le petit roi

Not to change the address of an existing account. You try and open a new account with an Australian residential address and I think you'd get a different answer.

Without wishing to get into the nooks and crannies of your personal finances, did Halifax charge you a higher interest rate because of the higher risk of your circumstances or were you given their normal published rate?

When did you do that? I spoke last week to the RBS and while I have had an account with them for 20+ years, the interest currently is 0.1%. I've a sizeable sum and I wanted to move it into one paying slightly more which although not exactly a fortune, 1.5% or thereabouts is better than the 0.1%. Simply put, they refused...got nowhere and not holding out hope of having a senior manager calling me back as was promised. They said I was not permitted to open a new account; something to do with different codes but it made no sense as I already have the open account I regularly use.

I looked at something similar and without making judgment (you can always claim the Peter Mandelson precedent :biggrin:) I believe you are still making a false declaration because you are not living in the UK or at the address at the time of the declaration. My reasoning is that if you made the same declaration, you could still use the same details and open the same account online from Oz and never go near the bank. One possibility I'm looking at is to open up an offshore account in GBP. These accounts are generally based somewhere in the Channel Islands and similar to the UK, have deposit guarantee schemes up to a reasonable amount. I do assume that any account with your name on it doesn't negate the need to declare it to the ATO.

Whoa, seems a few have put the cart before the horse here...the company hasn't actually reneged on paying for flights home have they? They haven't even been asked as far as I can follow the story thus far. My 2c worth, do as Diane Leather suggests and send the company a recorded letter. If they refuse to pay for the flights, after that is the time to be a bit more concerned. However you then will have something tangible to work with and present to immigration. I guess you'd be entitled to your personal effects to be returned to you from your office and if there's anything of value then I believe you should do so.

Is an employee who has signed a zero hour contract with company A still permitted to sign further zero hour contracts with company B, C, D, etc.? If they are all well and good, if not, its exploitation and worse, zero hour contracts are actually stifling flexibility in the workforce.

I, as a single person, am well used to supporting the weak of society and have no problem in doing so. I do have more of a problem in supporting the middle class welfare scroungers who receive Govt handouts (which includes child benefits) despite their income being substantially more than mine. Maybe means testing the value of their cars, holidays and property value should be taken into account or if they live in a 200k house, let them move to a 150k one before they get additional support. In Aus, maybe the tax system should be reformed to prevent Govt handouts in the form of negative gearing...I think then we would all clearly see who the real scroungers are.

Want another question to have to answer? ....lol. Do you have an open UK account to put it into? I don't know your timescales for going back but it is something else to consider and plan for. It's my recent experience that UK banks won't allow you to open a new account; although it's fine to use an existing open account.

I'll ask because I'm extremely curious as I'm in the middle of drafting a CV for a friend whose work are undergoing a redundancy program and she needs to be prepared. What is an Aussie style CV? Over the years I've created my own CV and had it peer reviewed following which, the style didn't change. To date, I've not encountered any problems in having it accepted.

I was told last year when I applied to a bank that I had to be a UK resident to open an interest account; something to do with Australian financial regulations, not UK. It may be different for a simple non-interest paying account or other banks but I didn't pursue it. I'll watch this closely to see if you get an interest paying account opened while being non-UK resident and not a UK taxpayer.