Are you kidding Bazza?
Here we are watching the UK economy fall apart, seeing more pandemic cases and deaths than any of its neighbours, hit worse by the post-pandemic supply chain crisis, rationing petrol in some places even now, a public sector, including health and social care in virtual melt-down, privatised utilities literally pouring shit into its rivers and seas, worse air pollution than its neighbouring countries, lower living standards, lower pensions, earlier mortality, higher inequality, a government that has made a once respected country a laughing stock, looming constitutional crisis, international trade down by more than worst-case brexit predictions at a time when it is rising for other countries, deliberate erosion of civil liberties and human rights… I could go on.
My recommendation: get out of the UK as soon as you possibly can.
Ah - so Bazza doesn’t actually live and work in France anyway?
Following my transfer from the UK I enjoyed a very happy and fulfilling period of working life in France. I do not understand bazza’s comment.
I think bazza’s comment needs qualification : if you work in France then it’s probably better than the UK, but there extremes in each country. If you’re thinking of moving over and hoping to find work here then most find it difficult, very difficult if they’re not fluent in French, in which case they may be better staying in the UK until retirement.
You’re right Andrew - they will find it difficult at first. But ultimately I think it comes down to people’s own approaches to life.
An English friend of mine here came over as a roofer when there was more of a house-renovation boom - mainly lots of English people who couldn’t believe what they could buy here with the proceeds from their little London semi. But when that all got more difficult - and he got a bit older - he buckled down, went to French classes, re-trained and qualified in France as an electrician, worked several years for a French company, and has recently gone self-employed again as an electrician with an almost entirely French client base. Never a thought of going back to the UK.
Indeed, my general experience is the opposite of Bazza’s: that it’s working-age people that wouldn’t think of going back to the UK, especially if they came here with children.
Agree with that one. Especially as the children have now grownup and all are doing well, dating or married to / have babies with French partners.
Seems to me the roots of working people who have come here from the UK are much deeper than those who came later in life who have their families (especially grandchildren) still back in the UK.
When you say hard times bazza can you expand? What kind of hard times were people of working age having
When I came to Fra nce as a young man ,I didn’t speak french ,It took maybe 12 months to have my first cdi contract, I always found that if you had a good grounding in your trade you spoke with your hands not with your mouth. I worked for french owned companies moved jobs 8 times was never short of work,I don’t really agree that you have to be fluent to work here.
Exactly. My electrician friend has a daughter born here - now about 16 - who, like my own kids, sees some of the news coming out of the UK and is horrified.
But that’s as nothing compared with the contrast when they get to higher education. Our eldest daughter went to uni in the UK, cost us a fortune and still - approaching 30 - has student debt, even though the fees were much lower then. The next is in uni here in France, costs us almost nothing, and will come out after 5 years debt-free.
(Third has actually researched continuing his studies in English. In the UK he would cost us a lot and come out with £50,000 personal debt, in Ireland, as an EU resident he would have no fees and he will get maintenance grant support.
I’d advise anybody that’s not rich, values education, and like us has 3 or 4 kids - and of course is willing to adjust to language/cultural differences - to get out of the UK into the EU a.s.a.p…
How long ago was that? I think a lot might have changed in recent years, unless a job where English is the office language. And British people are no longer Europeans so much more difficult.
I think you’re both right - it is harder now, but it also ultimately depends on your level of skill/expertise, and how in-demand that skill/expertise is here (or internationally - I worked ‘in’ France for years - but most of my clients were spread all over Europe - and occasionally further afield).
For that kind of money I’d have looked at the better universities in other English-speaking countries as well.
Such as the US, Canada or Australia.
If you’re paying you should ensure quality and that’s by no means uniform across education providers in the UK.
As with Jane having read your account my immediate thought was that it would be difficult to impossible to reproduce this today. Post-Brexit job offers for Brits who do not already have a work permit are presumably hen’s teeth territory and is comeing over with the intent of starting a business even possible right now? (I guess necessary to speak good French and have skills that an area needs).
As I understand it, the main barriers now are financial - as with most effects of brexit, if you’re rich enough to meet the income, insurance, etc, requirements - and preferably pay somebody to do the paperwork for you! - or to buy a business with the required turnover - then the move is still entirely feasible. Brexit only really disadvantages low-middle income people - and most young people of course.
This is another irony of Bazza’s view (in another thread I think) that ‘working people’ support brexit. (Presumably, he’s under the strange impression that far from retiring, older people are the only age group in which the majority are ‘working people’, since in the latest poll (June 2021 - R&WS Research) the majority in every age group under 55 would support a campaign to re-join the EU.
And professional people who could perfectly well have become employees in France but who now can not because whilst they do have skills, these skills can also be found in France.
You can not “buy” a work permit, no matter how much money you have. Your employer has to provide proof that they have tried to find an EU worker to fill the post, which entails showing as a minimum that they have advertised the job via pole emploi for a certain number of weeks and not received any applications from suitably qualified candidates, and therefore have no option other than to employ a worker from outside the EU/EEA.
What is a “frontier” worker? And, if you are an EU citizen do you still need a “carte de sejour” ?
Depends entirely on what sort of job you do.
Kiwi or Ozzie?
You could, until quite recently effectively buy citizenship in certain EU countries although I think most, if not all, countries offering fast track “investor” programmes have now withdrawn them - but if you are rich enough to meet residency requirements and don’t mind waiting 5 years to start a citizenship application you can still obtain an EU passport if you really want one.
Having organised BA student exchanges with the US and Austrralia, I don’t think you’d get a comparable undergrad education in any of the countries you mention for a similar outlay, as their average tuition fees are double or treble even those in the UK ( ‘According to Statistics Canada, the average tuition fees for undergraduate international students in 2019/20 are US$22,500 per year’ and one can more than double that figure for a US average). Also undergrad courses, particularly in the US, tend to be much more general and often lack comparable depth. Many subjects are only studied for a single module rather than for three or four years.
Ironically, despite the many faults of the UK’s current HE system, there’s far more data available on comparative quality of courses than there is in any of the countries you mention.
Nevertheless, I still think these days, UK HE’s pretty crap, compared to twenty or thirty years ago. Students now pay large amounts of money, but their weekly contact time is greatly reduced, as is the length of the teaching year (that’s now about two-thirds of what it was in the good old days)