When I bought a second home in Whitby a small fishing port in North Yorkshire, it made me compare the quality of life in comparison to living in my home town of Bradford, a large inland city.

The reason I'm posting the question above is not simply for the answer. I'm also putting forward the thought that sometimes we live our lives not in the best places in our country.

In my opinion there is little doubt which is the correct answer to the above question, but I'm going to give you my answer at the end of this article when I explain what brought me to this conclusion.

I live on the outskirts of Bradford in West Yorkshire, in quite a picturesque little village called Idle, which is quite a funny name when you consider its true meaning. We have the famous Idle Working Men's Club, with its emblem of a working man leaning on his spade, get the idea? People from all over the world ask for affiliated passes so they can say they are a member of the idle working men's club. Idle is quite nice in itself, being an old Victorian village, but its only three miles from the centre of Bradford city and 9 miles from the centre of Leeds.

Being so close to the city centre is good for my business, which is installing security alarm systems and CCTV. I've done this job since 1983. Why is this? Because, unfortunately, city centres in the United Kingdom are surrounded by crime and burglary. I used to think there must be other parts of the country which were not quite as bad. Now I definitely think this is the case and I'll explain why I think so.

In 2007 I bought a holiday cottage in the beautiful old fishing port of Whitby, North Yorkshire. The cottage needed lots of renovation work because I intended to let the property to holidaymakers as well as use it myself. It's in a gorgeous setting near the harbour, in a very quiet old yard with outhouses. The first thing that crossed my mind was this is very easy to rob because it's so quiet and there are no neighbours directly opposite. That was my security installer mind in force. So my first two jobs on the cottage were not renovation projects but firstly to install a security alarm system, which also had a telephone dialler which would ring me if the security alarm was activated and, secondly, to install a CCTV camera in the loft with a digital video recorder.

Then I moved on to all the necessary renovation jobs to make the cottage comfortable for holidaymakers. When I finished renovating the cottage, I asked the local and largest holiday letting agency to come around to view the property, quietly expecting nothing but praise for all my hard work and expenditure. It was actually the owner of the agency himself who came to view the cottage. He was a pleasant and professional gentleman, but I'm afraid his first words were not entirely complimentary! His first comment was: Why did you put a security alarm and CCTV camera on this cottage ? I explained my worries about the vulnerability from the burglary point of view, to which he replied that he had well over 120 cottages on his books in the area, and had been in the property letting business since 1970. Mine was the only cottage which had ever had a security alarm and CCTV installation.