Hi Welshgirl,
I picked NZ as my first choice for any eventual migration from the UK for a number of reasons:
- It's a beautiful place, and I find natural beauty refreshing and conducive to happiness;
- It's a relatively sparsely populated place and I don't like crowds;
- It appears to suffer relatively low levels of crime;
- It appears to suffer less from the materialistic approach that places wealth and possessions above true quality of life;
- It appears that the youth of NZ are less likely to be pressurised into the drink and drugs culture;
- It appears that other social values and attitudes are more like those of the UK of some time ago.
All of these are general statements in some way or other and I'm sure each could be contradicted with specific examples. They are all based on the relatively slight research I have so far carried out and I myself might subsequently come to disagree with my own current line of thought. Having said that, I would be pleased to be 'diasagreed with' by those who have far more practical experience of life in NZ - the Kiwis themselves!
I am not seriously considering any other country - yet.
To definitely want to go to NZ I would need just about all my positive perceptions of the country to be proved correct (as far as that is reasonable) and as few negatives as possible remaining to dissuade me.
My reasons for considering leaving the UK are quite numerous and relate to a degree of dissatisfaction with various aspects of our country's culture (reading the above list of things that attract me to NZ will give several clues, I suspect!) and, most importantly to me, a deep concern about the society that my daughter (currently aged 6) will be asked to grow up in.
I actually live in a fairly beautiful part of the UK (north east England) which is nowhere near as crowded or crime-ridden as some other parts, but it is still far from perfect. I have a stable job and a decent standard of living, so they play no part in my thinking at all.
I hope that's given you an insight into the workings of my mind...
(By the way - it's not a Freudian slip: when I typed 'I' above, I did, of course, mean 'we' as in my wife and I.)