Poppycock! My brother, who is a very gentle soul, was beaten up on a train by Tottenham fans on a train in the sixties.

What's your game returnee? It's getting really old now. You don't want to discuss anything. You just want to stir it up.

Moderator: can we get rid of this troll?

No... the point is, you can't believe most of what you read in the media.. especially when it comes to sensationalism.

Maybe, just maybe you aren't a troll who is out to stir up trouble then disappear BUT you seem to have totally missed the point of the thread. The whole point seems to be that the result of the survey is so far from the truth it isn't funny.
The reason people are attacking me personally is that you are just finding the most negative stories from the most negative media sources and doing a cut and paste job on them, no discussion just post and disappear. If you were indeed serious about possibly returning to the UK then you would be happy to discuss the good and the bad and post many of the positive stories coming out of the UK. You never know you might enjoy it

Gives us all something to do I suppose... but then most of us probably don't have as much time on our hands, that's why we type our own thoughts, not just copy and paste other people's.

Did you read my post? I live overseas and I read the news on websites and watch the news on BBC TV. I am not a troll. Yes, I have cut and pasted stories from websites incl: BBC; Telegraph, Guardian and Mail. Unfortunately most of the main stories paint a gloomy picture of Britain, which I would like people to comment about. The most recent one being how badly the elderly are taken care of in NHS hospitals.

Which post exactly ? It seems clear you don't want to return to the UK and you seem as though you are using every doom and gloom story you can find to justify staying where you are.
As others have suggested you might be better off actually speaking to real people in the UK and seeing how they are being directly affected.
If you aren't in fact a troll surely you can see why everyone seems to think you are ?

You know the only thing that concerned me before I returned 6 months ago was unemployment. None of the other stuff would deter me from coming back to live in my own country.

Yes petrol is expensive but I don't have to drive as far as I did in Australia.

The decline of the NHS? I have had marvellous treatment since I came back even unexpectedly spending a night in hospital and I have absolutely no complaints having every test possible and I was even given transport home as I didn't have my car with me.

Unemployment? - yes I was unemployed for 3 months, just as I was when I returned to Australia last year. But I now have full time employment.

Binge drinking? I don't go out a lot at night so can't say I have seen any worse here than I did in Oz on the few times I have been out.

Crime? So far I haven't witnessed any personally.

I would look around you Returnee, right now where you are living and envisage living there in Japan for the rest of your life. How does that make you feel inside?

Then compare it with how you feel when that plane touches down at Heathrow, the doors at the airport open and you get a blast of cold English air and you can smell how different the air is.

That's how I made my decision, not based on newspapers, graphs, polls or any of that other rubbish. It was based on the difference I FEEL in my soul living in both countries.

Fantastic post Beedubya, all the doom and gloom stories in the world wont make the slightest difference to us, we are headed home and can't wait.

Is it really true that in many parts of Britain waste bins are collected every two weeks. Also, if you fill your bin up a little too much leaving the lid slightly up, then the binmen won't empty it. Duh! I take our plastic waste bag to a nearby drop-off point twice a week, which is about a 3/4 minute walk. Bottles and plastics are collected once a week. It sounds very disorganised, confusing in Britain.

Please do not cut and paste info from other sites as if they were your own words.

As Sue said in her post earlier -
All you are doing is cutting and pasting; you aren't giving any views of your own. Then you complain because posters attack you for it. The idea of a discussion forum is that you enter into discussions, not that you just post links to articles which you feel will stir people up. Most people on this section of the forum are returning to the UK at some point. We have family there, friends, connection. We visit the place. We know the bad news stories, and we also know the good ones, and are happy to discuss both. What we don't want is someone constantly preaching onesidedly about how awful the country is.
There are probably forums somewhere out there in the world in which your approach would be welcome, this isn't one of them. Please try and become part of the community if you wish to stay - for instance, why are you using this forum? Are you planning to move back to the UK?

Anyone have trouble with bin collections?

1) Yes.

2) Yes.

3) What's your point?

4) Only to you, it seems.

Not me. I only put my bin out every 4 or 6 weeks anyway.

The system sound very backward. Must stink to high heaven in some places during summer