I generally dislike living in the UK and, given the opportunity, would emigrate. I plan to do so one day. However I honestly think that too many people wear rose tinted glasses. I'll focus on the transport networks thing as this is where my interest lies and most of my experience is.
It is quite true that aspects of the UK transport network are poor. Trains are often overcrowded and or expensive, many of the roads have huge potholes in, areas of the country are heavily congested, etc.
But this doesn't mean we are poor compared to the rest of the world. In actual fact, the rest of the world is often far poorer. Lets first focus on roads - a topic close to my heart and one that a lot of people tend to whinge about. I've heard people post that stupid comment about our roads being worse than a third world country on numerous occasions.
The reality of course is that our roads are amongst the best in the developed world. Yes, really. There are countries with better road networks than us - Spanish highways are better (Because we, the EU members, paid for nice new ones), and smaller high wealth countries like Switzerland etc have better maintained road networks. But what about the rest of the English speaking world?
Have you ever driven in America or Australia? In many cases the roads are absolutely shocking. The state of much of the highway network in the USA has to be seen to be beleived. We have potholes on residential streets, these guys have what can only be described as craters on 70mph highways. The roads are terrible. Our roads are frankly beautifully well maintained in comparison.
Then we've got highway networks. The Americans have a lot of highways but they are all totally random, junctions all over the place, random signposts, exits with sharp 90 degree bends, etc. Ours are sensibly laid out, well signposted, and all junctions conform to strict standards.
Australian highways? LOL. They don't really even have them. The main road between Sydney and Adelaide, two of the largest cities in the country, is a single carriageway road for most of the way. The motorways around Sydney are rough and bumpy - even the toll roads (We have only 1 toll Motorway, the USA and Australia have many).
The normal roads are a state as well. HUGE dips, massive gullies, the amount of cars with ripped off undertrays is unbeleivable. I cant remember the last time i scraped the bottom of my car here - yet in both the US and AUS I was frequently scraping hire car undersides off tarmac.
Trains.
Everyone moans about trains - but at least we have a semi integrated network with integrated ticketing in many places and frequent services. Try and catch a train from Rockhampton to Mackay, two of the largest cities on Queenslands East Coast. They are only 200 miles apart, and there is a large railway line linking them. Despite this there is ONE TRAIN A DAY. Yet people over here moan about our trains? Try using the railways in San Francisco. You need 3 different tickets to use CALTRAIN, BART and the Muni! In London, one ticket works on everything.
How about you get some clue and THEN form an opinion on how much our transport networks suck?
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