| He is a US citizen? Three nationalities? His reasons for leaving the UK make interesting reading in current circumstances: > The USA is putting curbs on surveillance, expanding its national healthcare, and there are mass parental boycotts of standardised testing in its public schools. The UK just elected a Tory majority government that's going to continue to slash and burn the welfare state, attack schools, health, legal aid and teachers, and impose mandatory cryptographic backdoors in the technology we use to talk to each other. They've even announced that merely not breaking the law is no reason to expect that you won't be arrested. https://boingboing.net/2015/06/29/why-im-leaving-london.html Edit: improved wording below and added quote A lot of his other problems are London specific. Why do people forget the rest of the UK exists? > London is a city whose two priorities are being a playground for corrupt global elites who turn neighbourhoods into soulless collections of empty safe-deposit boxes in the sky, and encouraging the feckless criminality of the finance industry. These two facts are not unrelated. > My office rent has doubled this decade. We live in 600 square feet, up six flights of stairs, and can't possibly afford anything even remotely larger. > We've seen the writing on the wall: this is not a city for families. It's not a city for people running small firms. It's not a city for people who earn their living in the arts. We've given it the best we have, and we're getting out because we can. |
Your comment is a bit confusing. Did you mean everything except the part you quoted only applies to London? The part you quoted is about the UK not London and seems to contain all that is necessary for someone to understand why a person like Doctorow would have considered leaving at that point in time.