{"id":3200,"date":"2021-02-20T17:36:36","date_gmt":"2021-02-20T17:36:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/?p=3200"},"modified":"2022-04-12T17:47:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T15:47:11","slug":"moving-to-russia-from-the-uk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/expatkaliningrad.com\/ru\/moving-to-russia-from-the-uk\/","title":{"rendered":"Moving to Russia from the UK"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Why I left the UK and moved to Kaliningrad<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Published: 20 February 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was sitting in the office of our antique shop. It was a bright, sunny afternoon one Saturday in June. A couple whom we knew as being members of the 1940s\u2019 crowd had just parked their 1935 vehicle on the small forecourt out front. I greeted them as they entered the shop, and they said to me, in a disappointed tone, \u201cWe have just heard that the shop is closing; that you are selling up and moving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I replied in the affirmative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After saying how much they would miss the shop and us (which was nice of them), they enquired where I was moving to. Over the past six months I had become an expert at answering this question. Turning away to place an advertisement on the shop’s ad board, I casually replied, \u201cRussia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine times out of ten, on hearing this, the astounded party would cry: \u201cRussia!\u201d. And some even fell back a few paces, as if thrown from the bombshell I had just dropped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this occasion I was deprived of my fun, as the people concerned turned out to be the one in ten: they expressed no astonishment on learning that I was planning to leave \u2018our wonderful democracy\u2019, in fact they empathised with me, sounding envious that I was \u2018getting out whilst I can\u2019, and saying \u201cwe don\u2019t blame you\u201d and \u201cwe would like to do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mick
Mick Hart & Olga Hart in the Vintage & Antiques Emporium<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But I did not decide to leave the UK and give up the country where I was born and everything I had ever known simply because it would furnish me with a first-class opportunity to laugh at the way the UK media brainwashes people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is true that my wife is Russian, and some people when apprised of this fact took it for granted that this is why I wanted to move to Russia, the logic being that had my wife been Martian I would want to move to Mars or, even more irrational, had my wife come from Wisbech I would want to move to the Fens. She hadn’t, and I didn\u2019t, and I wouldn\u2019t. Would you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was, of course, a bit more to it than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving to Russia from the UK<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

My wife, Olga, moved to England in 2001. In Russia she had been a qualified teacher of English with 10 years\u2019 teaching experience, but as we know, or are led to believe, educational standards in the UK are far superior than those in any other country, so her qualifications and teaching experience was immediately rendered null and void.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being a worker not a shirker, within two days of arriving in England, Olga set out to find gainful employment, no matter what it was, and after a couple of weeks managed to obtain the envious position of waitress at d’Parys Hotel in Bedford<\/a>. Not bad, we thought: from qualified teacher with 10 years\u2019 experience to table servant in two weeks: Welcome to the UK!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, it was a job \u2014 a thankless job. No sooner had she started than she fell foul of a bossy young lady with a rank inferiority complex and seriously challenged people skills, whom I would eventually christen \u2018Fat Arse\u2019 ~ for reasons that would be quite apparent to you had you been acquainted with her ~ and by extension (heaven forbid!) d\u2019Parys then became known to us and our close circle of friends as DeFatties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incidentally, this rebranding of the hotel almost caught us out when my seven-year-old stepson, who liked to be taken to d\u2019Parys for chicken nuggets and chips, blurted out one Sunday afternoon, \u201cI like it here in DeFatties!!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDeFatties?\u201d asked Olga\u2019s bemused manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEr yes,\u201dI quickly replied, \u201cDaniel calls it that because I always say that we are off to d\u2019Parys for chicken nuggets and fatty fries, instead of saying chips, and although he\u2019s doing well with his English, he does tend to confuse his words a little.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During this period of her induction into the side of British life which immigrants rarely anticipate, Olga did manage to find temporary work with an agency that needed tutors with foreign language skills to act as a guide and mentor for overseas students. She juggled both jobs and eventually migrated her waitress skills to what was then d\u2019Parys’ sister enterprise, The Embankment Hotel in Bedford<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"The
