Monday 28 May 2007

Leaving Home

There are comments here and there and all over noting how many people have left England in recent years.

Raedwald ended a recent post asking 'So when would you have decided to leave Germany? 1934? 1937? Or would you have stayed?' After thinking about it for ages, I would have stayed until circumstances were quite desperate and it would have been too late.

Leaving isn't open to most people. In the best of circumstances it's a hard, sad business, even when there are open arms and open houses at the other end.

Leaving means there must be a destination, and most people haven't got one because they have only one nationality, and a British passport doesn't go anywhere near as far as it used to.

Anywhere in the European Union? Well, yes at the moment, but current rights of residence and employment are just that, current, and the UK rejected joining Schengen, and has placed restrictions on incoming EU nationals, which didn't help. The Commonwealth countries? We aren't particularly courteous to their nationals, Old or New Commonwealth, and they've noticed. The rest of the world? Much of it is very dangerous, and the US and the Russian Federation are hard to settle in.

Acquiring another nationality is hard too; the best way is by marriage, and even that doesn't always confer rights of residence and permanence; and it is even less competent to do so for all of the family.

If you want to take your wealth there are severe regulations that take considerable time to overcome, existing in the name of anti-terrorism financial controls.

Work? The equivalent qualifications must be registered, and the real know -how gained, as well as the language, the contacts; did enough wealth come too, to set up a business?

And if all these difficulties are managed, can the family cope with what they can't even see coming most of the time? And can you help them with not weeks or months, but years of support, explanation, sortings out, understanding, kindness in the face of ill- founded resentment ?

Most important of all, can you persuade yourself that everyone around you is not secretly thinking and acting out every aspect of their lives in English only to deliberately hide this self-evident truth in French, German, Italian, whatever, whenever you are around?

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do not come to New Zealand: our own Labour Government is trying hard to be as complete a nanny as yours. ANd whilst the level of professionalism of the spin here is not as, er, good as it is in the UK, the quantity is up. Your crowd have set the standard...

hatfield girl said...

When its considered how relatively few are getting anything out of Third Way corporatism , and how much most of us are losing, makes you wonder if they really are getting voted into power. Not New Zealand then F, unless your lot are going to lead the uprising against being taxed till you're poor and then fed on welfare.

lilith said...

That's it HG. Having emigrated here aged 5, migrated to Spain in mid twenties then come "Home" again I know it is not for the faint hearted. First generation migrants, whatever their ethnic origin or destination, have a massivly raised incidence of heart disease. Our forbears who took the risks of setting out to Oz and NZ were getting away from death and disease in the mines and were often in their teens. Emigration is not easy.

Raedwald said...

I don't intend to go without a fight. When the UK becomes as alien to me as anywhere else in the world, I'll go without hesitation, and trust to chance and my innate abilities rather than good planning.

There are still pockets of independent and bloody-minded people around Europe; in Brittany, perhaps, or in the Basque region of Spain. I have the boat; maybe I'll become a sea-gypsy.

lilith said...

Sea Gypsy...fine idea Raedwald..a popular choice amongst retired naval officers I believe. Given the outrage of the populace over Poll Tax I find it astonishing that we are taking Bliar's "The State Knows Best" and Gordon's "Your money is my money" policies lying down.

hatfield girl said...

Actually L, we're not taking them lying down because they get cross enough with all the exposure of what they are and what they're up to on the net, and the spilling over into the press, to be planning to control us very seriously as soon as they can work out how to.

Laughing in class (as was once listed under 'Conduct' in a daughter's report) is Not Allowed.

R, you are going to need an ocean liner to take us all off, when the time comes.

lilith said...

I got hauled up to the Headmistress for "Dumb Insolence" and other "Serious Attitude Problems." (I thought I was there because they had found my cigarettes!)

hatfield girl said...

A Reports post is needed, L.

All this grammar school rage is insignificant when the white and spiteful, thin-lipped term's worth of pent-up venom and self-disappointment, directed at girls in their prime being prepared for the previous century's social goals is considered.

lilith said...

Quite so HG. I wanted to send my old school the complete works of Mary Daly and Andra Dworkin, leather and silk bound.