Cerberus1

Hi

I lived there for a year or so before moving to the Lockyer Valley around 12 months ago. (Have also lived in Cairns and Melbourne). Not sure what you want to know, it's got all facilities you'd expect from a small city - public & private hospitals, university, several shopping centres, cinemas, airport, esplanade, botanical gardens, new stadium being built etc. On the downside, unemployment is high, the weather is brutal (personally found it more severe than Cairns), rainfall is minimal due to the topography, resulting in continual water restrictions, crime is increasing - car thefts went up 78 per cent, robberies went up by 79 per cent between 2015 and 2016, the town center is full of boarded up shops - although that problem isn't unique to Townsville. From a purely personal perspective, I didn't particularly enjoy living there.

REACTIONS

IPS Community Suite has long had a reputation system; first we had a simple up/down system, later updated to introduce a Likes system as an alternative. Whichever system you chose to use, it tied in with our reputation system.

We're pleased to introduce the latest updates to the reputation system, and it's something that has been requested for quite some time: Reactions.

Quite simply, reactions allow users to offer more fine-grained sentiments towards content than a simple up/down or 'like'. They are now in common usage on social networks, and so users expect to be able to be more nuanced in their response to something they see.

Let's see how they work in a post, and then cover the options you'll have available.

What you see above is the default setup for a site that has used the Like system in version 4.1. We include 5 reactions by default:

• Like
• Thanks
• Confused
• Sad
• Haha

If you currently use the older style up/down reputation system, don't fret - you'll still get the new reactions on upgrade, but they'll be disabled by default and instead the new reaction UI will show up/down reactions. This gives you the flexibility to decide which of the new reactions, if any, you want to allow.

So, those are the basics - but what configuration options can you expect to see? First, you can of course add your own reactions! We expect that beyond the default reactions you'd expect to find, some sites will want reaction types specific to their use-case. On an intranet, you might want to have 'agree' and 'disagree' reactions for staff to use when responding to discussions. On a gaming community, you might replace the icons to be some graphic from a video game that means something to your particular userbase. There's a wealth of possibilities.

Each reaction you set up can be configured to adjust the original author's reputation count - a reaction can be positive (i.e. award a reputation point), negative (i.e. subtract a reputation point), or neutral (i.e. leave the reputation count unchanged). Our default set won't include any negative reactions, but you are free to configure these and new reactions to suit your own use-case. A user's total reputation count is still shown alongside their content and in their profile, of course.

If you don't want to use the new reactions for whatever reason, you can disable all of them except Like, and it'll behave just the like 4.1-and-earlier system:

Sites that currently use the up/down system don't show a list of names of users, and instead show an overall reputation score for the content. With the new reaction system, you can enable this even if you don't use up/down reactions. This is great if you plan to use reactions as, for example, an agree/disagree system, or where the content score is more important to your site than the individual reaction types.

As you'd expect, you can click individual reaction counts (or the overall reputation score, if you enable that setting) to view who reacted to the content. This remains a permission setting that you can apply per-group.

On touch devices, on-hover functionality is not suitable, and so for these devices the reactions UI looks like this:

Reactions play well with all areas of the suite, including Recommended Replies:

...and activity streams...

FILE UPLOADING

IPS Community Suite has supported drag and drop uploading to the attachments area at the bottom of the editor since 4.0. In 4.2 we're pleased to add the ability to drag and drop right into the editor, so you can drop your attachment exactly where you want it to show without having to add it afterwards.

If your browser and OS supports it you can also copy and paste, either from the desktop or from other content on the web:

Naturally this works for ordinary files as well as images:

Also related to Security:

Notification of a new device sign in

If enabled, users can receive an email notification when a new device is used to log into their account:

When a user signs in for the first time, a special key is set to recognise the browser on subsequent logins. This mean the notification email does not trigger on a new IP address, which would be annoying when travelling or if using a network where the IP address changes regularly. Instead, the notification is only triggered if someone signs into your account from a new physical device or web browser.

UserCP Device Management

If enabled, a new page will show in the user's settings page showing all the devices which have been used to log into their within the last 90 days (which is recent enough that could still be logged in if "Remember Me" was checked).

Users can see the device, browser, physical location (obtained by a GeoIP lookup) and if applicable, how the login was processed (for example, if the sign in was with Facebook or Twitter, this will show). If they chose "Remember Me" when logging in, they can undo that (handy if you realise you accidentally left yourself signed in on a public computer).

