Less than a week ago we published an article entitled ‘Britons Want Out – Mass UK Exodus a Possibility’ – and who would have thought it, but within a few days the lovely Office for National Statistics (ONS) has done us proud and is about to publish a report revealing that actually, two million Britons have left and the mass UK exodus is happening already.
Incidentally and coincidentally perhaps, these figures are being released on the same day that a story has appeared in the British media about the government considering plans for the creation of a giant database of electronic information that will hold details of every phone call and email sent in the UK. Is it any wonder that Britons are emigrating when we live in such a society?
The figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the last decade was “probably the greatest period of emigration we’ve ever seen” according to Jill Rutter, a senior migration researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research. In ten years Britain saw 1.97 million of its people leave and also between 1997 and 2007 1.58 million foreign nationals who were resident in Britain left as well!
Summing up what many of us are thinking is David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary: “this explosion in emigration is inevitably a reflection of the state of the country under a Labour government,” he is quoted as saying in today’s Telegraph.
We think that the steady increase in numbers does indeed have a lot to do with the state of the UK. From speaking to the hundreds of expats we come into contact with each week we have learned that people are dissatisfied with working longer hours for less, they want to raise their children in a safer environment, they want to get away from rising crime and rising uncensored immigration, and many of them have been able to fund their migration to more affordable overseas locations by selling up a UK property that has shot up in value over the same decade that the ONS figures relate to.
So what will happen now that the UK housing market is stalling? It may well have a slowdown effect on the numbers of British citizens escaping in search of a better life, but somehow we doubt it will quell the desire to leave in search of a new life abroad. It’s a sorry state that the UK finds itself it and it is a real shame.
