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Gusman Norway is just a simpler place to live. Every interaction one has with the state or with businesses is less complicated here, there is more trust between people and also between people and the state and local authorities. And the state seems to work for me to a greater degree.
Some examples:
When my wife died, in Norway, the paperwork to deal with the estate was a single page form that i signed and then the tax system sent me a summary of the money and property involved. I'm currently dealing with an inheritance in the UK and I have had to fill in three forms each of more than ten ages, supplied my birth certificate, marriage certificate, certified translations of death certificate and probate documents, a bank statement and utility bill, a certified copy of my passport, and do an online video verification of my passport. In the forms I had to make decisions about what I think the various exemptions should be instead of the tax man doing it for me. Several of the forms asked for information that had already been provided on other forms.
Logging in to banks, insurance, tax, etc. In Norway we have a system that allows one to use the same login credentials for all of them. In the UK every single one has not only a different set of credentials but also a different procedure.
Crime: it seems that there is much less in Norway than the UK
Old age care: In the UK if you have to be admitted to a care home then if you have more than a relatively small amount of money you have to pay the whole cost yourself, here in Norway they can take up to 85% of your income but no more.
There are many more similar points I could make.
I don't mean to say that it's paradise here just that for me and my family at least it is much less stressful.
As a tourist the UK is great, there is so much history crammed into such a small space. Oddly in my experience it is cheaper to be a tourist in the UK than Norway but despite its reputation Norway is not really so expensive to live in provided you don't want to go out eating and drinking in restaurants. I live about an hour's drive from the centre of Oslo the capital but my house is worth probably under half what a comparable house would cost within an hour's drive of London. Also it is an average size for Norway but has more than fifty percent more floor area than the average home in the UK. So even if I wanted to return to the UK to live I probably couldn't afford it unless I moved to some run down inner city area in the north.
Sorry for drivelling on so!
