Slean Wolfhead

Have you googled, lots of online providers for Australian cards but you might need to do a course with it. Maybe get one for the state you aim to work in most, they're normally then transferable between states these days.

OK, well it's too early do anything now but i can give you some good contacts nearer the time if you send me a PM around October. No promises though, I was here 6 months before i got something and that was through a contact i found on here! It's all about getting your foot in the door in Canberra, then it can flow pretty well as you build up contacts and prove yourself. There's a lot of demand to project manage application upgrades and moving them from physical to virtual servers, and single server systems going to redundant/high availability. A lot of early systems seem not to have been done brilliantly, or were done in-house by the customers themselves in a hopscotch manner...so there are upgrades and fixes to do at the same time, moving things from offices to data centres ! Lots of application people but not many with the technical or infrastructure knowledge to manage them the whole way through or understand what Vendors and solution architects are telling them. If you have experience of dealing with customers and can be pro-active here, that's a big bonus. Don't have to be a particular systems expert, you just learn whichever one is the subject of that project...some are pretty simple. Prince2 Practitioner would be a good thing to get before you come here, if you haven't already done that. Very often it's put on requirements lists even if the job doesn't really use it, but it's a way they sort out shortlists. Even if there are jobs on the "BAU" side, people often get pushed into doing projects where their skills are required. It's not an overly "mature" business as yet and there is a lot of demand for flexible people who can be trusted to think on their feet and achieve good outcomes, despite the changing environment. I guess from what you say above you know ITIL, they always ask for ITIL Foundation as a minimum. Obviously if you've got any MCSA or MCSE stuff you wouldn't need to worry about the ITIL.

ACT State Government would employ you. You say you're now looking at 2017? Is your experience in servers, or network infrastructure? Any application experience?

Bunnings has grown on me, maybe because i hadn't heard of many of the products initially so i thought they were a bit naff. Now i realise it was actually B+Q that were poor quality, I was always taking stuff back but haven't had to do the same here. We have a new Bunnings and it's stunning, I was walking round and they have a place for Utes to pull right into the shop up one of the aisles to collect stuff. It's becoming morelike Home Depot in the USA...where tradies and DIYers shop at the same place instead of splitting into different home and trade stores.

They code share with Air France, so if you get a French plane the food is better...China Southern are very good for a Chinese airline. I've never gone straight through (we meet in Guangzhou coming from the UK and Oz, then do a family thing), but i didn't like the seats on the Chinese plane. It's built for Chinese and their customary hard as nails seats, I was in agony. My brother's Chinese wife didn't notice a problem, but then she sleeps on a wooden plank.

The UK. $50 billion and 1.4 million jobs directly supported by tourism. £125 billion indirectly. Rising over the next 10 years to 10% of GDP, which is very significant..

IP rights only mean anything if all countries accept that law. China are one of the worst for respecting copyright because they don't agree with the concept anyway, everything they've done is copied from railways, to Windows software, to mobile phones. They don't see anything wrong in that, it's how they are. See, copy, make yourself. Good luck to them, they're the nation most likely to take the world into the 2nd half of this Century with the muscle to provide innovation. They're still building their power base though. Land rights are dodgy. It also gives a future reason for protecting national interests, even if based in another country. Look at Russia in Ukraine. I think you underestimate the power that China is going to have compared to Australia, given that most Chinese companies are connected to, or fronts for the Chinese Government and will rise and fall on their say so. Just look at the hugely powerful people currently being purged under the latest corruption spotlight, these are billionaires disappearing at the behest of the Chinese Government. Put it another way, should one sovereign nation sell land within it's territory to another sovereign nation, and would you think that Australia would dare waste it's time with "compulsory purchase" orders against China in the event of trouble? They wouldn't, they don't even care about money laundering right now as long as they pick up a few crumbs that have fallen off the table.

it's 30 years for full state pension now, so you'd miss out on 1/30th if you stay at 29 years. Not a huge amount under current rules. What i can't find out is if it rises to 35years for a full pension after April 2016, can you then do 6 years backpay to make it up to "full" again. Will they change the rules, or the cost and ability to pay Class 2 from abroad. Questions...risk.

Could that be 10 years of contributions required to get "any" pension, rather than the full amount?

I took some into work because i was sick of every brown sauce being bbq flavoured. Went down a storm at the office bbq. The blokes at work go and buy their own now and bring me bottles if i miss the Aldi deals.

There are plenty of people living in Bateman's Bay and working in Canberra. Too much travel to do on a daily basis, but i know a few who go to Canberra on a Monday morning, stay over Monday and Tuesday and then drive back to BB on Wednesday night after work....working at home Thursday and Friday. 5 nights in Bateman's, 2 nights in Canberra. This obviously takes planning and finding the right job. You might want to do two part time jobs in different places, just to get the income if that's crucial. I would start looking for work now and put out as many feelers out as possible, maybe even non-teaching jobs, try and get a flexible plan sorted and see where the land lies.

