Given how much British politicians seem determined to make life shitty for anyone making less than six figures, you'd think they'd at least let people spend what idle time they have high on drugs instead of questioning a system that seems intent on shredding the middle class.

Plus we ( the UK ) have now jumped onboard with remote drone assassination of UK citizens abroad. Even though there hasn't been a death penalty on the statute books since 1998.

Every country in the Five Eyes is doing this, and many if not most who have the money to fund this kind of thing are doing it.

Move to Greece. They can't afford surveillance.

CSEC (Canada) is up to the same shenanigans, approx zero politicians are talking about reigning in the surveillance state in any meaningful way during the election right now so it will keep on rolling. I often talk to people who have no idea who Snowden is, nor have they ever heard of CSEC.

You should read more history. We have been awful for 100s of years. Just in the 20thC we destabilised the Middle East, exploded bombs in pubs in Eire to drum up discontent, jailed the innocent, protected the powerful, destroyed our own manufacturing in favour of financial services, exported asset stripping to the US.....

The list could go on.

Your shame is proportional to your knowledge, the level of reprehensible action is a constant.

Just get out. However this ends it's not a happy ending.

The UK establishment are nuts.

Get out? To where?!

Well, there's Canada..... Where the Harper government is in the process of eliminating all historical archives and scientific libraries...

Australia? Hmm, wasn't there something about data retention? And maybe Western Australia trying to change the laws so protestors would have to prove that they weren't about to do something illegal when they were arrested?

New Zealand? Baaah.

Don't forget the moves towards Internet censorship in Australia too.

Aside from lots of sheep, what's wrong with New Zealand?

Here's the PM of NZ on the GCSB bill that allowed sweeping powers for the NZ spy agency (under his control) [1].

"All they can do is protect you, so it's against malware or a virus. ... On your computer at home you almost certainly have Norton Antivirus...that is exactly what that is, at a much higher level."

And the good people of NZ decided they didn't mind. Because. I don't know. I give up. It's like the world is determined to make a mess of itself.

[1] http://www.3news.co.nz/tvshows/campbelllive/john-key-defends... (from 8:00 in the video)

Along with the items already noted, it's also pretty small and I'm not sure how many immigrants they accept though I think there's something about Commonwealth nations and immigration that might help.

Germany? How ironic would it be if people from the UK ended up fleeing to Germany?

Land prices are far lower there. Working people fought and now their kids are neo-serfs in the UK.

Austria. They still fight fascism.

Israel maybe?

The American establishment isn't much better.

Britain has a history of far worse things. I find the lack of awareness of Britains brutal past in the UK to be terribly disturbing. Morally it has one of the most repulsive histories of countries on earth yet all we hear from politicians is about British values as if they are some kind of goal to look up to. The superiority complex prevalent in British political discourse has no foundation yet is rolled out time and time again.

Perhaps I'm older than you but it's been the same in my mind since the 1980s at least. My father informs me earlier.

At least we have the joys of privatized services now (I'm serious). They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway, gas and electricity infrastructure we had. Controversially perhaps, I've had much better service from the NHS since they moved to a service model.

I'm not ashamed of my identity at all.

>They are an order of magnitude better than the public railway

Order of magnitude more expensive, maybe. Better? No.

The first 15 years of my life in the 1970s and 1980s was spent going in and out of London to various hospitals on trains.

No. Absolutely not. It's much better now. Orders of magnitude better. Every train was late. There were engineering works overruns every Monday and weekend service was so bad you might as well walk.

And no not more expensive. People couldn't afford the train then and regularly took the inferior busses. If you went long distance, it was coach.

Either way you were doomed to a face full of diesel fumes from a Paxman or a Leyland and spend the entire day with your nose running black snot. Incidentally this is what killed my father; he was a bus driver.

  I've never been so ashamed to be British.

The "illustrious" colonial and expansionist history of the British empire wasn't enough to tip the scales for you before?

Why should we be ashamed of something that was done before we where born, should the Germans still be ashamed for world war two, should US citizens still be ashamed for what the US Army did, should the Italians be ashamed for what the Romans did, the French be ashamed for what Napoleon did?.

I accept our history, I'm not ashamed of it, it's history and I wasn't there.

However I am ashamed to be British for the things we currently do.