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Why did you leave?

Why did you leave?

Old Mar 20th 2009, 12:24 pm
  #16  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by crap coffee
1) to get Away from Terrorism

2) to get Away from the Corporate Rat Race

3) to get Away from the Crowd

4) to get Away from the Pollution

5) to get Away from Rising Crime

6) to get Away from the grey, dreary and LONG winter

7) finally.... I was sick to death of sitting in traffic...

and No more.....
Sounds like Auckland to me
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Old Mar 22nd 2009, 8:00 am
  #17  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

I suppose I most endorse most of what I've read here. I left the UK because I was extremely unhappy where I worked and was motivated to leave. An opportunity to work in New Zealand occured and I was sufficiently intrigued to follow it through. I have no regrets and love New Zealand. Would never contemplate living back in the UK.

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Old Mar 22nd 2009, 8:39 am
  #18  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Simple really - Witness Protection Scheme sent us here. Now we're safely in the backend of nowhere, and the neighbours have no idea what we are!

Plus, we didn't have to pay for the house!
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Old Mar 22nd 2009, 11:34 am
  #19  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

I don't want to be premature as I'm only at the very start of the process, but I'm on that path simply because the UK doesn't allow the sort of lifestyle I've been looking to achieve and I don't see that situation changing anytime soon.

I grew up in rural Wales and at the time I knew dozens of people who lived in houses they owned outright with a bit of land. Nothing grand, just a cottage or a bungalow with half an acre or an acre or so. These weren't rich people or self-sufficiency nuts willing to sacrifice for an ideal, just ordinary TV repair men, mechanics, odd-jobbers, that sort of thing. I naturally assumed that this was an achievable and relatively modest goal.

Now, such properties are vanishingly rare where my family live. Planners have encouraged increasing density and prices for anything with land have gone up and up, way beyond what an average income could bear in the area. I find myself trapped, only able to earn the money needed to buy a house by working in the London commuter belt, which I frankly hate.

I just feel that my own considerations of what I want from life are increasingly divergent from the path that British society is taking. Everyone having a shiny car, a big TV and two foreign holidays a year is not a social ideal I can buy into, especially if the price is that you have to be chained to lifetime debts for the privilege of living in boxes designed for packing efficiency above all else.
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Old Mar 22nd 2009, 12:49 pm
  #20  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by Tranmere Rover
Simple really - Witness Protection Scheme sent us here. Now we're safely in the backend of nowhere, and the neighbours have no idea what we are!

Plus, we didn't have to pay for the house!
If that's true, don't you think you should keep it to yourself..isn't that the whole point?
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Old Mar 23rd 2009, 9:54 am
  #21  
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Smile Re: Why did you leave?

Hi - its really nice reading these reasons to leave. We're about to go to Aucklnad where I have a job. We're leaving the Uk to live our life for us and not for our families. We've spent too long doing that and 'we' are getting left behind. There's also the crime, materialism, stress and weather so I'm really hoping New Zealand will be the place we can live our lives happily.
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Old Mar 24th 2009, 4:49 am
  #22  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Easy answer for me ....my wife made me!!!

- oh and a few weeks after I got here, my previous employer went into administration - I can hear my wife now ......"I told you I was right!!!"
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Old Mar 24th 2009, 6:33 am
  #23  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

because the toon are playing so badly at the moment that i thought I'd go into hiding..
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Old Mar 24th 2009, 8:04 am
  #24  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by drcallycat
We're about to go to Aucklnad where I have a job. We're leaving the Uk to live our life for us and not for our families. We've spent too long doing that and 'we' are getting left behind. There's also the crime, materialism, stress and weather so I'm really hoping New Zealand will be the place we can live our lives happily.
All things we have in abundance in Auckland, averaging 185 rainy days per year, traffic problems, pollution, drugs, gangs, crime, prostitution you name it, we have it.

You can hope for better, but I sincerely urge people do more research than hope particulary, when moving from any one of the perceived grungy cities in the UK to Auckland. Ask yourself what can you have or expect from Auckland that you don't already have elsewhere?

According to the 2001 census data, the population of Leeds is 715,404 - malking it the third biggest city in the UK after London and Birmingham.

In 2006, Birmingham had 1,006,500 residents according to the Office for National Statistics.

The Auckland metropolitan area or Greater Auckland is the largest and most populous urban area in NZ with over 1.3 million residents.

I fail to see how swapping one big messy city for another, will improve the quality of anyone's life
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Old Mar 24th 2009, 9:15 am
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Because my life (and more to the point I) in the UK was absolutely miserable and my life here, having done my research, 2 years on, is absolutely brilliant ...

