GRASS GREENER / SNOW WHITER

Living in the 9th best place to live on the planet, it now seems strange that I used to live on what is now the 25th best place to live. Given that the best place to live in the whole wide world is apparently France, this must be a deeply flawed survey.

I look back fondly to when I lived in the UK. All the bigger issues that one reads about in the papers never seem to make much difference at home: anti-social behaviour, immigration, black-on-black gun crime, knife crime, urban sprawl, poor roads and coastal erosion have very little impact if you ride a bike and live in a small town in the midlands. Perhaps that's the reason why people who are 'fed up with this country' are never really happy anywhere.

One of the nicer aspects of life here (and something that makes life unbearable for some in Britain) is the attitude and demeanour of youngsters. I often get asked why it is that British children are so well behaved. After speaking to them, it's clear that their only experience of Britain is watching Mary Poppins, so I tell them that Canadian children (even the really naughty ones) are mostly better behaved than British specimens. It's not their fault of course, in Britain it's too often the drink that's to blame.

Being a police officer on Britain, 'nuisance youths' and the consequent vandalism, public drunkeness and general screaming and shouting, was a kind of background music to the business of policing, so that wherever one went one met children swaying in the street shouting, 'Pigs innit!' Nowadays, I deal with very few children and the drunk, loud and abusive ones are so rare I'm momentarily shocked.

Even the older ones are reasonable. I once went to break up a party with about 150 teenage guests that had got slightly out of control. Naturally enough I anticipated the worst, but within 10 minutes, everyone had quietly dispersed and the music was turned off. People in nightclubs seem to drink a fraction of what they do in British ones, and afterwards... they get into taxis and go. Of course, at -20 deg C, you don't want to hang around for too long in the open, but even in high summer on a Saturday night, the worst you get is a bit of pushing and shoving.

There must be statistics out there that prove me wrong, that show Canadians to be a nation of violent drunks and their children even worse. If there are, I'm sure you'll let me know.