SHANO7

Hi Kelly Well she got a place at Uni but I think its more like your son im afraid as she has got herself a boyfriend !! not Looking forward to waving her off as she flies 2 weeks tomorrow Shane p.s I will get round to joing your f-book group but im nmot on it yet SHane x

Hi Kelly We are also home and have been for nearly 3 weeks now. So glad we are home after trying it and echo everything that you have said. Home is where the heart is and we now realise what we had here was not that bad after all. Agree with milly also about feeling half dead. Only drawback for us is our daughter is only home for another 3 weeks as she is returning to Oz hopefully only for a short while. Good luck Shane

Arrived back on Good Friday. Had the surprise of seeing my brothers at the airpoort as well as my wifes family. So for me its easy. Its Home. Australia never felt like home to us. Stepped out of terminal 3 took our first breath of uk air in 8 months. It was 2c and the vapour of cold breath looked amazing. Our drive down to devon was picturesque, lambs in the fields, rolling green hills, old country cottages it was awesome. then arrived at my mothers who was waiting at the top steps that i sat on as a 5 yr old and all of my youth to get the hug that we had waited for for so long. My wife has just got back from a trip to Morrisons and was gobsmacked at the prices. We scrathced the itch of Oz but when all is said and done we belong in the Uk in Plymouth with family and friends.

Totally agree with you HB588. Makes me laugh when people say the weather is poor in the uk. Most of the time it is but when its nice its lovely. Can wait for the bus in the summer without sweating your **** off. Perth and Australia is beautiful but so is the UK and with far more character and culture than Australia would ever have. In my short time here I have found Perth to be a little bit dull, Like a supermodel with no personality !! We have scratched the itch and are off home to family friends and people that dont just care how blue the sky is or how close the beaches are.

We fly into Heathrow on Saturday morning before travelling downto Plymouth..... for good !! Cant wait to breathe in some crisp fresh Devon air and go and see all the beautiful places Devon and Cornwall have to offer. Dont realise how much you miss it until you have left it

You cannot possibly immerse yourself in Australian TV as its basically very poor. Foxtel is full of dross and the only thing worth watching is old UK tv. The sports is a must if you like proper football. But be careful , Sky One had Game of Thrones, Spartacus and very good US programmes. The equivalent channel is classed as a movie channel which you have to pay extra for.

I would suggest you think long and hard. If you have a PR visa you generally get 12 months to validate. Do some homework about the houses. there was an article in the WA paper which generally is full of cars, horseracing sports and house builders selling the dream. It stated the mean house Price is $500,000.00 now . And it was $450k when we moved here 7 months ago. Rental is extremely expensive. Its not just the price of property but they are more based on size than substance. It depends what you are after in a home can you pay the mean house price and risk losing 20% in a recession. WA has seemed to have missed out on this though and the cost of living is high in comparison to the UK. I urge you not to base your move to Australia on just houses. We made the move like you after a very long process as the Australian government did not have any morals when it came to making applicants wait after they had taken the money and if we had our time again we probably would have sat it out in the Uk and waited or just not come at all. Houses we looked at 8 years ago that cost $125k without the land are now nearer the $200 k mark

Very strange that my relative received it

I dont believe this either..... they are just not Cold

They might be entitiled to it because they worked and lived in the Uk all their lives but the reason for its introduction was to assist the elderly with their UK heating bills in winter in the uk not summer In Australia. I completely understand were people are trying to justify the acceptance of it because of pensions being frozen but WFA was not created to top up pensions for those that had left the uk . I agree why should pensions be frozen when you leave the uk when you have paid into tax etc most of your working lives but that is a different issue. My point was why do ex pat pensioners need a WFA basing it on the reason the WFA was introduced in the first place . To assist with Heating bills for Pensioners in the Uk . No other reason. So with this in mind ... they dont . Just as a footnote John from moneycorp posted today that the UK could well be entering into recession again!! The British government need to get tough and there are a number of ways to try and help this. Wasting money on benefits would be a good start.

Reading everyones posts would suggest that the majority of people think its wrong some think its not. Those that think it is not fair believe its due because a pension has not been index linked. I fail to see the link between the two. The WFA was introduced to assist pensioners who have their pensions index linked withe theri costs in Winter of keeping warm without struggling to pay. It was not introduced to cover a shortfall in an ex pats pension when they moved and as a result of this move their pension would no longer be index linked.

As I have said before I did agree and say in my original post that Pensions are an entitlement . My point being that WFA and Pensions are not directly linked only in the fact that Pensioners receive them. But I maintain Pensioners living in Australia or other warm climates do not need this as much as pensioners in the Uk. Everyone who has migrated to Australia in recent years have made sacrifices financially and have not been helped by the lower exchange rate so Pensioners are not the only ones that are effected by this. We moved to search a better life and sold our house to fund this move. I want to point out I am not against Pensioners only it does not seem illogical for winter fuel allowance to be paid to them and not to be seen as a gift to be kept with the attitude that I will take it because my Pension is effected. WFA is relatively new if I remember rightly and a lot of people receiving it probably moved to Australia before it was introduced. I have heard people that receive it in the Uk and here openly say I dont need it but I can buy a new tv or something nice for the house. This is not what it was intended for. I feel you need to remind yourself of my original post where I purely stated that WFA is wrong for people that live in warm climates as they obviously dont need it. You decided to comment stating that other factors ie Pensions being frozen mean they should keep it and basically backed up my origianal post about peoples attitudes to this Gift from the government. I made the point that it would be better served given more benefit to the people that still live in the uk. The beauty of an opinion is that not everyone agrees with each others, You feel strongly about yours and I mine . You found it difficult reading my comment with my suggestion that the money would be spent on something nice to wear. This was clearly suggesting that an ex pat in Oz does not need a WFA . Why would they... its summer !! Whereas your comments have merely substantiated what i Wrote in my OP.

Like I said in my OP pensions etc yes but WFA definately not. As you said its disgusting to accept it when you dont need it. In reference to the cost of living . How can a comparison be made between cost of living in the Uk and Australia. I agree a £52 difference seems somewhat large but how would the Uk government rate it. Would they use a cost of living allowance from the country that we left or the country that we chose to live in ?

Is it any wonder things are getting bad. Millionairres receiving WFA, very wealthy people receiving child benefit and ex pats and EU residents receiving benefits.

Did you hear Lord sugar a few years back ? He received the WFA and obviously being a multi millionairre was a litle bit embarrassed. He requested could he send it back to be told by the Health department he couldn't because it was due to him !!