Living in the UK advice.

Liverpool? funny ...made me laugh anyway

Its lovely where I live but yeah plenty of areas are turning to shit.

I love Manchester me. Everything on your doorstop. City especially.

Just ignore the scrotes and have plenty of security and weapons.
I always used to love Manchester, even with it always having been a dangerous place. But over the last decade I’ve felt a bit lost in my own city.

I feel like the two examples the other poster used were very good: Newcastle and Liverpool have kept their Northernness and haven’t lost their identity. They’re friendlier than Manchester, they’ve kept their accents, and their city centres are cleaner and better kept.

Manchester has just turned into a small London. I think it’s lost its identity, lost its Northern friendliness, and like London it has lost its iconic accent. Young people in London don’t have that proper Cockney accent or Cockney Rhyming Slang anymore, and it’s the same in Manchester. The true Mancunian accent has disappeared amongst the under 30s, within a few decades it will be completely gone.

Too many non-Mancunians have changed the face of the city. Altrincham, Chorlton, Didsbury and the city centre are full of Southerners and other areas are just immigrant dumping zones.

Not enough people say hello to each other, hold doors for each other, give their seat up on transport. People will choose to avoid eye contact rather than engage. People don’t talk, smile or even nod at each other. The craic in pubs has disappeared, if not the pubs that have disappeared full stop.

My experience of Newcastle and Liverpool is that they’ve managed to keep what Manchester used to have but has lost.

Roads are always full of traffic, roads are awful (as a cyclist, they’re dangerous), cars are parked on the roads in too many bus routes which slows buses down, driving standards are appalling…

There’s graffiti everywhere, it’s terrible to look at:

IMG_8471.jpeg
IMG_8474.jpeg
^ it’s like this everywhere

Any spare bit of wall seems to have graffiti and tagging on it. Nothing shouts ‘town full of tramps’ more than shit graffiti.

Litter, bin bags and fly tipping is just strewn everywhere. Manchester is a true shithole these days. For every shiny tower that goes up, the rest of the city deteriorates. As I say, just a small London.

I used to be really proud of Manchester but I’m not so much anymore, it’s not the same city.
 
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Straight off the aircraft and on the train to Retford via Kings Cross. I'm spending Christmas with my daughter who lives near Worksop. I'm definitely not hanging about in London. Can't be arsed with any big cities these days.
Retford’s a nice little town with a grand church and square. Very friendly locals too. There’s some lovely villages/pubs in that neck of the woods ie North Notts.
 
I still love living in the UK. Spent a couple of years in OZ but it was not my bag. Once you had visited one coastal town, the others all seemed a bit identikit and being such a large Island I felt pretty isolated from the rest of the world and the papers/news etc reflected this.

Moving home was a great feeling and, although I get itchy feet, I would feel hard pressed to leave.

I do agree about getting out of the Cities though. I’m on the edge of a smallish City and since moving here, 10 years ago, I have seen the decline. Austerity, increased homelessness, changing shopping patterns and working from home has been to the detriment of bustling towns/cities.

Next step hopefully move back up north to either the Lake District or Northumberland. The latter I visited in September for a week (Newcastle away week) and was blown away by the beaches, tranquility and lack of traffic.

No where is perfect but this is still one of the best places to live. One of my work colleagues came back from visiting his family in Jordan and he said how nice it was to return, how comfortable he felt from the day he arrived and how his family feel the same when they visit.
 
Chances are, he will be downsizing house wise? If so, I think he will regret it.....if money isn't an issue in respect to what he can get, and where, then maybe not so.....would recommend the 'beautiful' South over wet and miserable North ;) but he'd find it more expensive value wise in property.
 
Apart from maybe Chester and York, there aren't many cities (that I know of) in the UK where I'd like to live. Some nice smaller towns though.

It's certainly far from one of the worst countries but there are many places outside the UK where I'd much rather live.
 
Straight off the aircraft and on the train to Retford via Kings Cross. I'm spending Christmas with my daughter who lives near Worksop. I'm definitely not hanging about in London. Can't be arsed with any big cities these days.
Does Worksop still have an acute heroin problem?

And wasn't it Retford where a young ex-pro footballer was kicked to death on a night out, a year or two ago?

There are social problems and stresses in all settlements in the Uk, just on a bigger scale in bigger cities.
 
Stay away from Piccadilly ....no one normal goes there nowadays.


The bus stops are straight out of zombie scare movies.
I had the ‘pleasure?’ Of working in an office overlooking Piccadilly (above Tesco/Lidl) during Covid.

I didn’t dare go out at lunchtime. It was really apocalyptic.
 
I'd suggest he just visit for 6 months and see if he misses Australia. I moved away 16 years ago and whenever I get a little dreamy about life in the Uk a trip back is enough to remind me the grass ain't greener. :)
 

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