The Embankment Hotel, Bedford, UK (December 2019)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Whilst labouring here, in addition to working towards her UK Citizenship \u2018exams\u2019, she was also studying for a postgraduate degree at Luton University, and in the meantime landed her first education post in the UK as an advisory teacher for EMASS (Ethnic Minority Achievement Support Service).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant that she would have to give up her job in the hotel trade, an outcome which my stepson Daniel heartily disapproved of. His mother becoming a \u2018teacher\u2019 was a definite step down from hotel waitressing, with its chicken nuggets, fatty fries and often free ice cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the EMASS job was a demanding one, Olga enjoyed it. As she said later, she felt as if she was actually doing some good and although it was not that well paid, most importantly, she liked the staff and got on well with her boss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was about this time, as Olga passed her QTS (Qualified Teaching Status) exams, that I asked her, whilst she still had chance to change her mind, was being a full-time teacher really what she wanted? I had visited a couple of schools in Kaliningrad, Russia: once to collect Daniel from primary school and, on another occasion, to pick up some documents from the Russian equivalent of a UK comprehensive. On both visits I had been struck by how well behaved and polite the children and students were and how attentive and orderly they were in class compared to their British counterparts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was not without experience of what British schools were like. I had a near brush with school culture when I left university. Not having the faintest idea of what I wanted to do in life, I fell prey to what in those days was standard career\u2019s advice, which was to dragoon you into teaching. Reluctantly, I went through the motions, which included three-days\u2019 \u2018teaching observation\u2019 at a school of one\u2019s choice ~ I chose The Ferrers School, in Higham Ferrers, Northants*.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brief introduction was enough to convince me that by not pursuing it further I would escape a career worse than death, and that, remember, was back in the 80s, when although British schools and life in Britain generally was all going terribly wrong at least it had not gone so utterly wrong as to be irredeemable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, in spite of all my remonstrations to the opposite, Olga ignored my pleas, held her course and set sail into the Poe-like maelstrom of UK education, reasoning that this was her job, this is what she had been trained for and this is what she wanted to do. Besides, she enjoyed teaching and enjoyed being a teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"UK
Illustration for Edgar Allan Poes’ A Descent into the Maelstrom by Harry Clarke
(Attribution: Harry Clarke, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Soon after qualifying she landed a job at the now no-longer-in-existence Harrowden Middle School, Bedford, and soon after that she stopped enjoying teaching and stopped enjoying being a teacher. This was the UK: being a teacher in the UK was nothing like being a teacher back home in her native country, Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are so many accounts that I could narrate to you about my wife\u2019s experiences as a teacher in the UK, but I will leave that for a later post. Suffice it to say, it was every bit as bad as I had described it and worse, and it was no coincidence that the first school at which she worked, Harrowden,  soon earnt itself the sobriquet of \u2018Harrowing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are familiar to any degree  with the UK education system you will not consider it to radical of me to say that UK schools and universities are little more than political indoctrination factories. The educational equivalent of \u2018from the cradle to the grave\u2019, but in this instance from primary school to university, the principal function of the education system is to inculcate, without fear of question or second thought, the dubious doctrines of so-called liberal progressiveness, particularly with regard to socially engineered and politically correct enforced multiculturalism and, in more recent years, gender engineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"PC<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

This, let us refer to it as political paedophilia, filters down from the top, through the career school heads and the ultra-left liberal staff to be consolidated by the biased nature of the texts and writers studied and reinforced by a daily helping of liberal-leftism from the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time that Olga was teaching, the BBC was head-over-orgasm in a tawdry sycophantic fantasy with Barack Obama, pulling out all the stops to cast him in the unlikely role of the Patron Saint of Democracy. When he was ousted in 2017, Trump was immediately framed as Bogeyman Number Two, just behind Vladimir Putin. Although Olga was unwilling to take an active part in this political grooming of youth ~ and refused to point blank ~ she had to endure considerable bullying before her case was heard, viz that she was there to teach English not enforce political views and corrupt the minds of the young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>
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Be careful whose sweeties they are and who you accept them from!<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are many other problems associated with working as a teacher in the UK, such as inflated bureaucracy, unnecessary paperwork, unpaid overtime etc, but these ills are universal to a good many other jobs and professions. However, one that is exclusive to teaching, and which stems from the same invasive fungus root of \u2018liberal progressiveness\u2019, is the continual round of daily abuse that teachers have to contend with both from feral pupils and their belligerent parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every single day in my building, there are egregious acts of student misconduct going unchecked.  Teachers are losing hope that things will ever get better, and we are tired.  We are expected to be therapists, social workers, substitute parents, punching bags, and outlets for student rage and verbal abuse.  Teaching is only a small percentage of what we do anymore.<\/p>Extract from Letter from Teacher \u2013 Dear JCPS<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Once again, I do not intend to expatiate on this here but will leave that subject for a later and more detailed post on the parlous state of the UK\u2019s education system, in which I shall provide specific examples of incidents that my wife experienced whilst teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After 20 years on the frontline of Britain\u2019s schools, my wife had had enough. It was time to call it a day ~ get out. In many ways, this was a great pity, as teaching had been her life. In the UK, in addition to her teaching qualification, she attended and successfully completed many professional development courses and received numerous compliments and accolades from the heads of the institutions in which she had taught, from members of the teaching staff and also from pupils. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mrs
