Slean Wolfhead

The swimming is just a procession, it's easier for the Aussies than the v USA swim meets and they don't really seem that interested. Cycling has surprised me, but again the UK cycles (no pun intended) to peak for the Olympics and often don't do much in between. Then again, the Aussies have been stung by the money the UK chucked at cycling, pretty much wiping them out for a decade. The rowing should be interesting too.

It's the old Olympic cycle. Massive funding prior to a home games, then a residual effect for the next one...then a decrease as the next generation don't come through because the funding was cut 8 years previously. Happened to Australia, will happen to the UK. France will be gearing up for 2024, then the Yanks in 2028 after a few shakey games by their high standards. What i didn't realise is that a lot of it is due to the coaching, and the top coaches just jump from host nation to host nation, earning the big bucks when the budget is there. Very business-orientated system.

Nowra is the very North tip of it. Goes down to the state border south of Eden where it's very sparce. You'd think for Regional Development and especially Health they'd be more concerned with developing the least populated areas in the very South, because this is where retirees are moving to with the youth moving the other way to the cities. Average age is only going to get older unless they purposely restore the balance by bringing in fresh young blood for a reason. One of the problems with the idyllic lifestyle is the need to go back to Canberra for full hospital services, a lot of people only feel isolated when they realise how old they are and what could happen if there's a lack of local services. There's no secret why the coach sustains a service to Canberra every day throughout the year even in winter, it's for people going for treatments or visiting people in Canberra Hospital. As for emergencies.....helicopter?

My brother is married to a Chinese lady and they had a son....he only came out with blonde hair. When they were pushing him round in his stroller people were just stopping them on the street and pointing, and old ladies would walk straight up and grab the babies cheek and start prodding him. My brother had to step in eventually to stop them doing it, it was meant well but they were getting worried about the baby catching something from all the touching*. * The baby is now 7 and earning a packet doing photoshoots for Chinese kids clothes....

A lot of Chinese people are still very naive, which is understandable given their isolated recent history til about 15 years ago and the sense of national superiority they've been indoctrinated with by their Governments. I guess it would be akin to Britain in the 1950's when the Caribbean bus drivers suddenly appeared in our cities. I work with a Chinese girl and some of the things she says are absolutely shocking, but it's meant without malice.

One of my colleagues is Indian. He was talking about the India v Australia cricket series and saying how he hoped they would beat those arrogant cheats. I agreed with him and said that everybody loved to beat the Aussies. He replied "I am talking about India, I'm Australian now!"

My parents met an Aussie couple on holiday in the Cotswolds...they said they came to the UK every summer to spend money and stay for a good few months in a caravan, so pretty wealthy. The old Aussie guy had broken his leg some months before. He said he'd been taken to hospital and was treated extremely well, plastered up, then was under Outpatient care until they could fly home. He told my dad they'd only asked his name and address...so he'd done that and given the address of the caravan park. They wouldn't take his insurance even though he had it available.

Bristol, Birmingham,..they're all the same. I did 3 weeks there last summer.....the amount of crap i ate and drank was unbelievable, even the pub food was rubbish. Chain pubs, same menu's, everything dropped off by the same lorry and heated up...nothing fresh or handmade at all. There were places i used to frequent that i refused to eat at this time...and it will get worse when they cheapen up even further in the next few years..chlorine-washed chicken and fat and sugar for the poor, the best stuff being exported. The only place i got decent meals was off my mum and dad, who eat very healthily and make it all themselves. I did like the balti's and Banks's beer though....can't get that in Australia.

Exactly. But you're seeing this culture shift in the UK, similar to how large portions of the USA have gone. People have had enough of experts, they've become shallow and consumerised and very introspective about their lives. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The way to start would be education but before that, making them understand how important education is to their futures. I just get the impression that a growing number can't even bothered to read to the bottom of the first page and assume they're always going to be looked after. It's very "nanny state" and there needs to be more understanding of personal responsibility and accountability. That's good. Am currently roasting a joint on the bbq, but everything else has come from the garden. We haven't bought a ready-meal in 6 years and feel much the better for it.

Governments kowtow to the sugar industry which is incredibly powerful and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. They know it's killing people but will not do anything about it, just like tobacco before it. It has to be about people getting wiser and stopping their kids consuming it because your Government won't help, neither in Australia or the UK. Market forces will dictate, but the sugar industry will respond by just making it cheaper. As you say, it stops with the parents.....but just think how many of them were brought up the same way and don't do any research or read any labels. Millions of them...how hard will they try?

Somebody's mother and gran, keep voting Tory people.... http://www.clactonandfrintongazette.co.uk/news/15810659.UPDATED__Pensioner__81__found_dead_at_home_in_Clacton_after_waiting_almost_4_hours_for_ambulance/ The 81-year-old woman called 999 complaining of chest pains on Tuesday, according to the GMB union. Paramedics arrived hours later and forced their way into her home, but she had already died. The East of England Ambulance Service aid crews arrived three hours and 45 minutes after her initial call. Dave Powell, regional officer for GMB, said the incident is "another example of how we are not coping" with the NHS winter crisis. "My concern is now that we are actually suffering deaths whilst people wait for ambulances," he added. "On arrival, the crew had sufficient concerns to force entry to the property as the control room could not contact the patient via telephone. "Unfortunately, the patient was found deceased in the property and there was nothing the crew could do for her.

