It strikes me as profoundly sad that calm, reasonable people such as yourself could be driven to the ultimate expression of dissent, which is leaving, and that there were warnings all along that went ignored.
As you and many others have pointed out countless times, you can't just let unlimited amounts of people from indiscriminate cultures into your country and expect everything to remain fine. Part of having a functioning, well, anything, but particularly a culture or a democracy, is exclusivity. It's not just a suggestion, it's required. If you let a bunch of G.R.R. Martin fans into your J.R.R. Tolkien book club, it won't be long until you're no longer talking about The Lord of the Rings.
I’ll watch your interview about the coming revolution tonight, but in the meantime, did anyone vote for net zero, Islamic illegal immigration, free housing for any immigrant or “gender” mutilation? No? Some group overthrew your government, and no one tried to fix it.
She links to it. It is on YouTube for free. Basically he think a civil war is coming in the UK. I can see why she’d fear for her children’s lives and leave before that happens.
I admire your choice Louise and wish you well. You will probably be well aware that Australia faces similar challenges if not as fully developed as in the UK. Being an island continent at the arse end of the world has its advantages. And the tyranny of distance is not as great these days. We were once mocked for being a decade behind social trends in the UK and Europe, but now that gives us a chance to see what awaits us if we don’t heed the warnings. We are also living beyond our means but have greater national wealth even if feckless governments are too obtuse to utilise it. We have an immigration problem and a problem with tribalism and an anti semitic radical element. However my faith in the strength of Australian values remains strong. I just hope you don’t settle in Victoria, the state of my birth. Melbourne has been ruined by progressive policies and corruption in the last 10 years. Best wishes
My family made the same call to leave last autumn, albeit to a destination not quite as far as Australia!
For my family, having a baby crystallised many things that were already subconscious worries, but ones we didnt pay active attention to because of having hectic professional lives. The stuff you don't think about because its frankly unpleasant and you would rather read a good novel.
For my wife maternity leave was a chance to really consider our child's future. Her feeling - and it was more a feeling than a rational calculation - was that England, and the life it allows the average family, was deteriorating year on year. Having been at the sharper end of the covid response; and using the NHS as a yardstick of state capability, she was already well aware that things behind the scenes are if anything worse than they appear on the outside.
For me it was a mix of things, desire for a change/challenge, fear of buying a house at an inflated price, paying £2k a month to reticently put my thirteen month old in nursery, onerous tax levels, ever worsening access to my GP, low quality politics and politicians, signs of decay and crime etc etc etc...
Anyway the day before our flight I listened again to your interview with David Betz. I think this was an exercise in reassuring myself I was doing the right thing. Hearing it initially had played a role in my taking the decision to move, it chimed with so much of what I had experienced recent years. Its one of the extremely rare times when a piece of media/journalism directly impacted my life.
I suppose the point of my comment is just to say thank you for your work, and wish you the best in Australia. (Your husband now needs to figure out if he is a VB or XXXX man). Leaving "home" as you sketch out above is a really significant thing, you capture the melancholy & mixed emotions I have felt too, especially moving as a family unit.
I’m an American girl who admires Britain deeply and am deeply saddened by what the country has come to. I share your intuition that things are unlikely to improve. Only time will tell.
Louise, as a reader of yours of some time I am devastated that you feel the need to leave your beloved country, one I admire so deeply because of the cultural heritage it has bequeathed to me. My (Our) own country of Australia has its issues and frankly I am very concerned about the state of politics, the cohesiveness of society, the state of free speech and the economy, which is going backwards. Nonetheless you are welcome here (back?) and I hope to continue to hear your thoughtful contributions, albeit with an Australian accent. Best wishes …
Burnham seems to think the answer lies in more devolution, but I fear that will just result in certain northern cities being turned into caliphates. I left England in 1983. The church where I was christened is now a madrassa.
Wow - this essay has hit me like a lead balloon. I am like you Louise, an Australian in the UK. However, I wasn’t born here originally. I have been in the UK for over 20 years now. I too am very concerned about the state of the UK. Last night my husband and I were talking about Burnham’s proposals to scrap council tax and levy a 0.5% annual tax on the value of your house. It is an insane proposal. I work in Luton and am very aware of the demographic shifts occurring in majority ethnic areas. I also am regularly asked if I would move back to Oz. As most people think I’d prefer the weather & lifestyle there. However it is now different for me. My parents moved here in 2019 to be closer to my children, so I cannot abandon them. My husband is very English and although he loves Australia, I cannot see him thriving there. He works in music and we acknowledge that, although things are pretty dire here, the UK is still a cultural behemoth compared to Oz. I have also grown to love this country deeply, its history and its people (although I don’t want them to win against Oz in cricket or rugby - this will sadly not change!) - there is such beauty here and I fear there is too much I will miss. Ultimately- what really keeps me here, amongst all the other things described, is a confidence in the wisdom of the British people. We voted for Brexit 10 years ago - against all odds. We were the first country to meaningfully push back against the gender madness and begin turning the tide. And in a rising tide of midwit public leaders I feel hopeful that the right people, who contain the intellect and strength of character to make the right decisions for the right time will emerge. History has proven this hope right before. I wish you all the best.
