Tazi Hupefi
Established Member
As someone from a mix of ethnicities and able to trace family members across the world, I like to think I have quite an objective view as to whether a country is a "good" place or a "bad" place to live.
Because of various skills and a good level of income, I qualify for Belize residency which I enjoy, but I am in no doubt that Belize as a country for "ordinary" people is a very different experience. It was always just the place I occasionally did business, or spent my free time when I needed a break from my usual life.
I struggle to see any real benefit to living in the UK, and think it can only continue to decline. On a local level, amenities and facilities are becoming increasingly run down (or closed down), the condition of roads and other key infrastructure is in real, serious decay, and this (broadly) seems to play out across England at least, despite pledges of £billions being made available for such things. Our council taxes are rising well above inflation and cost of living, supposedly to fund things like additional policing and social care. Our income taxes are effectively rising because of the tax thresholds remaining static for some years into the future, supposedly to pay for Coronavirus.
Our legal system has been decimated, and is becoming increasingly neutralised, and from first hand experience, it's causing the collapse of our legal services. Whether it's the deep, deep cuts to physical court infrastructure, a judicial recruitment crisis or the hand of the government in making increasingly strange laws, increasing sentence levels despite knowing there's no realistic possibility of it ever being used, and more recently, an obvious attempt to neuter the judicial review process.
Rents are high, houses are overpriced. Town, and now city centres are obliterated. Even the retail parks on the outskirts are becoming derelict. Life is expensive, but is it enjoyable? Even outside of Coronavirus, are our lives really that good? Discontent is starting to bubble over, not just from Covid, but underlying social and economic issues going back many years have never been resolved, and merely glossed over. I say, with some confidence, that by the end of 2021, the UK will be in severe civil unrest, ordinary, everyday people, from any end of the political spectrum or class hierarchy are feeling increasingly disillusioned. They may be disillusioned about different things, but the net outcome is still going to be the same. Recent events in Bristol and London are just a taste. People are increasingly realising that the police are actually quite weak, Bristol required resources from two separate police forces to bring it under control, and that was just a few hundred people in the end, with a net result that a police station got smashed up, and the loss of a couple of vehicles. People are awakening to the fact that it is not the police or government which actually hold the power.
I now look at Belize as a place I can "escape" to, almost exile to, not just as a place to relax and conduct international business. I don't think it's really much better at all, underneath, and there is serious inequality, but I would contend that it is still preferable to remaining in the UK, where there is not even any real attempt to even disguise the inequality anymore and I am having to contribute an increasingly large amount of my income in a vein attempt to somehow reverse the decline of the country.
Many won't be able to do the same thing, and have a "Plan B" country - but my question for you all is, outside of the UK, is the world any better? Have some countries got it right? Are some countries making enhancements to key areas of life that are being eroded in the UK?
COVID has just sped everything up in my opinion. The decline of the economy, of our infrastructure, of our lifestyles, the increasing restrictions on our lives, the need to hand over more of our income, and government neutralising anything and anyone that poses a threat to its existence or power. We'd have still reached this point even without a pandemic, just would have taken a decade longer.
Just because we aren't being blown up in Syria, or facing true poverty as in parts of Africa, does not mean that our own issues in the UK are somehow negated.
Because of various skills and a good level of income, I qualify for Belize residency which I enjoy, but I am in no doubt that Belize as a country for "ordinary" people is a very different experience. It was always just the place I occasionally did business, or spent my free time when I needed a break from my usual life.
I struggle to see any real benefit to living in the UK, and think it can only continue to decline. On a local level, amenities and facilities are becoming increasingly run down (or closed down), the condition of roads and other key infrastructure is in real, serious decay, and this (broadly) seems to play out across England at least, despite pledges of £billions being made available for such things. Our council taxes are rising well above inflation and cost of living, supposedly to fund things like additional policing and social care. Our income taxes are effectively rising because of the tax thresholds remaining static for some years into the future, supposedly to pay for Coronavirus.
Our legal system has been decimated, and is becoming increasingly neutralised, and from first hand experience, it's causing the collapse of our legal services. Whether it's the deep, deep cuts to physical court infrastructure, a judicial recruitment crisis or the hand of the government in making increasingly strange laws, increasing sentence levels despite knowing there's no realistic possibility of it ever being used, and more recently, an obvious attempt to neuter the judicial review process.
Rents are high, houses are overpriced. Town, and now city centres are obliterated. Even the retail parks on the outskirts are becoming derelict. Life is expensive, but is it enjoyable? Even outside of Coronavirus, are our lives really that good? Discontent is starting to bubble over, not just from Covid, but underlying social and economic issues going back many years have never been resolved, and merely glossed over. I say, with some confidence, that by the end of 2021, the UK will be in severe civil unrest, ordinary, everyday people, from any end of the political spectrum or class hierarchy are feeling increasingly disillusioned. They may be disillusioned about different things, but the net outcome is still going to be the same. Recent events in Bristol and London are just a taste. People are increasingly realising that the police are actually quite weak, Bristol required resources from two separate police forces to bring it under control, and that was just a few hundred people in the end, with a net result that a police station got smashed up, and the loss of a couple of vehicles. People are awakening to the fact that it is not the police or government which actually hold the power.
I now look at Belize as a place I can "escape" to, almost exile to, not just as a place to relax and conduct international business. I don't think it's really much better at all, underneath, and there is serious inequality, but I would contend that it is still preferable to remaining in the UK, where there is not even any real attempt to even disguise the inequality anymore and I am having to contribute an increasingly large amount of my income in a vein attempt to somehow reverse the decline of the country.
Many won't be able to do the same thing, and have a "Plan B" country - but my question for you all is, outside of the UK, is the world any better? Have some countries got it right? Are some countries making enhancements to key areas of life that are being eroded in the UK?
COVID has just sped everything up in my opinion. The decline of the economy, of our infrastructure, of our lifestyles, the increasing restrictions on our lives, the need to hand over more of our income, and government neutralising anything and anyone that poses a threat to its existence or power. We'd have still reached this point even without a pandemic, just would have taken a decade longer.
Just because we aren't being blown up in Syria, or facing true poverty as in parts of Africa, does not mean that our own issues in the UK are somehow negated.
