowing what goes on in the rest of the country perhaps they don't read past the local pages of the newspapers or watch more than the first 5 minutes of CITY-TV news. There are 2 24hour national news channels in Canada as well as all 3 national networks having national news programs on after the local news.

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Well what do you expect when British people go around forever accusing Australians of being convicts, and then any tiny sporting victory over Australia is splashed all over the cover of The Sun for the next twelve thousand years?

Britain means very little to a lot of Australians these days. Even those who are of British origin have it so many generations back, or have had their gene pool mixed with many other cultures, that the only times anybody even thinks about it are when someone mentions becoming a republic, or when the the Commonwealth Games are on.

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Australia does have a fixation with Britain... news about Britain is always on the news or in the papers over here whereas news about Australia is never mentioned in the UK.

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.....and, of course, a victory of any sort over an English team would never be mentioned in the Australian media would it?:rolleyes:

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Usually bad news.

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Australia is a borrowed country. That part you cannot change, so if it upsets you, tough. We all have to put up with things we don't like about our country.

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The NZ's media is fixated on foreign news with one proviso :A kiwi has done something (anything) overseas.

Then the local media jumps all over it (feeding frenzy) to promote the Kiwi who has made it big (for NZ standards) overseas.

Also, they will use the smallest possible link to a New Zealander to big-up themselves. Then they normally add something like :"Just shows what a bit of Kiwi ingenuity can accomplish" :rofl:

My other pet-hate about the media is that they can't WAIT to claim a migrant as one of their own : if they have become famous!

Like the recent Korean teenage golfer :

http://www.newzealandeducated.com/us...tigers_record/

Here is a classic example of how somebody automatically becomes a "KIWI" when he/she becomes famous. But, if you are Korean living in NZ for 25 years and NOT famous, you can't be a KIWI.

I pity the fools.:p

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How are those sour grapes?

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Meant to say province and not region. Also they do watch the news and read newspapers but don`t seem overly interested in what goes on in the rest of their country (one does know Quebec though because that is where she hails from) Certain people on the Canadian forum would have you believe that this lack of knowledge is quite typical with Canadians.............I have my doubts on that one and find it hard with modern media for people to not really know something about what goes on in their own country.

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Believe it. Never have I lived in a country where the average Joe has so little knowledge about their own country let alone the rest of the world, and cares to know even less.

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Where i lived in Canada, most people were not interested in anything or anybody beyond their own front door.....
The provinces may as well all be seperate countries and as far as watching TV, in my experience in what was my area the Canadians that watched tv ( in which lots didn't), would not subscribe to more then they needed.....They dont like parting with their money.

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Interesting thread, I spent part of my childhood in Africa and we never went out at night, had bars on the windows, dog that would bite anyone that was the way we lived our life did not think anything was different.

As far as patriotic I think people should be patriotic and support the country they live in and be proud what is wrong with that.

We became Australian citizens before our children were born as we knew they would be Australian and we support Australia in the cricket etc, the only thing is my oh who is a scot by birth will support Scotland traitor :D

I have no criticism of people who love who they are and where they live. Good on them.

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I agree with you and Sans as my own conclusions lead me to believe the same as well. I only questioned them becuase Dorothy said something to the contrary. The many Americans that I know (including family members there) that I have met in either the USA, Europe or Latin America just don`t really have any idea, about what really goes on outside their own country, so I imagine the average Canadian is probably not too different. I also know that many Americans have little knowledge about what goes on in other states as well. ............I spoke to an American here in Spain this year about music and he thought Led Zeppelin were AMERICAN:eek:

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Reminds me of a conversation I had with someone at work (Brisbane) who said it was "a shame Britain didn't produce groups like America - for example The Rolling Stones and the Beatles........":lol:

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I think its because these groups were so huge in America and sold the bulk of their records there that they are somehow mistaken as American.......One listen though to Mick Jagger or Ringo Starr talking is obvious that they are not American:lol:

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Ahhhh... love it :lol:

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I also belived that UK is a crap hole so I moved to Australia, but having lived here and experienced much worse crap now I changed mi mind and I say UK is much better than Australia, and next year I also move back. australia still looks like a colony: crap houses built as cheap as possible, cost of living is much more expensive.

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I just notice that every stabbing that has ever taken place in the U.K gets every paper in the county on it.....But most of all drug related crime doesn't even make the news...I have heard of a couple of stabbings over here but have not made headline news, If it were London, we would all know about.. At the end of the day who would walk through major city at night, not me..

Suzanne