I left because I had probably made the biggest mistake of my life 10 years prior, by moving from London to Cornwall ... make of that what you will ...

I do not suffer from crime, traffic violations, hoons, isolation, ummmm - anything else really where we live now. I love it ...
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Old Mar 24th 2009, 9:38 am
  #26  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

My hubby had applied on impulse, on a grey dreary day at the office in London for a job in NZ. Approx 18m later he was, most unexpectedly, called for an interview. We were sufficiently intrigued to want to follow through, and figured that it was an adventure that could, possibly, backfire, but that we'd rather give it a go and see what happens rather than miss the opportunity and regret it. We're some of the lucky ones, the gamble paid off and we all love it here, including the notoriously difficult to please teenaged offspring, but equally none of us were actually unhappy in the UK, and we would just as happily return there if our circumstances changed. Indeed the offspring are already mentally planning quite detailed OEs
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Old Mar 24th 2009, 8:07 pm
  #27  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by drcallycat
Hi - its really nice reading these reasons to leave. We're about to go to Aucklnad where I have a job. We're leaving the Uk to live our life for us and not for our families. We've spent too long doing that and 'we' are getting left behind. There's also the crime, materialism, stress and weather so I'm really hoping New Zealand will be the place we can live our lives happily.
Good on 'ya.

True we have much of the above here; some parts of Auckland can be compared to some of the most troubled areas of major UK cities but, equally, many more cannot.

Bo-jangles is correct in that there is crime and prostitution etc. but what city anywhere in the world does not suffer those ills? What I do not see here are filthy playgrounds where kids dare not play, dirty parades of shops with steel grilles on the windows, drug paraphernalia in car park stairwells, gangs of 'hoodies' intimidating people young and old, beggars sitting beside cash-machines and so many of those other things that had become part and parcel of the vista in the UK.

Yes we have traffic in Auckland, but SH1 is not a patch on the M25. Yeah it rains, which is why this country is so green and not prone to devastating bush fires like Australia. There are drugs and gangs in some areas, but if you don’t live in those areas…

I'd take my bit of Auckland (North Shore) over any UK city any day.
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Old Mar 25th 2009, 8:08 am
  #28  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by Trenchfoot
Good on 'ya.

True we have much of the above here; some parts of Auckland can be compared to some of the most troubled areas of major UK cities but, equally, many more cannot.

Bo-jangles is correct in that there is crime and prostitution etc. but what city anywhere in the world does not suffer those ills? What I do not see here are filthy playgrounds where kids dare not play, dirty parades of shops with steel grilles on the windows, drug paraphernalia in car park stairwells, gangs of 'hoodies' intimidating people young and old, beggars sitting beside cash-machines and so many of those other things that had become part and parcel of the vista in the UK.

Yes we have traffic in Auckland, but SH1 is not a patch on the M25. Yeah it rains, which is why this country is so green and not prone to devastating bush fires like Australia. There are drugs and gangs in some areas, but if you don’t live in those areas…

I'd take my bit of Auckland (North Shore) over any UK city any day.
Agree with much of that, except that Peak time SH1 Auckland is every bit as bad and worse than M25.
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Old Mar 25th 2009, 9:26 am
  #29  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by Bo-Jangles
The Auckland metropolitan area or Greater Auckland is the largest and most populous urban area in NZ with over 1.3 million residents.

I fail to see how swapping one big messy city for another, will improve the quality of anyone's life
I know I'm a rose-tinted happy clapper but I really can't see how you can compare Auckland to Brum. I would say exactly the opposite to above - swapping Brum for Auckland could vastly improve the quality of your life. Unless you're completely oblivious to all the great things the Auckland area has to offer. Or are really stupid and go and live in Otara or somewhere like that. The climate alone - provided you are not water-soluble - is enough to make the move worthwhile.
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Old Mar 25th 2009, 9:32 am
  #30  
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Default Re: Why did you leave?

Originally Posted by lapsed kiwi
I know I'm a rose-tinted happy clapper but I really can't see how you can compare Auckland to Brum. I would say exactly the opposite to above - swapping Brum for Auckland could vastly improve the quality of your life. Unless you're completely oblivious to all the great things the Auckland area has to offer. Or are really stupid and go and live in Otara or somewhere like that. The climate alone - provided you are not water-soluble - is enough to make the move worthwhile.
That's funny. Try London compared to Auckland Auckland is like a sleepy little village compared to London and that's not a bad thing!
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