If they see anything they don't recognise, a page to walk them through the necessary steps to re-secure their account is available.

I'll cover some of the changes on this thread.

First up: Security

When using 2 Factor Authentication, members can now choose Authy as an authentication handler.

Authy can send a user a text message, make a phone call, or send a push notification to a smartphone app to authenticate the user. 

Set Up

To set up Two Factor Authentication with Authy, the user will enter their phone number. To verify their phone number they will then enter a code shown in the Auhy app or have a code sent by text message or phone call. 

Verification with Authy

When the user needs to verify their account, the system will automatically show an appropriate interface. If you allow verification with the Authy app and either it is the only option you allow, or the system knows that the user has installed the Authy app, the system will prompt them to use the app. This can either be done using Authy's OneTouch option (where the user will receive a push notification to the app, and when they click approve, the screen will automatically refresh) or their SoftToken option (where the user will be instructed to open the Authy app and enter the code they see). If you allow authentication by text message and/or phone call as well, the user will also see options for using those instead.

These screenshots show the process for OneTouch authentication:

Once the user has approved, the waiting screen will automatically refresh with the user authenticated.

For SoftToken authentication, the user is prompted to enter the code shown in the Authy app:

Phone Verification

If you have disabled the Authy app as an option, or the user does not have it installed, they will be prompted to choose from the available options how they want to authenticate.

These screenshots show the process for authenticating by text message:

Management

If the user changes their phone number they can reconfigure the system in their account settings. The system automatically shows "Phone Verification" rather then "Authy" if the app is not available as an option.

I've updated the forum software to the latest version today.

A list of changes can be found at https://invisioncommunity.com/news/invision-community-42-r1030/

Well, looking at the Total exemption full accounts they filed with companies house last year, the Net current (liabilities)/assets were (£3,079). For a company dealing in financial advice, that personally wouldn't fill me with confidence.

Some 65 per cent of Australia's 1.7 million recent migrants and temporary residents were employed in November 2016, according to figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today.

"Around 9 per cent of recent migrants arrived with their employment confirmed, while 46 per cent spent up to three months looking for their first job," said Denise Carlton, Program Manager of Population Statistics at the ABS . "An estimated 82 per cent of skilled migrants who were the main visa applicant were employed as at November 2016."

"Around 65 per cent of recent migrants arrived in Australia with a non-school qualification, more than three quarters (76 per cent) of these holding a Bachelor Degree or higher. Approximately one third (36 per cent) of recent migrants had obtained a non-school qualification after arrival in Australia. Of these, half (50 per cent) had obtained a Bachelor Degree or higher."

The 2016 Characteristics of Recent Migrants Survey collected information about migrant employment, education and household income of those who have arrived in Australia over the past 10 years. 

Almost one third of recent migrants who have had a job in Australia reported difficulties in finding their first job, with the most common reason being a lack of local work experience and references (65 per cent) followed by a lack of local contacts or networks (31 per cent).

An estimated 43 per cent of recent migrants who had been employed since their arrival received help to find their first job. Assistance most commonly came from friends or family (74 per cent), followed by Centrelink or an employment services provider (17 per cent).

Ms Carlton said: "Since 2007, about 1.9 million people aged 15 years and older on arrival have entered Australia - equivalent to 10 per cent of the total Australian population over 15 years of age." 

Further details are available in Characteristics of Recent Migrants, Australia, Nov 2016 (cat. no. 6250.0) available for free download from the ABS websitehttp://www.abs.gov.au.
 

• Recent migrants are defined as people who were born overseas, first arrived to live in Australia (for one year or more) after 2006, were aged 15 years or over on arrival, were not an Australian citizen or New Zealand citizen on arrival, do not currently hold New Zealand citizenship and have permanent Australian resident status.
• Main applicants are generally the person whose skills or proposed activities in Australia are assessed by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection as part of their visa application. They will usually have been specifically identified on the visa application form as the 'main applicant'.
• Temporary residents differ from Recent migrants in that they have a temporary visa, not a permanent visa.

Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics and Reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia licence.

It took a tad longer than expected, but it looks like the Pomsinoz App is also in the Google Play store now:

22 minutes ago, Aimee2402 said:

 

With a risk of sound dumb... how do I check that the agent is mara registered?

