The Real Reason I'm Abandoning the UK

I love this country. I grew up here, built my business here, and honestly, I thought I'd never leave. But over the past few years, something has changed. The life I was building started to feel a little bit smaller. It started to feel a little bit more encroaching, and it felt like no matter how much progress I made, I still wasn't happy with what was going on around me. A few months ago, I realized that staying here might actually cost me my future happiness. So I've made the hardest decision of my life. I'm leaving the UK, and in this video, I to tell you exactly why and potentially why you should too. But for this to make sense, you're going to need some context. I'm David. I've been a trader for the last 15 years. I've worked in the City. I've worked for TradingView as their head of growth for the UK, head of market data, and also ran their compliance policy. And the last couple of years, what I've been doing really is trying to get Brits to invest better. I once loved the UK. I mean, all my friends are here. I love the culture. I love or loved the safety, the opportunities. But these started slowly drifting away, and I started questioning more recently if it actually made sense to stay. Of course, like all things though, there comes a time when change actually does have to happen, and in this case, the change wasn't good. Now, the breaking point for me was just 2 months ago. My 5-year-old had to do a lockdown drill at her primary school. She's in year 1. For me, this was completely unacceptable. And no matter how much I use my trader's statistical brain on whether, uh, you know, something bad were likely to happen to her, it just doesn't make sense to take that risk as a parent. You become completely irrational as a parent. And I think the safety of my daughter is absolutely paramount. That is the only thing that is really desperately important to me. I could give up everything else just to make sure that she's safe for the rest of her life. And currently in the UK, I don't feel like that is viable. And even the higher taxation, even the limited growth, even the lack of opportunity that seems to be going around, the quality of life decreasing, the expense, the misery that you tend to see from loads of people around you, that came secondary to that one simple fact that my daughter might not be safe by staying here. Now, the one thing for me, if we are talking about policy and we're talking about actual specific issues with the UK and the government, is is that they do seem entirely incompetent. And it doesn't matter which government, I'm not just talking about Labour here, because the issues that I'm referring to are far longer standing than just the last, say, year and a quarter. Things like the £100K tax trap is completely insane and shows a level of incompetence that just is mind-boggling. How can you face in some situations an 80% marginal rate when you go from earning £99,999 to between £100,000 and £125,000. What sort of disincentive does this create to take higher risk jobs, higher paying jobs, and to actually build the economy based off of developing things, getting people employed, paying the right people the right salaries for their incompetence? It's ridiculous. And that is possibly one of the primary examples of politicians not understanding incentives in the UK. There's a whole host of other things. Take energy prices. We have the second highest energy prices in the world. Now, this is while Norway is drilling an extra 30 sites in the North Sea to make sure that they've got money for their sovereign wealth fund. We no longer permit licenses to drilling firms or even subsidize drilling firms to increase our oil revenues, all the while we have absolutely astronomical bills. And these bills aren't really borne by the consumer, these bills are borne by businesses because the consumer actually has capped energy prices, believe it or not. Firms can actually only make about 3% profit off of the consumer. So British Gas maybe makes £150 per household, whereas on businesses they don't have this. The firms absolutely rip the fucking ass out of businesses, and this translates to higher costs for goods. So when you have something like, you know, the Russia-Ukraine war occurring, when there's a COVID event and supply chains are completely shagged, you face higher costs on top of those supply chain disruptions purely because of UK government policy and their net zero stance, which is massively, massively distortive. Most of the increase in the recent price cap has gone on because of network costs, which actually translates to shit. We need to be able to facilitate the transition to net zero because the grid cannot currently support it. That is insane. And Ed Miliband is basically an eco-terrorist. This is just another example of the incompetence and misunderstanding of government of second and third order effects. But take another example. In the UK, as a UK citizen, you are taxed 0.5% stamp duty when you buy UK shares. When you buy US shares, you're not taxed that stamp duty. What kind of incentive does that provide for any UK investor to get long UK equities? It doesn't. It's insane, it's ridiculous, and it's quite simply fucking stupid. And don't forget, that's not just a Labour issue. That is a long-standing issue that the Tories could have dealt with as well, but they didn't deal with that because they're also thick as shit. And also, it's not about me being a tax-dodging cunt either, because potentially I get in on Portugal's regime, but the chances are that I actually don't because the scope of their regime has narrowed so much that I'm not involved in science and technology. So I'm actually moving to somewhere that has Higher taxation, possibly. However, what Portugal don't do is spend on retarded shit that the UK government consistently does, and that is the biggest problem. It's not even that the taxes are going up. I couldn't give a shit about that. It's that the value for money in the UK is so poor from that taxation that it doesn't make sense to give cash to the government. And so this is forcing people out. We've seen people over the last month or so move to the UAE. Oh, they're a Dubai wanker. Well, that's the incentive that the government has provided, because these people have almost been deemed as enemy number one. Nick Staronsky, the owner and founder of Revolut, he's gone to Dubai. We've seen a couple other people as well more recently over the last week, before Rachel Reeves just this morning on the 4th of November decided to say some of the most stupid shit ever. Now, it's likely that she's going to introduce an exit tax, and this is another example of sheer competence. Why would you warn about introducing an exit tax before it's fucking introduced? How fit can you be? And this is the problem, it's not even just that they're introducing these policies, it's that they are stupid. They do not understand that, okay, well, if I'm talking about an exit tax, maybe loads of entrepreneurs are going to actually leave before that exit tax gets implemented. Then what? Oh, we neither get capital gains tax, we don't get the corporate corporation tax, and then we don't actually even get the exit tax. Fucking