NicF

The article seems to be behind a paywall? Bit hard to comment when you can't read the article.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs if a man can't spend time with his daughter without being suspected of being a peadophile.

Yes it is. Usually jobs give the full time salary and the part time fraction so to get the part time salary you just multiply the full time salary with the fraction. So, if the job is advertised as $100,000 for 0.6FTE pro rated the salary for the part time hours would be $100,000 x 0.6 = $60,000 a year. You can them stick this in the pay calculator to get the actual amount you would get paid each fortnight/month. I've been working part time for most of the last 15 years - you get used to the terminology after a while.

No definitely not. Being suspicious purely because a male adult is with a female child is so wrong. I would imagine if someone had abducted a child there would be something to make the hotel suspicious, and in this case then the hotel would be right to report their concerns, but otherwise they should mind their own business.

Until your post there was no mention of Australia on this thread. Plus look at who started it - definitely not designed to be an Aus is better than the UK thread. Perthbum, I can't comment on the state of the NHS as it is now as I've not really paid much attention to what has been going on in the 4 and a half years I have been in Australia, but it would be a shame if the NHS stopped being the NHS I grew up with. It was always a great healthcare system and far less confusing than the one here. If I was still in the UK I would be happy to pay more taxes to ensure it's future.

Yes

We brought pretty much everything as well and I don't regret bringing any of it. Even the wardrobes that we didn't need as we sold them and got far more for them here than we would have done in the UK. We didn't bring any of our outside tools or furniture but I kind of regret not bringing some of the gardening stuff, especially my retractable hose, and a painted outside bench.

Most companies in the UK don't really have you accruing leave in the same way you do here, so for annual leave you get so many days a year and if you don't use them you loose them. What you get for sick leave in the UK will depend a lot on your contract with your employer, but again generally there is no accruing of sick leave in the UK like there is here. There is also generally no long service leave in the UK. So, even given that you have been working for the same company for 20 years any time spent in the UK wouldn't have any leave to carry forward any way so you only really started accruing leave once you started working here.

We used a mortgage broker - Andrew from Vista who posts on here (well it was Stacey we dealt with but from the same place). My OH was working in the same kind of job in the same kind of industry as he had been for years. There is no way we could have got a mortgage on our own as we didn't have a clue how to go about it. To be honest we weren't really looking to buy land so soon but my OH found a great block in a lovely location not far from where we were renting and it just seemed the right time. It did mean bringing our pounds over at a time when he exchange rate was about 1.4 dollars to the pound, but it was the right time so we went for it. We could have waited for the exchange rate to improve but we would have lost the opportunity to build where we wanted to.

I work a four day week but I don't work full time hours over 4 days. I actually work two half days these days but I used to work four days and have three none working days. I would highly recommend it to everyone but I appreciate for some the financial implications would make it impractical. Trying to work full time hours over four days would be a nightmare unless you worked from home and had zero commute time - you would be out of the house for forever and what are your kids supposed to do on those days? Some kids are left in childcare for long hours already, they would hardly be home if working days got any longer.

We got a mortgage after being here for just six weeks. We were borrowing for a block of land and only wanted to borrow about a third of the value but then we had to borrow for the cost of the house build. My advice would be to use a mortgage broker as they will know which lenders are likely to lend for your circumstances.

Here in SA we've had a labour government since forever (or maybe it just seems that way). We also have a budget surplus and the economy in SA is in big trouble. This idea that government debt is bad and a budget surplus is good for the economy is something of a fallacy.

I think that is excellent advise for moving anywhere, even to another town within the country you are in.

I hate this idea that there are jobs that men can do that women can't. It's a load of rubbish. The differences within the sexes are far greater than the differences between them. Some women may not be suited to some jobs, but then neither are some men.

I can only assume it's either not a law in SA or the hospital my youngest got taken to in an ambulance without us either didn't know or care enough to report us. He's 11 and has been walking to and from school on his own for ages. The ambulance trip was after he fell and hurt himself on the way home from school one day and some nearby parents called an ambulance for him. He's not the only kid around us that walks to school by themselves and they are definitely not all over 12.