I left the UK and moved to Germany, about 18 months ago. I barely spoke a word of German when I arrived. Admittedly the main reason was that my fiancee is German, but I'd been uncomfortable about the same issues you mention regarding the UK and the direction it's heading. It's the best thing I ever did.

I learned German for 4 months, then started looking for work. I had an MSc in IT, but no IT experience. I got a job within 1 month of looking, the firm speaks German, but most of the developers speak good English. At first I only spoke English at work, but now I speak German where I can, English the rest of the time

I have to say that Germany is FAR better than the UK on most of these issues. Whilst they do have ID cards here, they're not electronic and probably only exist as a hangover from being an occupied state after WWII (the allies required it).

My advice would be take the plunge! Don't worry about language too much within the EU if you're going for IT jobs (maybe apart from France, but that could be just reputation).

ITER is the world's best chance of obtaining almost infinite amounts of clean energy. Most of the recent press about the National Ignition Facility has ignored one key fact - the NIF is about creating fusion explosions to model bombs. Sure, it can also be used for fusion power research, but that's not the primary reason it received it's funding. ITER is about developing commercial fusion using a tokamak.

Also, the way the US cancelled all funding for ITER for 2008 was pretty disgusting. If a country becomes a partner in such large science projects, they need to stick with it, rather than screwing everyone around