 

thanks so much

You can use the search facility at https://www.mara.gov.au/

Hi, you can open a bank account before you arrive with most of the major banks

eg: National Australia Bank: https://www.nationalaustraliabank.com/nabglobal/en/banking/migrant-banking

ANZ - http://movingtoaustralia.anz.com/global/en/ 

Commonwealth - https://www.commbank.com.au/personal/can/moving-to-australia.html

All have branches in the Castle Hill area as well

For Health Insurance, if you're just looking at insurance to satisfy the 457 visa requirement while you move over then have a look at https://www.457visacompared.com.au/457-visa-health-insurance/

If you want more comprehensive health insurance, you can compare at https://www.comparethemarket.com.au/health-insurance/
 

Furnished Rentals:

https://www.domain.com.au/rent/?postcode=2154&ssubs=1&features=furnished

http://www.realestate.com.au/rent/in-castle+hill%2c+nsw+2154/list-1?misc=furnished&source=location-search

https://www.stayz.com.au/accommodation/nsw/sydney/castle-hill 

As above

The forum taxonomy isn't decided by popularity, if it was, it could potential change month to month, which wouldn't make much sense. Instead, the forum taxonomy is determined by the purpose of the website.

So if you look at the categories on the front page, they're arranged - MOVING TO AUSTRALIA -> LIFE IN AUSTRALIA - States & Territories - Partner Forums -> MOVING TO THE UK .

CTF, by it's very definition - 'This forum is for all off topic conversations' is off topic, ie, it's not related to the main purpose of the website - Migrating to Australia, living in Australia or moving back to the UK. Members registering on the website / people searching on google etc, tend to find us for one those 3 main reasons above. It doesn't make sense for someone seeking migration information etc to be presented with off topic information when they access the homepage. Hence the order the sub-forums are in.

Because of the large amount of driving I've been doing and the amount I've been spending on fuel, I've started driving with the fuel monitor constantly displaying in the car, It's definitely changed my driving style as I try to keep each journey average under 6 L / 100 km  Currently looking at 750km+ for this tank full (40L tank). (2.5L engine)

There seems to be quite a few references on the internet about Tapatalk and Twitter not working together very well. I can mention it on the tapatalk support forum but given they haven't responded to my last few emails (and I'm a paying customer) It's probably a case of don't hold your breath waiting for a fix

2 minutes ago, BritChickx said:

No grief here?!! Was just a suggestion?! ?

Sorry, should have made it clear, that wasn't aimed at you. I've had to deal with a couple of issues about uk chat behind the scenes so it's just a general appeal to the members. 

I'd possible be wary about not telling the bank and continuing to use an account / access it via online banking as continually accessing online banking from an overseas IP address may raise a red flag.

Just to add, please don't give the mods any grief about threads being in the wrong place at the moment, a lot of this is my fault. When I changed the forum software, I think I changed what was MBTTUK to 'UK chat' but didn't give any consideration to the forum description, hence it still reads

A few weeks later, forgetting what I'd done, I then moved quite a few threads from UK chat as they didn't fit the forum description. Having been made aware of what has happened, this has prompted a discussion as to the best usage of UK chat (and to a lesser extent, Aussie chat). It could be used as the description says, to discuss moving back to the UK. It could be used to discuss moving back to the UK and to discuss news which will have an impact on people moving back to the UK - such as exchange rate, employment/jobs, health, housing, education etc etc or thirdly, it could be used to discuss the move back and ALL UK news.

For personal reasons, it may be a few days before we work things out, so please, as already mentioned, above, please don't give the mods any grief about where threads are located at the moment, they can always be moved at a later date if need be. 

1 hour ago, BritChickx said:

Just an idea, but with a lot of posting current news in Aus and the UK and elsewhere in the world, I was wondering if there should be a section called 'news, politics and current affairs' or something to that effect? And then we can make the threads we like regarding terrorist attacks, elections or just general news without filling up the UK chat or Aussie chat sections?

It's currently under discussion as to what to use the two chat sections for, as their usage doesn't always match the forum descriptions at the moment. Please bear with us while we work through the forum categories. There's no ulterior motive here, we're just trying to establish what works best, we don't want to have to make changes, only to have to change them again a few weeks/months down the line.

