So, I’ve been watching politics in the UK with increasing distress. I’m now more and more convinced that this is not the place to be. We’ve wanted to leave for a long time, and have an exit strategy, but each passing day makes me more convinced that we need to do that as soon as we can reasonably do it. Not that I really know where to go, I mean, Canada appears to be trying to join the UK on its death spiral towards an unpleasantly right wing nutcase led state.
I know the UK is hideously xenophobic. Whilst I’ve had few problems since I was a kid, I’m well aware of the way that people think about immigrant families and workers here. I also hear discussions at work and the vilification of immigrant workers seems to have nicely settled in. The fact these people are often way overqualified for their jobs, and doing just whatever job they can get… those jobs being jobs no-one else wants? That seems to pass people by. But now that labour have started singing the same songsheet? It just makes me more and more worried. The policies being put in place would have meant that I probably couldn’t have married my wife, or it would have been very close. The experience was bad enough without more invasive questions about our financial status, when the state feels it’s fine to try and pick apart exactly why you want to be together.
So, it’s more and more clear that my incredibly intelligent and educated wife is not what UK politicians want in the country. Well, that’s fine. We’ll leave.
I want to leave anyway, because the piecemeal death the NHS is suffering is too horrid for me to stick out. Because we need to spend some time close to Kathryn’s family. Because other countries are better places to raise children (apparently, in Western countries, the UK ranks around 22nd for being a ‘good place to raise children’). And for many other small reasons.
It is depressing though. I was raised to believe things about the UK, about how the UK was a good place, and that we looked after the poor, that we supported those less able and enabled them to achieve, that we treated the sick according to need, that we were a safe haven of democracy to those from abroad. I was taught that we’d done horrific things in the past, that we’d learned from those mistakes and moved forwards. And I feel distressed at watching the right wing take control, at watching the extreme capitalists sucking the life from our society, at the way we’re going.
I hope our exit strategy works.
