I was so surprised at the cost of living on my last visit to the UK, it was the final straw and made me decide definitely that we won't be returning. Life is hard in the UK, even if your earning a reasonable salary. Some friends of mine and I have come the opinion that unless your earning more than £100,000 in the UK you couldn't live a comfortable life.
We are in the process of getting an Australian visa, which we hope will offer us a better quality of life in the future, particularly when the salaries in my line of work are about 4x the UK salary offering.