stupid. For any country to do well though, you need taxes from the people and businesses to work for the people. That is the overriding point here. And in the UK, you're not just getting the value for money that you want. Council taxes go up, your bins get collected— well, for me anyway, twice a month. What is the point? What am I paying £2,500 a year for? It just doesn't make sense. And then we look at the state of the NHS. They keep shoveling money into this system that clearly doesn't improve the more money you give to it. So change the fucking system. We're not in 1955 anymore when population was super, super low and we were seeing the growth post-war. Doesn't make sense to have that system anymore. Get rid of it. Change it to socialized healthcare, just like across Europe. Germany, France, Belgium, Switzerland, they all have socialized health insurance. That is not the US system. Get it through your heads. There's not just two systems for the NHS, okay? It's not just private and it's not just, you know, the UK system. Australia has a different system, works absolutely fantastically. You pay £25 to see a GP and the price signal means that there's less burden on waiting times. It means that people don't go to the GP to then go and get fucking paracetamol for a little headache. The incentives in the UK are completely bollocks. And so for me, the only option is to leave those incentives and find incentives elsewhere that make me feel like the quality of life is better. It's so much deeper than just tax bans. It's an incentive play. Now, when I visited Portugal over the last year or so since we've been considering leaving, my cousin actually moved there 5 years ago. And so I've seen it from a couple of different perspectives. I've seen his life. He moved from LA, which is a completely different context. And the environment, the energy, you know, the way of life there is so much better and different to the UK, and I'll give you a story. Now, in the place that I'm moving to, there's little cobblestones along the pavement, and that's what their pavement is. It's not black like in the UK, it's not tarmac. It's these little old-looking cobblestones that look ornate, look traditional, look beautiful. Now, what I saw were the workmen with little pickaxes taking each broken cobblestone out and replacing it with a brand new one. In the UK, what would happen is you'd see someone from the council come with a big tarmac load and just chuck tarmac on. You see those big scars. People don't give a shit. About what their environment looks like here, whereas over there they do. And that was funny enough, even though it's a really, really small and seemingly inconsequential anecdote, for me that was really important because it really shows that they're trying to keep tradition. They're trying to keep things looking how they want to rather than just focusing on the cost and focusing on just, oh yeah, just getting it done. They give a shit, basically. That's vital for me and shows you what kind of life you're likely to have. You know, the council tax over there is basically €70 per year. They've got communal bins where you just take it, drop drop it in, then come and pick it up. You can do that as much as you want, and it's really, really close. They've got loads of them. Things like this actually do make a difference. It's not just tax, it's the way things are done that really, really matter. Now, of course, the weather is going to be fantastic for everyone. Right now it's 20 degrees there. Yes, it rained a little bit last week, but I'm used to rain. Clearly I'm from the UK, and also I'm Irish, so yeah, there we go. But being able to do stuff pretty much all the time, all year round, is a massive, massive of life improvement as well. You don't have to stress about going somewhere and maybe bringing an umbrella or bringing a jumper, bringing a coat. It just makes you happier. And I think although the UK is fantastic, the weather is a big, big deal. What I also see in somewhere like Portugal is opportunity. You know, I would love to be able to give back to another country in a different way, maybe bring a new way of thinking in terms of certain business ideas or things that they might not necessarily have, you know, it's an up-and-coming economy, I would say. And I think it exciting coming to somewhere where there is a buzz, there are people who want to do things there, and there is less misery. Yes, don't get me wrong, everywhere is going to have its own issues, and I'm going to be well aware of that. But I think there's a bit of excitement around Portugal, and quite frankly, I'm very, very tired of being around the constant negativity that we hear about the economy, about society, about safety, crime, all of this stuff. It does your head in, as I'm sure you can definitely relate to. But what does this move actually mean? I mean, for Think and what we're doing here is it means that I can be happier. I can take a more objective view on things by taking an outside perspective and seeing how things could be. What I really still want to do is get Brits to invest better. I think there is a huge opportunity for Britain. Not right now. I think we are really in the doldrums, but over the next 10 years, I think things can really change. We can see how bad things can get, and unfortunately, I do feel like it's going to get worse, but opportunity comes during bad times and we have to maintain a bit of resilience as well, because one day I'm going to be back 100%. I'll be back in the UK one day, but economically we can turn a corner. We just need some second and third order thinking. But for me personally, this represents a brand new chapter and I'm really, really excited and I wish I didn't actually have to do this. But fortunately what this feels like is that I'm moving to Portugal. I'm not fleeing the UK, although it could seem like that. It's more of an excitement to go somewhere new rather than just, as I said, flee somewhere that is currently not doing the best. Of course I'm nervous. It's a brand new place. I'm gonna have to learn a brand new language, and really quickly, because if you don't learn a new language when you go somewhere, I think that's disgusting, quite frankly. And you need to really fix up your ideas or just go home if you aren't willing to learn a language. And yeah, I've got a child, so the situation is made more complex with moving a 5-year-old to a brand new country where she's gonna have to learn a brand new language as well. But it's exciting more than anything, and I'm looking forward to what's coming because it's going to enable me to be less pessimistic about the place that I'm living in and be able to free up and become more creative, have better ideas with how the global economy is going, how markets are going, and then translate that to you. I'll be happier, basically. Basically, leaving the UK is not easy, but where I'm going next feels like the start of a brand new chapter, and I'm going to take you there in the next video and show you guys why I've chosen this particular country. In the meantime, click on this video here for my thoughts and analysis of why the economy in the UK is keeping you poor. Cheers for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.