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sabremeisterSayeth the right-winger: "If you don't like it in Brexit Britain, why don't you just leave?"
I did "just leave".
As a member of three demographic groups that the Tories have on their shit list (disabled, long-term unemployed, below the poverty line), life in the UK had been getting steadily and measurably worse for me since I had to leave my last paid job - as a temp worker at Harrow Council, in 2007. With the Tory GE victory in 2019, I lost all hope of the country being any sort of healthy place for me to live. So, on the recommendation of a friend who shares my disability and who has dual citizenship, I moved to Sweden.
After all, why not? Sweden is regularly rated as one of the best places to live in the world, no matter what criteria are used; they have excellent healthcare, high pensions, strong unions, and a tolerant and open mindset, even at government level. Whereas if I stayed in the UK, the chances were very good that I would be dead within five years, due to collapsing public healthcare, food shortages, spiralling living costs, and reduced income; and I'll remind you that I was thinking that in late 2019 - COVID had barely begun, Russia wasn't even looking like it was eyeing up Ukraine, gas & electricity prices were still reasonable, and the country had not yet suffered any impact from Brexit.
Unfortunately, it took me nearly a year to be able to get organised and actually move there. That meant I was pushing the limit of any residual on freedom-of-movement agreements that Brexit had terminated. Add to that the circular requirements of many facets required by the Swedish bureaucracy of emigrating there (and the incredibly slow speed the Swedish bureaucracy operates at), the fact that living in Sweden without a Personnummer is incredibly difficult, and the language barrier, and I ran out of time. To be able to emigrate to Sweden without a job or family members there, you need to be able to support yourself for a year (thank you, deceased relatives, for remembering me in wills), and have health insurance. Until the end of 2021, health insurance was covered by my EHIC, but after that I needed to obtain my own, and I just couldn't afford it.
So, in March this year I emigrated to Ireland. Aside from the utterly insane prices for accommodation, which made things difficult for a while, it has been a wonderful experience. I have been here a little over two months, and I have a more-or-less permanent (and affordable) address, I am registered with a doctor, private health insurance is not an issue, my PPSN application is being processed with no sign of problems, and the only language barrier is that I find some peoples' accents rather thick. I am living not far from a reasonably-sized town with places where I can explore returning to work in my chosen profession, and I am even managing to make friends.
I am aware that my circumstances made me fortunate in being able to have emigration as an option, and that millions of people do not. But the UK is rotten - it has been rotting from the inside out for at least as long as I have been alive. The only way it's going to stop being rotten is either for it to collapse in on itself, or for a civil war to pre-empt the collapse and burn the rottenness out. But I didn't want to leave the country of my birth, and I shouldn't have had to. I feel more like an exile or a refugee than an migrant, but I couldn't continue to live in such a corrupt and hostile country, whose government were doing its best to kill me by neglect. Not and remain sane.
I did "just leave".
As a member of three demographic groups that the Tories have on their shit list (disabled, long-term unemployed, below the poverty line), life in the UK had been getting steadily and measurably worse for me since I had to leave my last paid job - as a temp worker at Harrow Council, in 2007. With the Tory GE victory in 2019, I lost all hope of the country being any sort of healthy place for me to live. So, on the recommendation of a friend who shares my disability and who has dual citizenship, I moved to Sweden.
After all, why not? Sweden is regularly rated as one of the best places to live in the world, no matter what criteria are used; they have excellent healthcare, high pensions, strong unions, and a tolerant and open mindset, even at government level. Whereas if I stayed in the UK, the chances were very good that I would be dead within five years, due to collapsing public healthcare, food shortages, spiralling living costs, and reduced income; and I'll remind you that I was thinking that in late 2019 - COVID had barely begun, Russia wasn't even looking like it was eyeing up Ukraine, gas & electricity prices were still reasonable, and the country had not yet suffered any impact from Brexit.
Unfortunately, it took me nearly a year to be able to get organised and actually move there. That meant I was pushing the limit of any residual on freedom-of-movement agreements that Brexit had terminated. Add to that the circular requirements of many facets required by the Swedish bureaucracy of emigrating there (and the incredibly slow speed the Swedish bureaucracy operates at), the fact that living in Sweden without a Personnummer is incredibly difficult, and the language barrier, and I ran out of time. To be able to emigrate to Sweden without a job or family members there, you need to be able to support yourself for a year (thank you, deceased relatives, for remembering me in wills), and have health insurance. Until the end of 2021, health insurance was covered by my EHIC, but after that I needed to obtain my own, and I just couldn't afford it.
So, in March this year I emigrated to Ireland. Aside from the utterly insane prices for accommodation, which made things difficult for a while, it has been a wonderful experience. I have been here a little over two months, and I have a more-or-less permanent (and affordable) address, I am registered with a doctor, private health insurance is not an issue, my PPSN application is being processed with no sign of problems, and the only language barrier is that I find some peoples' accents rather thick. I am living not far from a reasonably-sized town with places where I can explore returning to work in my chosen profession, and I am even managing to make friends.
I am aware that my circumstances made me fortunate in being able to have emigration as an option, and that millions of people do not. But the UK is rotten - it has been rotting from the inside out for at least as long as I have been alive. The only way it's going to stop being rotten is either for it to collapse in on itself, or for a civil war to pre-empt the collapse and burn the rottenness out. But I didn't want to leave the country of my birth, and I shouldn't have had to. I feel more like an exile or a refugee than an migrant, but I couldn't continue to live in such a corrupt and hostile country, whose government were doing its best to kill me by neglect. Not and remain sane.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-09 04:16 am (UTC)