Hoopy427
Well-known member
Missus and I looked into moving to New Zealand a few years ago, more of a pipe dream than anything concrete, the closest we got was buying a road map of the country! If I could wake up tomorrow all settled in a different country it would probably still be New Zealand though, it looks great.In 1986 my wife and I were in a tiny hospital in Mzuzu, Malawi, East central Africa, where I worked as a doctor. She had just given birth to our first born child. Our two year contract had a few months to go. A few days later I brought a world map into the recovery room and put it on the wall. I said to my wife, "We have a daughter and may have more children. Here is a map of the world. I am a doctor and you are a qualified teacher. We could find work almost anywhere in the world. We were both born and brought up in Glasgow, Scotland. With the whole world to choose from, then where should we bring up our family? Objectively with the entire world to choose from would you hone in on Scotland? Seriously? Would that be your automatic first choice of location? Just because it's what we know?
She said 'No!"
Well then lets draw up from criteria to choose
English speaking ( we could learn another language but there are plenty of English speaking countries around the world)
That rules out South and Central America, and all the French speaking countries.
We were left with Scotland , England, Ireland and Wales. Canada , America, India, Australia, New Zealand and a few islands like Jamaica and other west indies islands. A few coutries in Africa like Kenya , Uganda, Nigeria and The Gambia.
We excluded all of Africa and all the little islands. Just beacuse we could!
All the countries of Britain were so-so. Adequate but not spectacular.
Canada was too cold. India and Australia were too hot. (We are redheads!!!) America too violent.
It had to have a good education system and a good health system if we were to work and our children flourish. It had to be a healthy democracy.
That's why we chose New Zealand 35 years ago. The first country to give women the vote. I never on any day, regret that decision.
If you are a young person with a family and you can emigrate then why would you choose to live in a country where people hate you and want to kill you because of the colour of your shirt, or the team that you support or the school that you went to?
The Scots with get up and go should get up and go.
Rant over.
England has plenty of shitholes (Birmingham for a start) but we lived in the Cotswolds which was lovely, nice scenery, decent people, all very civilised, more chance of getting hit by lightning down there than getting caught up in sectarian violence and most importantly the weather is better than we get here.