And between Halesowen, Cradley, Quarry Bank....totally different intonations, you can tell which town people are from even though they're virtually joined together. I met a woman over here, Wolves fan with a mug on her desk. Got talking to her and said but you have a Dudley accent, not Wolverhampton....she was dumbstruck. She was from Wednesbury, about 4km outside Dudley and about 7km from Wolves...but has been living in Canberra since 1996 :-) The Aussies love it, a new Pom starts and they ask me to tell them where they're from just by listening to them talk...it's as easy as the difference between Bristol and Leeds. They can't do that, totally bemuses them.

Well yes, it's obviously relevant. You said his dad would have been against bombing Syria and questioned the soundness of his son. But his Grandfather probably wouldn't have minded, seeing as that was his job and he flew aeroplanes as a member of a bomber crew. Perhaps Tony would have been the one who's soundness might have been questioned ?

It's a peculiarity of how the British define themselves, and how they perceive socialism today. All societies end up with a rich elite, whether they're left or right wing. The British way of thinking is that socialists should be cardie-wearing leftie semi-destitute hippies, and the Tories are cartoon versions of Alan B'Stard, kicking poor people and happy to kill off the elderly as a drain so long as they get a new Jag every 2 years. We see one as preventing wealth, while the other provides it. Neither are true...the wealth will still be exactly the same, just the distribution would be different. It's an oxymoron that a lot of poor British are working class Tories and vote for the party that "promotes" wealth creation because they feel that's the self-righteous pathway to themselves being successful, when in reality that very system will give them less opportunity to become wealthy in comparison to those at the top. They are the Xmas turkey, yet don't realise it. They feel better saying they vote Tory, as if that's a more businesslike thing to do. Similarly, some lefties think that by voting labour, money is going to be taken off the richest and given to them. It won't be, but they will have more opportunity to bridge the wealth gap, but they'll never make up that gap unless they win the lottery. 12 of the 13 wealthiest countries on the planet are socialist, it's not a ideology to prevent wealth creation. The only difference is that in a right wing ideology, they see the richest as having a greater proportion of the wealth and a bigger gap to the poorest at the bottom thus making them stronger than the weak at the bottom of the social ladder, and they're happy to take more from the poor to make that gap get bigger. Socialism means that everybody should be "equally free to thrive", so they try and close that gap by preventing discrimination across society. It doesn't mean that everybody will be equal, and nor could that ever happen. It was Orwell who famously said, "some are more equal than others" when describing socialism/communism. Socialism doesn't mean that people shouldn't be free to make as much money as they like and use the same rules to their advantage through being as "equally free to thrive" as everybody else, that's why we have rules that everybody can take the same advantage of so long as it's within the law. Fidel Castro is worth more than the Queen, and that bastard Blair is worth £100million. They would both class themselves as socialists, trying to prevent discrimination.

And yet his father, and Hillary's grandad, was an Air Commodore and flew in a bomber crew..

They don't even need to be caught, NSW has been aware of it for years. Money coming in, rather than going out, so they've turned a blind eye.

http://www.businessinsider.com.au/jeremy-corbyn-poll-numbers-v-ed-miliband-2015-11?r=UK&IR=T That is interesting It seem to me that a lot of people agree with Corbyn and his principles, but more think that the UK as a country has gone past the point of being able to put principles before politics. He's honest enough to just state his case and not get dragged into "tit-for-tat" exchanges favoured by populist PR men like Blair and Cameron. There's not much wrong with what he's saying that wouldn't have been completely acceptable and mainstream even 30 years ago. Definitely not "loony left" compared to some we've had, and people can see that he's a decent man that we'd like to vote for but just can't....so the only alternative is to destroy him. In 2015 it's classed as loony left because everything else moved right, including socialism. The thing about elections is that the people collectively, usually end up with the political leaders they deserve and the success of the nation rises or falls by that.

Going by the OP's post, he had 25 years paid and could pay back an extra 9 years....making 34 years in total. Given that the "current" state UK pension stops counting for inputs at 30 years, is there any point paying more than 30 years contributions at this point? I'm assuming that the UK will probably raise the NI requirement to +30 years, but we don't know for sure yet?

They criticised him for not bowing low enough at the Cenotaph, but didn't report that he stayed around afterwards talking to the veteran's while everybody else went off for a nosh up. Typical British press really, they don't want to see the point.

Maybe, but the UK figures also affect the £. Going into winter, things slow down a bit and they may revise economic predictions. Last quarter the UK economy cooled off, this may be worse as seasonal businesses close down. 25th November, but watch out for early economic leaks that may affect the rate if they decide to dribble some bad news out.

Also worth looking at their website and choosing a phone able to hold a good signal (Blue Tick) if you're travelling, some Aussie coverage is very weak outside main urban areas.

For our first policy here we used Virgin, they accepted ours...not at the full discount but enough to make a difference. After the 1st year you're ok.

I was in a hospital shop being served by an old lady. I asked what part of Scotland she was from and she nearly had a heart attack. She said she'd been here since 1955 and nobody has mentioned it for years, she thought she'd lost the accent completely.

The best way I've heard a friend describe Australia is thus: "average people do very well in Australia. Above average people get very frustrated because the pool isn't deep enough for them to swim in, and paddling just isn't going to stimulate you for long". I don't agree with all of that, but I can understand the sentiment.

It depends, how old you are, how fast you want to go, how tall you are, how comfortable, how much do you feel is expensive etc. Air China was about £560 return to Sydney but the reviews are not good at all.