No longer in Melbourne so can't help on some of the questions but if you're renting, the landlord is responsible for council rates and the annual sewerage/drainage charges, you are responsible for the water usage charges.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has just released a report showing the latest estimates of regional internal migration:

REGIONAL INTERNAL MIGRATION

Regional internal migration is the movement of people from one region to another within Australia (both interstate and intrastate). Net regional internal migration is the net gain or loss of population through this movement.

The following commentary analyses 2015-16 data at three geographic levels: Greater Capital City Statistical Area (GCCSA), Statistical Area Level 4 (SA4) and Statistical Area Level 3 (SA3).

CAPITAL CITIES

Brisbane had the highest net internal migration gain of all Greater Capital Cities in 2015-16 (10,100 people), ahead of Melbourne (8,300) and Hobart (400).

The Queensland capital recorded the largest net migration gains in the 15-24 year old (4,200 people), 25-44 year old (2,700) and 0-14 year old (2,600) age groups. Most arrivals into Brisbane came from Rest of Queensland (42,100), Sydney (9,900) and Rest of New South Wales (9,200).

Melbourne had net gains in the 0-14 year old (690 people), 15-24 year old (4,900) and 25-44 year old (6,200) age groups. Most arrivals into Melbourne came from Rest of Victoria (24,200) and Sydney (13,700).

Sydney had the highest net loss of all Greater Capital Cities in 2015-16 (-23,200 people), followed by Adelaide (-6,100), Perth (-3,300), Darwin (-1,200) and the Australian Capital Territory (-180). Sydney lost most people to Rest of New South Wales (41,300) and Melbourne (13,700). Compared to other Greater Capital Cities, Sydney recorded the highest net losses across all age groups, except for 15-24 year olds where it recorded a net gain of 1,000 people.

• In 2015-16, net overseas migration (NOM) reflected an annual gain of 182,165 persons, 3.0% (5,300) more than in 2014-15.

• An estimated 366,400 people moved interstate in 2015-16, an increase of 8.1% from the previous year.

• At 30 June 2016, 28.5% of Australia's estimated resident population (6.9 million people) was born overseas.

MIGRATION SUMMARY, State & Territory - 2015-16(a)
	Net Overseas Migration (NOM)	Net Interstate Migration (NIM)	Net migration
State or Territory	no.	no.	no.
NSW	71 161	-11 349	59 812
Vic.	65 007	16 699	81 706
Qld	20 019	11 581	31 600
SA	9 163	-6 398	2 765
WA	13 640	-7 703	5 937
Tas.	1 143	42	1 185
NT	420	-2 696	-2 276
ACT	1 607	-176	1 431
Australia(b)	182 165	na	182 165
na not applicable. (a) Estimates are preliminary (b) Includes Other Territories.

ESTIMATED RESIDENT POPULATION, Australia - Top 10 countries of birth - 30 June 2016(a)(b)(c)
	Persons
Country of birth	no.	% of Australian population
UK, CIs & IOM(d)	1 198 000	5.0
New Zealand	607 200	2.5
China(e)	526 000	2.2
India	468 800	1.9
Philippines	246 400	1.0
Vietnam	236 700	1.0
Italy	194 900	0.8
South Africa	181 400	0.8
Malaysia	166 200	0.7
Germany	124 300	0.5
(a) Estimates are preliminary (b) Top 10 countries of birth excluding Australia. (c) All population figures presented in this table are rounded. Estimates of the proportion of the Australian population are based on unrounded numbers.  (d) United Kingdom, Channel Islands and Isle of Man. (e) Excludes SARs and Taiwan.

The map below shows where the website has had visitors from over the last few months - there's not many countries where we haven't had visitors from. Everyone is more than welcome to participate on the forum. 

The domain name - pomsinoz is something the previous owner chose back in 2005. Would I like to change it - probably, but it's problematic, due to all the links out on the internet pointing to pomsinoz.com, we'd likely take a big hit in google for a lengthy period of time.

A guide to TV's & Radios can be found in our articles at directory at 

Also games consoles guide 

Plenty of good agents that post on here, @Raul Senise @wrussell @Richard Gregan @George Lombard @Alan Collett, there will be others as well.

Never heard of them, a quick look shows that they don't have their own Migration Agent, they use an Independent Contractor in Sydney