It’s good you're getting while the getting is good. It’s just awful that politicians cars are being vandalized in English cities by Pakistanis. So much more awful in fact than the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of rapes by the same men of little white English girls. Oh wait, you said nothing about that. Never mind.
Well yes, politicians cars are ever more valuable aren’t they.
I’ve read some of your stuff Louise. (I think you deleted your comment back to me which said You’re not familiar with my work, are you? But in this particular essay you focused simply on the absolute and sheer horror of a politician’s car being keyed. But then the WSJ really hasn’t covered the issue much and when they did in the past, comments were severely moderated and deleted.
Remarking on something occasionally doesn’t help. It needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated so it sinks in and perhaps gooses the powers that be to act.
As a Brit this makes me so sad because of its echoes. Echoes of the Maddox Brown painting of course. But other departure as well. My Sister and I were about the age of Louise’s boys when my parents embarked for colonial East Africa in the late 50s. They were helping to prepare British, soon to be independent, colonies for self government. We returned after a few years, confident that what was then the “new Elizabethan age” would be a hopeful one. What a tragedy that our brightest and best are concluding at its close that their future lies elsewhere. It makes it hard to see how we can fix our predicament, and it induces a feeling that the lifelong efforts we make on behalf of our own children (my children are Louise’s age now) have been wasted.
Living in America, I have to admit I have a hard time separating the fact from fiction of what’s happening over there, and when I mention the UK to people here, all of them sort of roll their eyes. Somehow, the UK’s civil troubles have expanded beyond our own by quite a leap. Really, for me, it’s a defense of western civilization. The fact that you and your family are making such a move, which has no guarantees that life will be better, only the opportunity and hope that it will be, is a strong statement. I wish you all good luck and Godspeed!
I agree. As a fellow American, I thought things were quite bad in the US a few years ago. But we seem to be calming down a bit, while the UK is full sending it. I never thought someone could go harder than the US.
It strikes me as profoundly sad that calm, reasonable people such as yourself could be driven to the ultimate expression of dissent, which is leaving, and that there were warnings all along that went ignored.
As you and many others have pointed out countless times, you can't just let unlimited amounts of people from indiscriminate cultures into your country and expect everything to remain fine. Part of having a functioning, well, anything, but particularly a culture or a democracy, is exclusivity. It's not just a suggestion, it's required. If you let a bunch of G.R.R. Martin fans into your J.R.R. Tolkien book club, it won't be long until you're no longer talking about The Lord of the Rings.
I’ll watch your interview about the coming revolution tonight, but in the meantime, did anyone vote for net zero, Islamic illegal immigration, free housing for any immigrant or “gender” mutilation? No? Some group overthrew your government, and no one tried to fix it.
What interview about the coming revolution are you referring about? I love to see that.
I think he's talking about Louise Perry's interview with David Betz. I think it's available on YouTube or her Substack if you google it.
She links to it. It is on YouTube for free. Basically he think a civil war is coming in the UK. I can see why she’d fear for her children’s lives and leave before that happens.
This one? https://substack.com/@louiseperry/note/p-155825222?r=1vmb3
I admire your choice Louise and wish you well. You will probably be well aware that Australia faces similar challenges if not as fully developed as in the UK. Being an island continent at the arse end of the world has its advantages. And the tyranny of distance is not as great these days. We were once mocked for being a decade behind social trends in the UK and Europe, but now that gives us a chance to see what awaits us if we don’t heed the warnings. We are also living beyond our means but have greater national wealth even if feckless governments are too obtuse to utilise it. We have an immigration problem and a problem with tribalism and an anti semitic radical element. However my faith in the strength of Australian values remains strong. I just hope you don’t settle in Victoria, the state of my birth. Melbourne has been ruined by progressive policies and corruption in the last 10 years. Best wishes
Hi Louise,
My family made the same call to leave last autumn, albeit to a destination not quite as far as Australia!
For my family, having a baby crystallised many things that were already subconscious worries, but ones we didnt pay active attention to because of having hectic professional lives. The stuff you don't think about because its frankly unpleasant and you would rather read a good novel.
For my wife maternity leave was a chance to really consider our child's future. Her feeling - and it was more a feeling than a rational calculation - was that England, and the life it allows the average family, was deteriorating year on year. Having been at the sharper end of the covid response; and using the NHS as a yardstick of state capability, she was already well aware that things behind the scenes are if anything worse than they appear on the outside.
For me it was a mix of things, desire for a change/challenge, fear of buying a house at an inflated price, paying £2k a month to reticently put my thirteen month old in nursery, onerous tax levels, ever worsening access to my GP, low quality politics and politicians, signs of decay and crime etc etc etc...
Anyway the day before our flight I listened again to your interview with David Betz. I think this was an exercise in reassuring myself I was doing the right thing. Hearing it initially had played a role in my taking the decision to move, it chimed with so much of what I had experienced recent years. Its one of the extremely rare times when a piece of media/journalism directly impacted my life.