The rewarding element of teaching ~ so sad that UK’s schools are the victim of a pernicious ideology<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Throughout her career, she had seen many teachers come and go, both long serving and new: some who had been \u2018dreaming of escape\u2019 for years and just could not take it anymore; others, fresh from college, who lasted less than a week before making the brave but timely decision to embark on a different career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As if an Orwellian education system, lunatic skewed political correctness and state-sponsored delinquency was not enough, another baptism of western malfeasance awaited my wife. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the time that she had been resident in England there had been several anti-Russian campaigns prosecuted in the extreme by the UK\u2019s media, but in her last three years of living there the establishment and its media\u2019s attempts to trash all things Russian and stir up rampant Russophobia had gone into overdrive, having obviously been prioritised by those who control our governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was no coincidence then, and it is no coincidence now, that the anti-Russian Blitzkrieg had been  launched at a time when both the British and American public\u2019s trust in the neoliberal way had resoundingly hit the skids. The last thing that an imploding democracy needs is its 5-year cross-tickers looking elsewhere for the national, traditional values that no longer exist in their own back yard. And UK politicians would do well to remember that making history is a considerably less stable proposition than valuing and celebrating history, not to mention rewriting it or simply giving it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Moving<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At last, incensed by the liberal propaganda machine and suffocating political correctness, Olga broached the subject to me of getting out ~ of leaving the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, did I agree to go just because I am a fine husband and devoted to my wife? It would be so easy at this point to say yes, and by doing so pedestal myself as a martyr to feelings other than my own, but the truth is that it took almost three years before I, too, decided that I had had enough of the liberal canker that was so malevolently blighting the land that I loved. English born and bred, a legacy Briton with roots ~ my grandmother\u2019s brother fought and died for his country in the First World War; my two uncles also fought in the Second World War, and my father\u2019s brother, who was a Major in the Second World War, was awarded the Military Cross (M.C.) posthumously) ~  it should not have been an easy decision to make, and it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the interim, whilst I was weighing my decision,  I used to joke that the next time I went on holiday to Kaliningrad I would ask for political asylum on the grounds that I could no longer live under the oppressive liberal yoke: open borders,  anti-social behaviour, ethnic-linked but never officially admitted-to crimes, increased internet censorship, and all the other politically correct baggage ~ the petty, ridiculous, meaningless stuff that is blown out of all proportion and which saturates our daily life, such as  should we have a female Dr Who? how many women are there in the UK\u2019s board rooms? not enough black actors on television, should same sex couples be allowed to adopt children, LGBT issues, gender issues, race issues and aarrrrggghhh!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then comes Brexit, with its liberal-motivated back-stabbing, double dealing, wriggling, writhing shiftiness and utter contempt for democracy \u2014 the liberal leavers screaming (and don\u2019t they just!) that we must have a \u2018people\u2019s vote\u2019 in the name of democracy when by the democratic process that is exactly what we had, it was called a referendum. (Apropos of this, it amused me recently to see the headline in one of the UK\u2019s extreme left newspapers which claimed that if Trump was not impeached it would be a ‘threat to democracy’. Talk about ironic!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even though Democracy ~ battered, bloody, tarnished, sullied, bribed, threatened and subjected to all manner of shameful legal illegalities ~ would eventually break free from its criminal leave abductors, thanks primarily to Nigel Farage, by now my mind was made up. We were sailing on a cultural Titanic. It was time to leave the sinking ship<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were some who asked, \u201cWhy not got to Spain?\u201d and \u201cWhy not go to France\u201d. I suspect my reply was somewhat too obtuse for them: \u201cThe EU ~ NGOs ~ Merkel\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, when fellow Brits ask me \u2018do I like living in Russia?\u2019 I play their game. Knowing what they want to hear, I reply, in a suitably pained tone: \u201cWhy did I do it \u2026?\u201d And as a triumphant smile begins to dawn on their faces, before they can say I told you so I quickly conclude my statement with, \u201c \u2026 leave it so long, I mean. I should have moved ten years\u2019 ago!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next (when I have time to write in between beers) \u2018What I like about life in Kaliningrad\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I found time: What I like about Kaliningrad!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
All you need is a a way-back machine to be proud to live in Britain again!<\/span><\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

*Note: My school observation took place in the 1980s, so I am not qualified to comment on The Ferrers School today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Copyright \u00a9 2018-2022 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Image attributions:<\/strong>
Brainwash tap:
https:\/\/publicdomainvectors.org\/en\/free-clipart\/Danger—brainwashing\/71010.html<\/a>
Ghoul with sweeties bag:
http:\/\/clipart-library.com\/img\/1687772.png<\/a>
No to political correctness:
Wikipedista DeeMusil, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PREVIOUS POSTS:<\/strong>
My First Trip to Kaliningrad in the year 2000<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n