That's just wrong. Australia had 4G before the UK, and I've got a fibre into the home with 100Mb upload (the UK average is less than 4Mb/s with Virgin cable) . They also invented WiFi here and plan to roll out 5G before the UK. The difficulty in Australia is that there are a small number of people over an area that's about 30 times larger than the UK, so it's far more difficult for any company to make a profit unless they charge high prices, and more difficult for a bank to back investments. The UK is basically a saturated market of compressed people in small spaces....lots of profit to be made, lots of customers and lots of competition to keep prices down. You're right about the TV, but who the hell is going to be watching TV in 5 years anyway? Get outside and have a proper life.

They used to prescribe paracetamol and aspirin at prescription price because patients wanted it free, instead of paying 25p at Tesco or Aldi. My dad used to rant about it...bloody lazy cheapskates. I think they've stopped it now, or at least put up signs requesting people to stop asking for it on prescription.

It's winter, they're ill. This incompetence has been well predicted for 12 months.

It's not slow and laid back, I work in IT and defence technologies..easily on a par with the UK and we all work hard at the cutting edge and swap around easily between countries. I just think you went to the wrong place and didn't make the most of Australia, and you seem to only be aware of your own disappointing experience so only have knowledge of that....it's a pretty narrow horizon for a continent that you barely seem to have any in-depth knowledge of. The bitterness and stereotyping is quite irrational however, unless it's really affected your mental health to the extent that you have trouble letting go. As others have said, a lot of what we enjoy is subjective, not objective.

I don't understand then why people in Australia seem to be so much more relaxed and happier? Maybe your character just didn't suit that way of life ?

I met an old lady and asked her when she emigrated here from Scotland. She looked staggered because she didn't think she had any trace left of a Scottish accent. 1955 she said :-)

I wouldn't bother. You'll probably get better value by choosing the cheapest deal at the time. We got a bus class upgrade on Emirates once through points collected, but the better value would be in Birmingham attracting more airlines and giving you more options to find deals. I think Qatar have come there in recent years? Or you could hop on the coach and fly from Manchester and get onto Singapore or somewhere. https://www.pointhacks.com.au/ will give you good guidance on Emirates.

So what are people actually doing? What are their financial strategies to protect themselves when money will be worth less, property will be worth less or at the very least, become stagnant to the point of not being able to sell, and if the stock markets crash then a lot will be wiped off super until stocks and shares are actually valued by their worth rather than by fantasy fuelled gambling. I was swayed by the story of a work colleague's father who put all his spare money into super and then saw about $250,000 wiped off just before he retired in 2009. It's a huge risk, and it will happen again. We're toying with the idea of downsizing a house that's too big for us and spreading the money around various countries. We have UK interests and will get a house as an inheritance, but don't want to bank on that for anything. We're quite happy to go back to renting one day rather than be stuck with an expensive property that nobody can afford to buy....you might as well have no money if you have a $million dollars locked up in a box that nobody has the key to open. I think the old ideas about house ownership are going to become outdated and perhaps, undesirable in future. Who'd want to be committed for a massive amount of debt that will restrict your life, and who would want to own that asset if they couldn't access the cash value? We're at the peak of earning potential and have sacrificed a lot to save around $12000 a month on top of cost of living expenses and maxed concessional rate super savings. This is very good money and beyond our dreams when we left the stagnant UK, but we know it has a finite timescale and we don't want to be flogging ourselves for more than the next 3 years. We live comfortably but fairly frugally, there's no wild parties, no constant trips back to the UK and no splashing money up the wall of things we don't need...mainly because we worked hard to get ahead into good positions. Where do you put that money, assuming a mortgage is paid off? The bank is paying nothing. Save and then pump it into super after the next crash? Buy overseas bonds to spread the risk of currency crash, or buy into multiple currencies to spread the risk of a crash in one of them?

20 years ago the figures were significantly different to what they are today and the nearer you get to a precipice, the closer it becomes in timescales.

https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/about-us/careers/current-vacancies-listing https://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/ You could try these people, they're in Canberra. They might help with organisations who work with them, rather than being directly employed by a Fed agency. Fed govt do employ foreigners through agencies in some fields, not sure about your skill area though. I think if you're well-trained and obviously already have working entitlement, you should be ok to find something to get started...then it just moves from there.

You'll be dead one day and not have to see it, just like those 107 billion people who've lived and died within their own eras over hundreds of thousands of years....when the first boundaried country was only made about 5000 years ago. It really only matters to the living.

went to a wedding on Saturday in Sydney. An Australian with Indian heritage, Catholic, marrying a non-religious Chinese girl. Talk about a riot of colour and a hotchpotch of a service, but it was fabulous. This is the future of the world when we gradually mix and put our faith in reality, making changes to long-established traditions. Evolution? (and the food was to die for...)

Get a cheap basic TV with a good picture, and a little Amazon Fire stick or other android box that you can bring with you and connect to the internet. You can bring both then just change the TV when you're over here if you need to. I wouldn't bother with a Smart TV anymore, the android box will give you the same stuff and it'll be a better piece of kit than what's built into the Smart TV. If you want to upgrade, you just upgrade the $100 box and not the whole TV. Foxtel (Sky, Virgin etc..) will give you free to air channels piped through, so you're not reliant on the TV itself to decode Aussie audio.

We have some friends who came over with 3 kids 5 years ago from the UK. One girl was a "bit of a handful", the other 2 lads had just finished degrees but had no real life plan, typical British kids from a typical town. The girl now has a long term partner and child, works and has just moved to the Gold Coast from Sydney to buy her first house....a responsible and completely different person from the angry young girl who came over here. One lad is in Melbourne, working for a radio station as a producer and living in a loft apartment in the city. The other has just married a lovely Kiwi girl and moved to Auckland last year, has a great job in IT. They've all done astonishingly well and far better than anyone's wildest imaginations.