I suppose the point of my comment is just to say thank you for your work, and wish you the best in Australia. (Your husband now needs to figure out if he is a VB or XXXX man). Leaving "home" as you sketch out above is a really significant thing, you capture the melancholy & mixed emotions I have felt too, especially moving as a family unit.
I’m an American girl who admires Britain deeply and am deeply saddened by what the country has come to. I share your intuition that things are unlikely to improve. Only time will tell.
The essential repairs are too extensive to undertake and there's no political will to start. That's why Betz is correct in his predictions.
Louise, as a reader of yours of some time I am devastated that you feel the need to leave your beloved country, one I admire so deeply because of the cultural heritage it has bequeathed to me. My (Our) own country of Australia has its issues and frankly I am very concerned about the state of politics, the cohesiveness of society, the state of free speech and the economy, which is going backwards. Nonetheless you are welcome here (back?) and I hope to continue to hear your thoughtful contributions, albeit with an Australian accent. Best wishes …
Burnham seems to think the answer lies in more devolution, but I fear that will just result in certain northern cities being turned into caliphates. I left England in 1983. The church where I was christened is now a madrassa.
Devolution has been a disaster. All it's done is created corrupt fiefdoms.
I hope you're informed enough to know Australia is on the same trajectory as the UK, just a decade behind.
Wow - this essay has hit me like a lead balloon. I am like you Louise, an Australian in the UK. However, I wasn’t born here originally. I have been in the UK for over 20 years now. I too am very concerned about the state of the UK. Last night my husband and I were talking about Burnham’s proposals to scrap council tax and levy a 0.5% annual tax on the value of your house. It is an insane proposal. I work in Luton and am very aware of the demographic shifts occurring in majority ethnic areas. I also am regularly asked if I would move back to Oz. As most people think I’d prefer the weather & lifestyle there. However it is now different for me. My parents moved here in 2019 to be closer to my children, so I cannot abandon them. My husband is very English and although he loves Australia, I cannot see him thriving there. He works in music and we acknowledge that, although things are pretty dire here, the UK is still a cultural behemoth compared to Oz. I have also grown to love this country deeply, its history and its people (although I don’t want them to win against Oz in cricket or rugby - this will sadly not change!) - there is such beauty here and I fear there is too much I will miss. Ultimately- what really keeps me here, amongst all the other things described, is a confidence in the wisdom of the British people. We voted for Brexit 10 years ago - against all odds. We were the first country to meaningfully push back against the gender madness and begin turning the tide. And in a rising tide of midwit public leaders I feel hopeful that the right people, who contain the intellect and strength of character to make the right decisions for the right time will emerge. History has proven this hope right before. I wish you all the best.
It’s good you're getting while the getting is good. It’s just awful that politicians cars are being vandalized in English cities by Pakistanis. So much more awful in fact than the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of rapes by the same men of little white English girls. Oh wait, you said nothing about that. Never mind.
Well yes, politicians cars are ever more valuable aren’t they.
I’ve read some of your stuff Louise. (I think you deleted your comment back to me which said You’re not familiar with my work, are you? But in this particular essay you focused simply on the absolute and sheer horror of a politician’s car being keyed. But then the WSJ really hasn’t covered the issue much and when they did in the past, comments were severely moderated and deleted.
Remarking on something occasionally doesn’t help. It needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated so it sinks in and perhaps gooses the powers that be to act.
As a Brit this makes me so sad because of its echoes. Echoes of the Maddox Brown painting of course. But other departure as well. My Sister and I were about the age of Louise’s boys when my parents embarked for colonial East Africa in the late 50s. They were helping to prepare British, soon to be independent, colonies for self government. We returned after a few years, confident that what was then the “new Elizabethan age” would be a hopeful one. What a tragedy that our brightest and best are concluding at its close that their future lies elsewhere. It makes it hard to see how we can fix our predicament, and it induces a feeling that the lifelong efforts we make on behalf of our own children (my children are Louise’s age now) have been wasted.
Best of luck to you.
Depending where you have gone in Australia, it may not be much better, sadly...
Living in America, I have to admit I have a hard time separating the fact from fiction of what’s happening over there, and when I mention the UK to people here, all of them sort of roll their eyes. Somehow, the UK’s civil troubles have expanded beyond our own by quite a leap. Really, for me, it’s a defense of western civilization. The fact that you and your family are making such a move, which has no guarantees that life will be better, only the opportunity and hope that it will be, is a strong statement. I wish you all good luck and Godspeed!
I agree. As a fellow American, I thought things were quite bad in the US a few years ago. But we seem to be calming down a bit, while the UK is full sending it. I never thought someone could go harder than the US.
Geography is the difference. The UK is tiny.
That was great as always Louise, you had to do what is best for your kids and maybe one day you'll move here to the USA, congrats on your move.
Very sad to see you leave your beloved country.
If things somehow become sane again , will you come back to UK in the future, or are your leaving permanently never to return?